Abstract:Customer's role in value creation is in transition from passive buyers to active partners, which encourages companies to engage their customers in an ongoing dialogue. However, companies still have troubles in involving customers in the development activities. This in-depth case study in manufacturing company operating in b-to-b markets applies a role theoretical drama metaphor as a diagnostic framework to analyse the role distribution between a service provider and a customer in an actual service development setting. Results indicate that enhanced customer involvement activities challenge the role boundaries between the customer and the service provider. The company needs to open up their service development process to the customer and the customer needs to be ready to take a more active role in the process. The paper contributes by providing valuable information for both manufacturing companies and design consultancies to help in initiating and implementing customer participation in the service development process.

Industrial manufacturing companies are increasingly shifting their focus from products to services, challenging their development functions at the operational and strategic levels. When strengthening a company's service orientation, attention must be paid to service experience and value co-creation, which create momentum for service design. However, the research has thus far been silent on concrete guidelines for how to proceed with servitisation. In this article, we propose a service orientation-based tool to facilitate service development and design in industrial manufacturing companies. The tool combines previous research on NSD and service design with empirical investigations and the authors' experience. The tool provides a framework for assessing and improving the organisation and implementation of service design and development in industrial manufacturing companies.

Service-oriented industrial companies need to manage the complexity of developing new services (NSD) besides products. Prototyping offers a way to increase the success of NSD. There are service prototyping environments, but they fall short in effectiveness. CoProtolab concept was developed for effective, comprehensive, immersive and collaborative prototyping of industrial services in a physical and virtual environments. The research follows an axiomatic design theory and results in a theoretical model for studying and developing virtual, physical and social service prototyping environments.

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