Offering business solutions instead of selling products has been identified by many firms as a strategy to fight against price pressure through commoditisation, to strengthen relationships with customers, and to increase ‘share of wallet’. Yet, three out of four companies selling business solutions fail to see a sustainable economic impact (Johansson et al., 2003). One approach to understanding how business solution suppliers could change this situation is to develop an understanding of the life cycle of business solutions, from idea generation to redeployment. This systematic review examines how the literature conceptualises the development, deployment and redeployment of business solutions. It systematically identifies and then analyses 31 scholarly articles contributing to our knowledge on this issue.
The review discusses the literature within the framework of four aspects. Firstly, the review proposes the processes and phases of the development and deployment of business solutions. Secondly, it presents the components of the redeployment of business solutions. Thirdly, it provides information on the actors involved in the development, deployment, and redeployment of business solutions, and, fourthly, it discusses the interaction forms of these actors. The discussion shows that evidence in relation to the conceptualisation of the development, deployment, and redeployment of business solutions remains at a superficial, tentative and inconclusive level. The major limitations of the extant literature relate to the studies’ context-specificity, their lack of theoretical underpinning, and their deficiency of including actors of the supplier and/or customer network in the empirical investigation even though there is evidence that they play a role in the development, deployment, and redeployment of business solutions. Based on the limitations identified, the study suggests opportunities of further research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CRANFIELD1/oai:dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk:1826/7882 |
| Date | 08 1900 |
| Creators | Windler, Katharina |
| Contributors | Juttner, Uta, Maklan, Stan |
| Publisher | Cranfield University |
| Source Sets | CRANFIELD1 |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis or dissertation, Masters, MSc by Research |
| Rights | © Cranfield University 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission of the copyright owner. |
Page generated in 0.0016 seconds