This document summarizes Luna Leoni's Ph.D. thesis defense. The thesis examined how manufacturing firms can create and maintain competitive advantages through implementing servitization and knowledge management strategies. A literature review found these topics are under-researched. A case study of IBM identified five connections between servitization and knowledge management, which were used to develop a new model. The thesis contributes new understanding of servitization and identifies opportunities for further research on how knowledge management can facilitate servitization adoption in other contexts like Italian manufacturing firms.

1. Luna Leoni
Thesis Defence
Ph.D. in Management
Curriculum in Business Administration
January 28, 2015

3. In the last fifty years, the economy has been characterized by a transition
that led to advanced industrial nations to be increasingly less based on
physical output, and more on intellectual and intangible assets.
In particular, the environment in which modern firms compete is
characterized by an increase in the:
•Use and dissemination of the Information and Communication Technology
(ICT);
•Integration and interaction among different countries, i.e., globalization;
and
•Importance of the production environmental impacts.

4. Due to these new market conditions, manufacturing firms – more
than others – need to redefine their business model (Klaila, 2000)
through the implementation and deployment of new processes,
namely: Servitization and Knowledge Management.
Therefore, it is important to understand – both in theory and practice
– how a manufacturing firm can create and maintain a competitive
advantage against its competitors through the application of these
two processes.

5. “How can the implementation
of a knowledge management
system facilitate the adoption
of the servitization strategy?”

6. The following two research methods have been applied:
1.Systematic Literature Review: it allows to identify, review, and synthesize –
in a transparent and rigorous way – all the literature currently available (Victor,
2008) on the topics analysed. It differs from traditional narrative reviews (Huff,
2009; Cooper, 1998) by being more explicit in the selection of the studies and by
employing rigorous and reproducible methods of evaluation.
2.Inductive Single-Case Study: Inductive studies are especially useful for
developing theoretical insights when research focuses on areas that extant
theory does not address well (Ozcan; Eisenhardt, 2009); Single-case studies
can richly describe the existence of a phenomenon (Siggelkow, 2007); and the
choice of the IBM Corporation is appropriate because it represents a
recognized successful servitization model.

7. 1. THE PROCESS

8. 2. DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE LITERATURE (I)
Time-line distribution of the papers

9. 2. DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE LITERATURE (II)
Geographical distribution of the papers

10. 2. DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE LITERATURE (III)
Journal distribution of the papers

11. 3. THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF THE LITERATURE

12. The literature that jointly considers servitization and knowledge in general
focuses on the designers’ role. Thus, the successful implementation of a
servitization strategy seems to be entirely based on designers’ role, capabilities
and skills.
Moreover, much still needs to be done in terms of quantitative research.
In conclusion, even though the two topics analysed by this systematic literature
review are particularly relevant in modern society, they are still not well
addressed by the academic world. This allows the identification of a research
gap and the possibility for future work to try to fill this gap, through theoretical
and practical research.
4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

13. Data sources followed Yin (1994, 1989) and occurred through:
•Interviews, with internal professionals belonging to different
IBM business units; and
•Corporate documents: Internet web pages, annual reports,
publications and internal documents.
1. DATA COLLECTION (I)

14. 1. DATA COLLECTION (II)

15. • Courtroom questioning: to
carry out interviews that
emphasized facts, avoiding
questions that typically yield
vague answers;
• Event tracking: the informants
were put back in the time frame
of the events, and then guided
forward to produce a chronology
of events that was as accurate
as possible (Eisenhardt, 1989);
• Non-directive questioning: to
allow the possibility of
answering freely.
1. DATA COLLECTION (III)

16. • Cross-interview analysis: the insights that emerged from each
interview were compared with those from other interviews in order to
identify similar constructs and themes (Ozcan; Eisenhardt, 2009;
Eisenhardt; Graebner, 2007).
• Each interviews notes taken were then compared in order to
highlight similarities and differences.
• The results emerging from the interviews analysis were triangulated
with data from corporate documents.
2. DATA ANALYSIS

17. 3. FINDINGS (I)

18. 3. FINDINGS (II)

19. 3. FINDINGS (III)

20. 4. THE MODEL

21. The main outcome of this thesis is an increased understanding
of the servitization strategy applied by manufacturing firms.
The core contributions of this study can be summarized as follows:
•A literature gap between servitization and knowledge has been identified;
•An in-depth case study has been applied in order to demonstrate that the
literature gap should be filled; and
•The five connections points identified through the case study led to the
development of a model, which represents a novel way of examining servitization
in a knowledge management perspective.

22. • Academics: because both the results of the systematic literature
review and the findings of the inductive case study enhance cross-
disciplinary research, instigating discussion among scholars from
different disciplines, which can contribute to exploit or explore
interesting research areas; and
• Managers/industry practitioners: because the model identified –
through the analysis of the IBM Corporation – can help
manufacturing firms for better understanding how their knowledge
management system could be used or modified in order to facilitate
their transformation process into product-service providers.

23. Further research should take the case study proposed in this thesis as a pilot case to
conduct other studies with larger sample. This will allow testing the validity of the model
and its generalizability.
The Author has identified a major opportunity: to investigate the situation of the Italian
manufacturing firms. In particular, will be interesting to be able to respond to the
following research questions:
1.“Is the servitization recognized as a useful strategy by the Italian manufacturing firms?”
2.“Is the knowledge management system used to facilitate the servitization strategy
adoption in the Italian manufacturing firms?”

24. The analysis carried out in this thesis aims to verify if and how the knowledge
management systems can support both the adoption and the implementation of the
servitization strategy in manufacturing firms.
The case study results seem to prove that different types of connections between the
two analysed topics (i.e., servitization and knowledge management) exist.
Moreover, even though the servitization could not be anymore considered as a nascent
field, there are a lot of different perspectives of this phenomenon – such as the
knowledge management perspective – that are only partially mentioned in the literature,
but that represent interesting areas of development.
Therefore, the topic still represents a flourishing field for Scholars, coming also from
different disciplines. Thus, further research is advisable, required, and necessary.

25. Luna Leoni
Thesis Defence
Ph.D. in Management
Curriculum in Business Administration
January 28, 2015