Commercialization of Digitally-Enabled Products and Services: Overcoming the Barriers by Applying Action Learning

This paper describes and analyses the application of Demings' PDCA circle in combination with action learning methods to support the commercialization of digitally-enabled products and services. It does this through a single use case where one of the authors was embedded. The paper considers the challenges for a traditional firm selling solutions based on digital technology and how this is then converted into a value proposition. PDCA provided a change management framework that supported the action learning that was taking place by providing iterations with refection phases. This allowed the firm to proactively identify the barriers that it had to overcome and then to understand how it overcame these barri ers. In doing so, it built new knowledge within the firm that could be standardized. This is an initial study, and additional studies should be made of alternative cases to allow for a deeper comparison.