Digital servitization and competence development: A case-study research

Exploiting new technologies, companies are increasingly improving their service offerings. This paper aims at identifying the pathways that companies are undertaking in the digital servitization and recognize what are the competences relevant for the development and management of new service offerings based on Industry 4.0 technologies. Through the development of a conceptual model and a multiple case-study, the digital servitization journeys of eight industrial companies and the related competences are discussed, suggesting that various categories of competences enable different digital servitization paths, but proper combination of technical, methodological, personal and social skills, is required to succeed in the digital servitization.