Jukka Ohvanainen¹, Emmi Hakala¹, Esa Hietikko^1,

The service business is seen as one of the most significant industrial trends of our time. Physical goods and technology no longer provide sufficient competitive advantage for manufacturing. Many industrial companies have noticed the potential of service business, but only few have achieved significant success. This paper introduces how to explore the service business potential in product oriented industrial firm while minimizing risks related to service business development. In our NSD approach, we design service concepts by participating customers within the 5+1 step design process. In order to seek the business potential, deep customer understanding is a necessity. Service concepts, in which the customer understanding is gathered through the process by participating end users and network partners, act as a decision tools when making go/kill decisions about the productization and further service business development actions.

industrial service business, service concepts, NSD (New Service Development), service products