Rural Transformation through Servitization

Rural development paradigms after the Second World War depended on a set of assumptions relevant to the mass-scale industrialization of the agricultural sector. However, most of these assumptions are now invalid and we need strategies for redesigning the industrial economic system to co-create value according to the rules of post-industrial society. To grasp better what drives today's rural development, this book conducts an analysis of qualitative changes in economic and social life caused by a major innovation model inherent to post-industrial society – servitization. The book aims to contribute to the scarce literature on the role of servitization in farming and rural development. It offers a conceptual and empirical understanding of the ways of servitization in agriculture and rural development, examined through the prism of an evolutionary approach based on the theory of qualitative structure. The method of qualitative structure explains why and how a switch from product-oriented business logic to service-oriented business logic happens and helps to find many new insights useful for improving farm management and socio-economic development of rural regions. It combines a systematic and evolutionary analysis of literature on servitization and agricultural production strategies with case studies of farming and territorial servitization projects implemented in Lithuania. It will be of great interest to researchers and students in the field of rural development studies, servitization and business model innovation.