Smart service systems enable innovative value propositions based on smart products and data-driven value creation. Grounded in service-dominant logic as our theoretical lens, we argue that smart service innovation takes place in ecosystems of collaborating actors, as a single actor does not possess all required resources and competencies. We empirically explore smart service innovation using an interview study of 14 experts who were involved in real-world smart service systems engineering projects. As a result, we conceptualize 17 roles that describe the resources and competencies required for smart service innovation at an abstract level. Through the analysis of actor-role constellations in our sample of projects, we further identify four patterns that exhibit different strategic approaches to smart service innovation. Our results advance the theoretical understanding of smart service systems through an empirically grounded systematization of roles, which reflect the resources and competencies required for smart service innovation. With this study, we shed light on the multi-actor and inter-organizational settings of service innovation processes, which have been under-researched so far. Our insights are further helpful for practitioners, who participate in the smart service innovation and who need to analyze their strategic position in service ecosystems.

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Smart service innovation is the process of reconfiguring resources, structures, and value co-creation processes in service systems that result in novel data-driven service offerings. The nature of such offerings requires the involvement of multiple actors, which has been investigated by a few studies only. In particular, little is known about the multiple actors’ efforts to manage uncertainty in the process of establishing smart service systems. Empirically grounded in data from 25 interviews with industry experts, we explore how organizations act and interact in smart service innovation processes. For our data analysis, we adopt a microfoundational view to derive a theoretical model that conceptualizes actor engagement as a microfoundation for iterative uncertainty reduction in the actor-to-actor network of the smart service system. Our study contributes to information systems research on service systems engineering and digital transformation by explaining smart service innovation from both a multi-actor and a multi-level perspective, drawing on service-dominant (S-D) logic and microfoundations as well-established theoretical lenses.

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