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Purpose: Total quality management is a valuable approach to continuously improve the quality of organizations; however, scholars debate its applicability to services, which require specific best practices that are different from those related to manufacturing. Moreover, digitization is pervading all kinds of services, but little has been written about total quality service practices in digital-based companies. For this purpose, the authors provide a holistic model of total quality service that reflects the peculiarities of such companies, guided by the question: how do total quality service practices change in digital-based service organizations? Design/methodology/approach: The authors conduct an illustrative case study on Healthware Group, a global integrated digital health organization, to evaluate theoretical assumptions about total quality service practices in the digital environment. Findings: The findings allow to validate the model provided. In addition, the study enables them to observe the changes the authors are witnessing in service provision in the digital era and the consequent transformation of best practices. To be accurate, the authors cannot refer to a full transformation in digital-based companies but rather to the enrichment and extension of TQS practices. The best illustration of these conclusions has been summarized in a set of propositions corresponding to seven of the key levers of a TQS model. Originality/value: The paper represents the first attempt to discuss the relationship between total quality service and digitalization, offering a set of propositions for academics and insights for practitioners. The model can be used as a tool to visualize the different levers that successful implementation of TQS in digital-based services companies can rely on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The paper faces artificial intelligence issues in the venture creation process, exploring how artificial intelligence solutions intervene and forge the venture creation process. Drawing on the most recent literature on artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship, the authors propose a set of theoretical propositions. Design/methodology/approach: The authors adopt a multiple case approach to assess propositions and analyse 4 case studies from which the authors provide (1) more detailed observation about entrepreneurial process phases influenced by artificial intelligence solutions and (2) more details about mechanics enabled by artificial intelligence. Findings: The analysis demonstrates artificial intelligence contributes alongside the entrepreneurial process, enabling mechanisms that reduce costs or resources, generate new organizational processes but simultaneously expand the network needed for venture creation. Originality/value: The paper adopts a deductive approach analyzing the contribution of AI-based startup offerings in changing the entrepreneurial process. Thus, the paper provides a practical view of the potentiality of artificial intelligence in enabling entrepreneurial processes through the analysis of compelling propositions and the technological ability of artificial intelligence solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Port Community System is a type of digital platform that offers several benefits and improvements to the operations and supply chain of an increasing number of ports worldwide. However, prior literature does not explain in detail how these various types of benefits and business process improvements spread within a port and are obtained by its main groups of stakeholders (agents, terminal operators, and so on). The article fills this literature gap by analysing the distribution of benefits and improvements among the main types of port actors in Rotterdam (the Netherlands) after the introduction of the 'Portbase' platform. The results show that PCS effectively improves port stakeholders' business processes only if the platform is the core element of a port digital transformation strategy, and if it offers a large portfolio of smart IT solutions that (a) directly improve the system quality, information quality and service quality, and (b) are properly targeted for the business processes that are carried out by the different groups of port stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital entrepreneurship has received growing interest from academics and practitioners. Another form of entrepreneurship in which interest has been greatly boosted, thanks to digital technologies, is user entrepreneurship. Drawing on the sociomaterial perspective of digital entrepreneurship, the present article contributes to this body of knowledge by exploring how user entrepreneurs frame and implement the process to create new firms to commercialise their own digital innovations. Our qualitative study reports a single case study about the process of digital entrepreneurship implemented by a patient innovator that launched a new firm to commercialise his healthcare innovative solution. Various theoretical propositions about the sociomateriality of the entrepreneurial process of digital user innovators are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent years have been dominated by the urgency of mitigating the effects of dramatic emergencies. In the first step the sudden outbreak of Covid19 and next the Ukraine conflict raising have put under stress the stability of worldwide B2B digital platforms sectors. In response to the unpredictable catastrophes the worldwide organizations started to adopt several breakthrough technologies by means of confused response strategies. The literature did not sufficiently address the issue of which could be the most effective ways to relief a crisis picking solutions from the new breakthrough innovations in B2B digital platform systems. The analysis of B2B digital platforms during a crisis is not trivial because of the system complexity. To fill the literature, gap this paper exploits the line of study of crisis theory. Through the lens of analysis of the adaptive management model, the paper aims at creating a theoretical model based on the most impactful breakthrough innovations on B2B digital platforms mechanisms. Related to dual adaptive management approaches, the study creates four different scenarios to simulate through a system dynamic method. The results of the simulation come up with four main mitigation strategy patterns associated with the different levels of crisis perturbation and adaptive approach style. The paper aims at expanding the study on B2B digital platform technological evolution and provides some interesting insights on how to configure an effective crisis mitigation strategy. • The article explores the B2B digital platform technological evolution • The article offers a model based on the most impactful breakthrough innovations in B2B digital platform mechanisms • The simulation led to four main mitigation strategy patterns associated with different levels of crisis [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the extant literature regarding the exploitation of digital technologies by illustrating how this type of IT can influence business process improvements in the healthcare industry.Design/methodology/approach The paper reports an illustrative case study for MSD Italy, the Italian subsidiary of the USA-based company Merck & Co., Inc. The group sells drugs for human use in Italy but is also active in the veterinary (MSD Animal Health) industry, with Vree Health, and in solutions and software-based services for the healthcare industry.Findings The results show that the adoption of digital technologies could improve the performance of main healthcare business processes, particularly those processes that can be simplified with the adoption of information technology. More specifically, digital technologies could increase efficiency and, at the same time, allow for the delivery of better quality and reduced response times, with many benefits for several stakeholders, such as national health systems, clinicians and patients.Originality/value Although some studies report the need