Smart Product-Service Systems (Smart PSS) in Industrial Firms : A Literature Review

During the last few decades, the PSS literature has documented industrial firms’ transformation from the product dominant logic of business to product-service bundles constituted by machines and related services. This transformation has had several dramatic implications on firms’ profitability, strategy, operations, organizational setting, sales and marketing approaches, and R&D practices. However, more recently, industrial firms have started to adopt various smart technologies that are embedded within the PSS. The use of smart technologies in PSS gives rise to the new types of PSS that are referred to in this paper as Smart PSS. Based on a literature review of 43 papers from relevant academic fields, this paper seeks answer to the following research question: what are the value creating features of smart product service systems (Smart PSS) in industrial firms? We synthesize the knowledge on Smart PSS to provide a definition and show the distinctive features of Smart PSS and propose an agenda for future research