Selling products used to be the standard way of doing business.
Traditionally, it is left to the user to transform the purchase of
a product into something that fulfils effectively a final-user
need. Today, two streams of research - business management and
sustainability - normally with very distinct perspectives on the
world, have surprisingly converged to form a common conclusion:
selling products is old-fashioned business. Companies should switch
their focus to selling need fulfilment, satisfaction, or
experiences. Or, in other words, selling integrated solutions or
product-services. The business management literature argues that,
by focusing on the integrated, final-client needs, and delivering
integrated solutions fulfilling these needs, companies will be able
to improve their position in the value chain, enhance added value
of their offering, and improve their innovation potential. In a
business world where many products are becoming equally
well-performing commodities, this strategy is one of the ways to
avoid a sheer competition on price - a type of competition that
Europe never can win with emerging and low-cost economies such as
China. In that sense, product-services can mean new business for
old Europe. The sustainability knowledge stream argues that
need-focused solutions could be inherently more sustainable than
products. Product-services could offer the value of use instead of
the product itself and decrease the environmental load in two ways.
First, companies offering the service would have all the incentives
to make the (product-)system efficient, as they get paid by the
result. Second, consumers would be encouraged to alter their
behaviour as they gain insight into all the costs involved with the
use. Until today, the connections and interchange between the two
research streams have been quite limited. The question of whether
product-services truly are the avenue to a sustainable world is
still under discussion. This book aims to develop a systematic view
on this issue. The potential of product-services to enhance
competitiveness and contribute to sustainable development prompted
the EU to invest heavily in the theme under the EU's 5th Framework
Programme (FP5; 1997-2002). A variety of research and development
projects in the field were supported under the umbrella of the
Sustainable Product Development Network (SusProNet). These included
MEPSS (Methodology Product Service Systems); Home Services; HiCS
(Highly Customerised Solutions); Prosecco (Product-Service
Co-design); and Innopse (Innovation Studio and exemplary
developments for Product-Service). The projects were undertaken by
a mix of European research institutions and companies including
Orange, Philips and Nokia. Some of these projects focused on
developing methods that could help industries change their output
from a product to a service. Others focused on the development of
new product-services or solutions (HiCS, Prosecco, Innopse), and
yet others tried to analyze under which circumstances
product-services are likely to be implemented and accepted by
consumers (Home Services). One project focused on dissemination of
the concept to SMEs (Lean Services). Other projects focused purely
on new product-service development, such as Brainfridge (an
intelligent fridge managing its supply chain), ASP-NET (application
service providers), Protex (intelligent enzymes) and IPSCON
(receivers for wireless telephones). New Business for Old Europe
brings together the key outputs from all of these groups to present
a state-of-the-art collection on product-service development,
prospects and implications for competitiveness and sustainability.
The book has a number of aims. First, it attempts to bridge the gap
between business and sustainability literature to lead to a
better-founded understanding of the business drivers for embarking
on product-service development, and its relation with
sustainability and competitiveness. Second, the book reviews the
large amount of studies that have developed toolkits, methods and
approaches that can support marketers, product developers and
strategists in business to develop product-services, selects the
best-practice approaches and analyses any gaps. Third, the book
examines what opportunities there are for product-service
development in a variety of key areas including base materials,
information and communication technologies, offices, food and
households. Each chapter in this section discusses the area,
developments that will stimulate or hinder the market opportunities
for product-services, product-service examples, and typical
implementation challenges for product-services in that area. These
chapters serve as a quick introduction for companies interested in
developing product-services in a specific area. Fourth, the book
translates all the lessons into suggested approaches for
product-service development by companies. Annexes include a
lightweight "product-service development manual" and an
alphabetical list of useful underlying tools.
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