Digital servitization and sustainability through networking: Some evidences from IoT-based business models

In the last few years, the widespread of digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things, in manufacturing industries and servitization became so strong that, recently, a growing research stream has begun to focus on how digital technologies enable service development, ushering in digital servitization as a specific research stream. Notwithstanding the prospective academic and managerial importance of explaining how digital servitization leads to sustainability, this research direction is still poorly investigated in the literature. The present article aims to fill such research gaps by answering the following research question: How do digitally based business model innovation and networking in manufacturing servitization impact sustainability? In order to answer this research question, we performed a multiple case study about technology-driven business model innovation and networking that has been implemented over the last few years by four small and medium manufacturing Italian companies.