Open Access

Frederick Birtel, Tobias Harland, Lennard Holst, Jana Frank, Florian Defèr

• Today, however, agility is seen more than ever as a critical success factor for companies. In times of an increasing degree of digital interconnection and minimum viable products, a mentality is entering the industrial service sector that has so far only been exemplified by Internet companies (e.g. Google): New products and especially digital services are developed in highly iterative processes. To this end, customers are involved in early test phases of development and provide feedback on individual functional modules, which – in contrast to the previous approach – are only gradually assembled into a market-ready “100 percent version”. But especially with the development of new digital services, companies must ensure more than ever that both the existing analog service business and the design of new digital services are geared to effectiveness and efficiency in order to meet the growing demands of customers and competitors. To achieve this, companies must not only be familiar with the products currently on the market, but also master the entire product history, which in some cases goes back more than 30 years and varies greatly from one industry to another.