Christoph K. W. Blum
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Blum
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Christoph K. W.
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  • Publication
    Digitalisierung à la carte - Individuelle Auswahl von Use-Cases nach strategischen Prioritäten
    (Hanser, 2018-12-17)
    Classen, Moritz
    ;
    Blum, Christoph
    ;
    Budde, Lukas
    ;
    Hänggi, Roman
    ;
    Friedli, Thomas
    Industrie 4.0 still rules the discourse of industrial production in practice and academia. Under the variety of possible technologies and applications, especially small and medium enterprises have difficulties identifying the use cases relevant to them. This article presents a method that permits the identification of use cases according to the strategic priorities of a manufacturing company. The method is validated through the real case of a metal processing company.
    Type: journal article
    Journal: ZWF Zeitschrift für wirtschaftlichen Fabrikbetrieb
    Volume: 113
    Issue: 12
    URL: https://www.hanser-elibrary.com/doi/10.3139/104.112016
    DOI: 10.3139/104.112016
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/99750
    Scopus© Citations 2
  • Publication
    Stage-gate or perfectly agile – The future of smart service innovation: A systematic literature review
    ( 2019-10)
    Blum, Christoph
    ;
    Budde, Lukas
    ;
    Friedli, Thomas
    Smart services become increasingly important among manufacturing companies. However, many companies struggle to offer smart services that are economically successful. Developing smart services is complex, challenging and includes manifold elements from business model innovation to software engineering. Therefore, it is essential to approach smart service development as part of a well-defined and efficient process. A dominant approach to align smart service development and related product development processes is neither found in academia nor in practice. By conducting a systematic literature review, we present the current status of servitization literature according to smart service innovation. We identified core dimensions and related activities of service innovation processes based on a vast variety of different designations. Additionally, we consolidated core dimensions and activities in a framework to build the foundation of a guiding process for smart service innovation. Finally, a flow chart proposes an appropriate sequence of smart service innovation activities.
    Type: conference paper
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/98154
  • Publication
    Everything as a service? Introducing the St.Gallen IGaaS Management Model
    (Swiss Alliance for Data-Intensive Services, 2019-09)
    Classen, Moritz
    ;
    Blum, Christoph
    ;
    Osterrieder, Philipp
    ;
    Friedli, Thomas
    Manufacturing companies enhance increasingly their hardware products with services. The deployment of digital technologies intensifies the fusion of products and related services towards hybrid offerings consisting of smart products and smart services. If manufacturing companies can control all relevant performance measures of such hybrid offerings in use, they are at the edge to further transform their business. At this stage, bundles of products and services merge into a single service offering. With such a service, customers may use the product while the supplier ensures the product’s functionality. This kind of offering is called Product-as-a-Service. Manifold industry-specific applications of this concept have emerged, such as Lightning-as-a-Service or Windpower-as-a-Service. In a broader sense, these offerings are subsumed under Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS). However, only few manufacturing companies offer XaaS, let alone the number of companies that are economically successful in this endeavor. In contrast, software vendors show the successful transformation from selling on-premise solutions to offering Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). In order to do so, software companies had to restructure their offering. Far more than just adopting a new business model, switching to SaaS was a strategic move for software firms that entailed fundamental organizational changes. As software vendors demonstrate how profitable SaaS is, the underlying transformation path could be a didactic play for manufacturing companies. Importantly, a comprehensive framework to transform a manufacturing firm towards XaaS is missing. In order to fill this lacuna, we propose a holistic management model. The four layers strategy, business model, operating model and enablers represent the main levers for turning the transformation towards XaaS into action.
    Type: book section
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/98275
  • Publication
    Designing Industrial Companies Procedural Backbone to Master Digital Service Innovation A Dynamic Capabilities Perspective
    (Universität St. Gallen, 2022-02-21)
    Blum, Christoph
    At present, industrial companies face increasingly complex challenges. Shrinking prod-uct margins and changing customer needs form the core of these demands. A reliable service business offers an attractive option to industrial companies wanting to evade from the current conditions. In addition, ongoing digitalization is taking services to a new level. The resulting digital services combine the latest technological trends with their ability to meet individual customer needs. Therefore, industrial companies turn to digital services to protect and increase their competitive advantage. However, existing digital services miss the predefined targets of most industrial companies. This shortcom-ing is caused by firms developing digital services primarily based on product-driven innovation approaches. Also, academia remains silent on suitable digital service inno-vation practices. In response, this dissertation develops a new digital service innovation approach for industrial companies. The dynamic capabilities view provides the conceptual framework to develop these new organizational capabilities. Organizational processes, comprising routines, arti-facts, and actors, implement the required innovation (i.e., dynamic) capabilities in prac-tice. Moreover, systematic literature analyses provide the foundation for the presented research. In addition, two empirical studies enhance the theoretical insights on digital service innovation. First, an in-depth interview study explores necessary routines in practice at 24 organizations. Second, focus group research involving eight industrial companies expands the previous understanding of digital service innovation to an im-plementable approach. Finally, this dissertation presents a management framework of digital service inno-vation governance and process models built on routines, artifacts, and actors. The gov-ernance model transforms industrial companies organizations. Thereby, organizational alignment and sufficient performance control enable digital service innovations. The process model directs the firms through these innovations by applying three innovation modes: identification, conceptualization, and implementation. In sum, this dissertation makes a valuable contribution to digital service innovation research and practice. The findings close the gap in the literature between defined rou-tines and high-level dynamic capabilities. In practice, the management framework es-tablished in this study constitutes a powerful tool that helps industrial companies build robust digital service businesses. Its application at industrial companies drives cus-tomer-centric, digital service innovations that overcome the increasing challenges in the markets.
    Type: doctoral thesis
    URL: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:ch:bel-2264352
    URI: https://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/handle/20.500.14171/108949