for effective business processes for sustainable healthcare systems, there is a lack of literature regarding the specific implications of the adoption of such digital technologies for the business process management of healthcare firms. This paper attempts to fill in this gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article contributes to the theory of Business Model Innovation by incumbent firms via digital servitization. Our research explores the conditions affecting manufacturers' ability to innovate their business models by developing and supplying advanced, digitally-based services. The authors performed a Qualitative Comparative Analysis via a qualitative investigation of the novel business models adopted by 19 Italian small- and medium-sized incumbent manufacturers. Our study found a series of theoretically relevant causal factors for the targeted outcome variable: size and investments, customer intimacy, and external service suppliers are crucial paths for developing successful digitally-based advanced services. The findings suggest three managerial implications: first, managers must capitalise on corporate knowledge and assets, mapping and leveraging useful people and technologies. Second, they should seek external service providers related to technology and strategy/organisation to help them update the value proposition. Third, they must build and foster customer intimacy and capitalise on key customers, either leveraging the extant sales/field service structures or envisioning new direct data exchange channels. • Digital servitization transforms how companies make decisions and innovate. • More antecedents impart on digital business models. • Managers must capitalise corporate knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The role of digital servitization in facing environmental changes by adopting a lens of analysis of exaptation. • Exploring digital servitization as the degree of adaption of the actors involved, the changes in the value chain, and digitalization toward sustainable trajectories. • Digital servitization, manufacturing processes, exaptation, sustainable perspectives. • A conceptual framework for managing the digitalization of manufacturing systems toward sustainability. • An evolutionary trajectory for integrated and digitized manufacturing processes. Industry 4.0 technologies are dramatically increasing the potential of servitized products, augmenting several times over the reach and the responsiveness of the actors involved. Accordingly, the organization for digital manufacturing is completely disrupted, and the boundaries between users and producers are fading away, new functionalities are emerging, or existing ones are being re-modulated to deliver new unexpressed potential. Digital servitization impacts on the entire body of factors tied to manufacturing process; this paper seeks to simultaneously investigate the technological, social, and environmental levels. Unfortunately, the evolutionary trajectory of the manufacturing process seems to remain quite fuzzy and, most of all, the main factors responsible for the process changes are not clear. Our conceptual study aims to trace the evolutionary path of the manufacturing process based on four determinants: digital reconfiguration of the actors' organization, digital servitization strategy adoption, exaptation of the manufacturing process, and sustainable manufacturing mechanisms. Depending on the determinant level, our conceptual model sketches a process evolutionary trajectory by individuating different archetypes of a sustainable manufacturing process. This conceptual paper extends the previous literature that seems to miss a simultaneous analysis of what is the role of digital servitization in facing environmental changes by adopting a lens of analysis of exaptation which drives system modularity in relation to the sustainability goals and digital servitization potentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Intellectual capital is crucial for building and monitoring a KPI dashboard. • Environmental, organizational, and technological dimensions drive KPIs dashboard. • Healthcare policies have to support digital platforms for cancer networks. We aim to provide a conceptual analysis about the role of intellectual capital in driving construction of a reliable measurement system in order to increase the effectiveness of healthcare policies. Specifically, we explore the building of a dashboard to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) in the digitalized health networks. The study seeks to improve healthcare policies by developing an integrated meso‑level framework based on the centrality of intellectual capital components (structural, relational, human). To tackle the research question, we follow a conceptual approach supported by direct observation of a cancer network in the Southern Italy. First, we performed an integrative literature review in order to reveal the role of intellectual capital in driving digital transition for healthcare networks. Second, we started from theoretical speculations in order to build up a reliable dashboard formed by a set of KPIs, aimed at monitoring the crucial operation of a digitalized cancer network. The conceptual model outlines an inductive process model by which the managers of the healthcare network can develop a comprehensive multi criteria group decision making (MCGDM) dashboard of KPIs, automatically extracting most of the information about the network from the digital platform. We have chosen three main dimensions that drive the digital transition: technological, referring to human capital, organizational, referring to structural capital, and environmental, referring to relational capital. The originality of the model lies in its specific focus on confronting the complexity and heterogeneity that irremediably affects the decision-making process. An intellectual capital-driven dashboard allows cancer network policy makers and practitioners to deal with digitalization in a very broad and successful way. This paper seeks to gain an overall understanding by merging different fields of research and providing a reliable baseline to set up further quantitative academic research, centered on the dashboard. Due to its standardized approach, the dashboard may improve comparability between different healthcare networks and open the way for comparative studies between different healthcare structures; it might represent an opportunity for practitioners and academics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Digital servitization impacts on the renewal of corporate business models. • Digital servitization is affected by the prior knowledge of the firm. • Our findings outline four ideal-types of business models using prior knowledge. Over the last few years digital servitization has become a very popular topic in the industrial marketing and technology management literature. The present article contributes to the extant literature on business models for digital servitization by investigating the roles and effects of prior technological knowledge. To date, this rich and growing body of literature has underestimated a crucial corporate asset for value creation, and that is firms' past experience and knowledge. Such a corporate heritage may have relevant implications for a firm's approach and decisions regarding digital servitization, however, especially if it is related to one (or more) of the I4.0 technologies. The research question posed in the present article is thus: how does a company's prior knowledge affect its digital servitization strategies? To answer this question, we conducted a multiple case study, collecting and analyzing primary and secondary data about Italian medium- to large-sized enterprises that had recently implemented digital servitization. The findings illustrate the different effects of the technological solutions adopted on the companies' business models, and delineate an inductive matrix with four different ideal-typical business models: expert industrializer; explorative solutioner; explorative industrializer; and expert solutioner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]