Towards the Management of the Development of Product-Service Systems in Business Ecosystems - State-of-the-Art

The mechanical engineering industry faces major challenges due to digital transformation. Business model innovation is needed to uncover new sales potential and sustain a competitive advantage. A trend towards servitization is gaining traction - products and services are merging into integrated Product-Service Systems (PSS), providing a higher added value to customers. By cooperating with companies of different sizes and branches that bring novel competencies, resources and market channels, a holistic development over the entire PSS lifecycle is enabled. Business ecosystems emerge if this defined value proposition materializes through the interaction of its actors. The increased organizational and technological interdependencies within this system calls for adequate management. The aim of this paper is to present a state-of-the-art literature research related to the management of the development of a PSS within business ecosystems. Literature from six databases and one search engine was reviewed systematically. The result of the paper is the derivation of 18 fields of action formulating the basis for the design of a management concept.