Foundations of Service Modularization: Towards a Design Theory for Productizing Solutions

This chapter addresses the problem of transforming custom IT solutions into reusable and standardized IT services. Marketing research shows that solutions create high value for the customer by meeting individual technical, organizational, and relational needs (Tuli et al., 2007). However, research also shows that delivering profitable solutions requires service providers to realize greater productivity through standardization of IT services at the same time (Galbraith, 2002)