Without friction, no shine: Coping with servitization tensions among Knowledge Intensive Businesses

In today’s world, servitization is seen as a global trend to stay competitive in the current business environment. However, as firms progress in servitization, they often encounter tensions. Research suggests that managers often fail to understand the implications of tensions at organizational levels and lack managerial practices needed to cope with tensions across different levels. Although resolving problem- and dilemma-based tensions has been extensively researched in servitization, ways to resolve paradoxical tensions in servitization have largely been neglected, especially at an organizational level. Therefore, this study aims to uncover insights into the complexities of managing servitization tensions by investigating paradoxical tensions that Knowledge Intensive Businesses (KIBs) face during the servitization innovation process and an exploration of managerial perceptions regarding the coping-mechanisms of these tensions. Using an inductive method, an exploratory qualitative multi-case study was condu