7th International Business Servitization Conference

This book of abstracts summarizes the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Business Servitization (ICBS 2018), held at the NOVA School of Business and Economics, Lisboa, Portugal. In this edition the conference’s focal theme has been Make, buy or partner: Paradoxes in product service innovation. With this theme the event aimed at discussing through what drivers, processes and actors play a crucial role in enabling and promoting collaborative technological upgrading and product-service innovation. Servitization and the benefits of knowledge-intensive service provision do not necessarily have to be fully integrated within the manufacturer’s internal value chain, therefore it is important to understand how the various forms of collaboration like strategic outsourcing, strategic alliances, joint ventures and other types offer an opportunity to develop and anchor technological and service capabilities across partnering firms.