Sustainable Innovation in Industry through Servicization – ServINNOV

The ServINNOV project (Sustainable Innovation in Industry through Servitization) is a fundamental research project, which relies on the multidisciplinarity of the academic partners and on the complementarity with the industrial ones. The project is in line with the third topic on the ANR call “Innovation and business models”.

The ServINNOV project aims at studying one of the current changeovers of industrial companies from a production and innovation process essentially based on material goods to the integration of multiple service activities. What is at stake is the study of the processes behind this strategic and organizational innovation through services, this innovation being understood in a sustainable performance perspective. That is, is it possible to connect strategic evolutions of firms towards competitiveness and growth with sustainable development at stake on a firm and on a territorial level?

Thus, this research project aims at studying two complementary issues.
The first is the analysis of the evolution of an industrial company from a material goods production to an integrated offer of goods and immaterial services, and possibly to a full servitization where the product is only available through a service offer (functional economy model). This organizational evolution can provide all the stakeholders (producers, customers, institutional and territorial ones) with new value creation opportunities along the product life-cycle.

The second issue concerns the way the added value created through servitization can contribute to sustainable development requirements (economical, environmental, and social ones). The sustainable development stakes will be analyzed first on a firm level, where the product/service combination can lead firms, in a strategic way, to adopt an eco-design approach, and to take into account the overall life-cycle of the product system. On a second level, the transition to a functional economy model changes the relations between firms and their external stakeholders. Thus, the analysis should consider the role of the multiple territorial relations of firms in the servitization process.

The ServINNOV project aims at providing real advances in the field of servitization, functional economy, and models designed to manage this strategic and organizational transition. Thus, the project will set out to understand and model the dynamic evolution of firm’s business models, and the consequences of this evolution on the overall performance of the firms and of the territories in which they are embedded.

The project will both rely on a clear and structured modeling approach, and on the analysis of real industrial companies, that will be used as an experience field and then as an experimentation field. That is why industrial companies are part of the project consortium. On a scientific level, the project organization aims at ensuring the consistency between the multi-disciplinary points of view, and at enabling the real integration of the models obtained in a unified diagnosis and management approach of this economic and organizational transition process. This integrated diagnosis/management approach also aims at transforming the theoretical models built into practical tools, intended to support decision-making within companies and territorial authorities.