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The purpose of this study is to identify and discuss the role of intelligent materials in the emergence of new business models based on the Internet of Things (IoT). The study suggests new areas for further research to better understand the influences of material intelligence on the business models in industry-wide service ecosystems.

The study uses data from an earlier study of intelligent materials in the steel industry networks. The insights are based on 34 qualitative interviews among 15 organizations in the industry. The data are reanalyzed for this study.

The observations from the steel industry show how material intelligence can be harnessed for value creation in IoT-based business ecosystems. The results suggest that not all “things” connected to the IoT need to be intelligent, if information related to the things are collected, stored and shared for collaborative value creation among the actors involved in the business ecosystem.

The study discusses how IoT deployments allow businesses to benefit from the velocity and variety of information associated with things and guides future research to study the ways in which value is created through IoT-enabled business models.

Rather than focusing on improving the efficiency of the supply network, the study presents new paths for competitive advantages in the new IoT ecosystems.

The study contributes to the mounting research on the IoT by identifying and discussing the critical aspects of how IoT can transform business models and supply networks within end-to-end ecosystems.

This paper aims to analyze the debate related to the strategic role of information in the industrial service business, that is, whether information is a resource that could and should be protected. The connection between manufacturers’ servitization and management strategy literature is used in the analysis.

A qualitative case study on five new entrants to the industrial service market.

The results of the study provide new insights on both the characteristics and boundary conditions of new entrants’ approaches to strategically benefitting from information resources. Instead of aiming to possess and control data, the case companies prefer the access to large data volumes over exclusive access, render the question of data ownership to be largely irrelevant and perceive that the strategic relevance of information lies in novel data combinations.

The study provides a contemporary perspective on the prevailing information resource protection doctrine in the context of industrial services. Most importantly, the results challenge the hitherto unquestionable strategic relevance of customer relationships in Internet of Things (IoT)-driven service businesses. Furthermore, the results identify the need for flexible organizational structures that aim to leverage the complexity of the market environment.

Through providing a theoretically grounded and empirically backed contemporary perspective on the role of information in IoT-driven service businesses, the study expands the strategic understanding of industrial service providers.