Sustainability-as-a-Service: Requirements Based on Lessons Learned from Empirical Studies

The industrial journey towards digitalization and sustainability requires an understanding of companies’ status and desired state. New business models, like digital servitization, can support the transition from pilots to full implementations on the shop floor and the innovation of the end-to-end value chains. This paper aims to identify the requirements for industrial companies to undergo the transition towards digital servitization, where sustainability is at the core. The proposition is that Sustainability-as-a-Service can enable industrial companies, like manufacturers, to deliver sustainability values through digital servitization. This study presents a framework that contributes to the body of knowledge of the digitalization and servitization domains by describing the phenomenon of digital servitization and narrating its relationship to the sustainability domain. The research method of this work includes a review of relevant literature, and the analysis of four use cases, where challenges from real companies were identified and transformed into requirements. The results are summarized in a list of requirements for companies to follow towards a digital servitization business model, which includes technological enablers, organizational skills, knowledge of influential external factors, understanding of sustainability principles, and the contextual situation of the value chain. This study can guide industrial companies to advance towards Sustainability-as-a-Service by providing them with concrete measures on how to prepare for this journey.