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The purpose of this paper is to bring new insight into the barriers of service business development in installed base manufacturing companies by studying the transformation from an organisational culture perspective. It proposes a new framework that can be used both in studying the transition and in supporting the change within an organisation.

A case study‐based approach was applied together with conceptual work based on literature in order to construct the framework. The study was carried out in two manufacturing companies and the framework was tested on four other occasions. The data collection methods included interviews, organisational culture surveys and workshops.

The paper provides a service culture and capability framework with tentative descriptions of transformations in the basic elements needed to facilitate the significant progress of a service business. It also gives empirical examples of how the transformation can manifest itself in organisational culture.

The framework is promising, but further research is needed in terms of theoretical and empirical validation.

The paper contributes to supporting the transformation from a product‐oriented culture towards a more customer‐oriented and service‐oriented culture. It suggests that the transformation can be facilitated by exploring and communicating new core task demands and synchronised development of customer relations, management, service development practices and service business understanding. It argues that this is also a possibility for renewing an entire organisation and improving its readiness for the future.

This paper offers an essential, but little known organisation culture perspective to the theoretical discussion on industrial service business development.

The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretically and empirically grounded interdisciplinary framework for understanding service innovation in a business-to-business (b-to-b) context, particularly from the perspective of the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME).

This study used an abductive research process, supported by theoretical insights from a literature review, and empirical evidence from a multiple-case study. Six SME case companies were all transforming towards service logic. The empirical data consists of semi-structured interviews with the case companies and their business customers, workshops and business documents.

The study identified four critical service logic-related perspectives in service innovation in a b-to-b context, and related key questions: How is potential for new service business recognised? How is freedom of action perceived? What kinds of strategies are plausible? What are the reasons, objectives and support for the change? The shared interpretation of these questions within an organisation seemed to be related to the company’s success in doing business in new ways, enhancing service innovations and in their transformation to service logic.

This article offers a new interdisciplinary and empirically grounded perspective on innovation in the b-to-b and SME context framing the phenomenon in service logic. Tackling the questions is a precondition for SMEs in enhancing service orientation in strategy, mutual value orientation in organisational culture, their role in others’ business and collaborative business development, thus enhancing service innovations producing reciprocal value-in-use over time.

VTT DIGITALO is an office building built for use by the VTT Technical research centre of Finland. The building project aimed at producing an office building and a modern workspace that supports an interactive way of working, emphasises the image of the user as a provider of high‐end technology solutions, and is in accordance with the principles of sustainable construction. The paper sets out to assess the project from the viewpoints of user‐requirements management and sustainable construction.

The study includes the following aspects: life‐cycle impacts, building performance and user satisfaction. The paper introduces the project targets, summarises the results, discusses the lessons learned, and makes recommendations for further research.

DIGITALO succeeded in achieving the targets stated for energy‐efficiency, adaptability, indoor conditions and service life, but there are problems with reference to pursued interactive and innovative workspaces. The results of the study emphasise the importance to develop requirement management methods that support the identification and understanding of user needs. The users' own understanding about the nature of work rather than directly expressed needs for workspaces should be considered as the starting‐point.

The DIGITALO project was considered as a milestone in a long‐term process that aims at the development of high‐quality facility and space services that are in accordance with the user needs, and based on understanding the strategic goals of the user. The DIGITALO case did not manage to achieve all the stated requirements, and the paper discusses the problematics of requirement management especially from the viewpoint of methods and tools needed.