Leadership for Digitalization and Digital Servitization

Digitalization and digital servitization present substantial opportunities for innovation and growth, particularly for incumbent companies. This cumulative dissertation examines the leadership skills required to leverage these opportunities while managing the associated challenges and complexities. Four overarching research findings emerged by applying the research methods of a literature review on leading internal and external digitalization activities and semi-structured interviews with thirty digital servitization experts. Digitalization and digital servitization leaders should adopt a holistic leadership approach, possess a visionary mindset, focus on change management, and be employee-oriented. Moreover, transformational leadership has been identified as a suitable leadership style for navigating digitalization and digital servitization. The findings of this cumulative dissertation contribute to the scholarly discussion by advancing the underexplored research area of digital leadership and providing actionable insights for practitioners on the required leadership skills to succeed in digitalization and digital servitization.