Servitization and bioeconomy transitions: Insights on prefabricated wooden elements supply networks

Abstract

Despite the academic research on servitization in the recent past, few studies have investigated how the increasing role of services as a change in production processes affects the evolving bioeconomy, pursuit of resource efficiency and improved sustainability. The servitization of manufacturing companies, the blurring of the lines between the manufacturing and services sectors as well as the role of territorial servitization in emerging technology fields are already being studied in several disciplines, but bioeconomy strategies connect these questions to primary production, natural resources and new bio-industries. To fill this void, we 1) elaborate an analytic framework for addressing servitization at multiple levels of transitions (individual companies, supply networks and socio-technical systems), 2) test it with data on three prefabrication supply networks for wooden elements, and 3) discuss the system dynamics how servitization affects bioeconomy transitions. The analyses exemplify that servitization resides at multiple levels in the increasingly integrated manufacturing processes. The analytical framework elaborates how renewal of wood products companies and the forest-based industries that supply to them is determined by these companies’ responses to the changes in customer industries and their ability to adapt to the evolving socio-technical regime. Better understanding is needed on the non-technological innovations and gradual reconfigurations due to servitization that can contribute to increasing efficiency and improve sustainability in bioeconomy transitions.