Many manufacturing industries are undergoing a transition from manufacturing of
products towards integrating more services into the traditional product concepts and
provide product-service systems (PSS). Development of PSS changes the focus from the
product to the functionality of the product; hence it can be referred to as functional
product development. PSS also puts focus on the value of the knowledge-intensive
solution. This change in focus challenges the way companies innovate. When
developing PSS, the solutions are not limited to the product parameters; hence PSS
broadens the solution space for innovations.
Innovation capability can broadly be defined as the ability to routinely achieve
innovative outcomes, which is crucial for industrial companies in order to grow and be
competitive on the market over time. Therefore, there is an apparent need to increase
the innovation capability in order to find strengths and weaknesses, especially in the
change towards PSS. However there are many factors that affect a company’s capability
to create innovative products and services.
The research question that has guided the work presented in the thesis is: How can the
innovation capability for product-service systems be increased in a systematic way? The research
study has mainly been conducted at Volvo Aero, a company in the aerospace industry,
which is characterized by high technical complexity, high development cost and long
product lifecycles. The industrial position has allowed close studies in the organization;
hence the research approach has been participatory action research. Mainly qualitative
methods have been used for data collection, such as observations and interviews.
Measuring the innovation capability is one way to find ways to systematically increase
the innovation capability of a company or organization. Results from this research
points to areas of importance when measuring a company’s innovation capability.
These regards what kinds of projects the company selects, how the customer is involved
with the development of innovations, how the different functions within the company
interact, what kind of climate there is within the development projects, what
methodology is used in the innovation process and how the innovative work is
rewarded.
The results also indicate that developing product-service systems involve close internal
collaboration between individuals with different skills and competences and may also
require external skills and competencies that may not reside within the product focused
organization. Therefore, to increase the innovation capability of product service systems
companies need to reassess how they collaborate both internally and externally,
throughout the value-chain and throughout the product lifecycle. Finally, this thesis
presents a model of networked competence innovation that combines the designerly
approach with strategic, tactic and operational dimensions. The model builds on
techniques to visualize strategic planning, facilitate shared understanding in focused
workshops, and visualize innovations using prototyping in networked projects.