Creating Product-service System Opportunities for Small and Medium Size Firms Using Service Design Tools

This paper describes a process, based on Service Design tools, of product- and service-discovery that has been used in workshops with two Swiss small and medium-sized firms. Both of the firms were manufacturing high-quality products and under pressure on price. The use of individual Design Thinking tools had not provided a route to deliver the product- and service-innovation required; what was missing was a method to combine the individual tools to create a process. The leaders of the firms confirmed that the process described allowed them to expand their thinking from product development to a broader product-service system development process.