The analysis of how the development of knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) sectors in certain territories contributes to rebuild the competitive advantage of manufacturing businesses—a process described as territorial servitization—has increasingly drawn scholarly and policy attention. The collection of nine papers in this special issue brings new insights into how institutional and spatial as well as socio-economic and industry-specific attributes underpin the development of territorial servitization. By adopting a multidisciplinary perspective that combines a variety of frameworks (organizational, place-based, economic geography), the mechanics and the relationships underlying territorial servitization as well as its territorial economic repercussions are developed. This editorial note first portrays territorial servitization as a local hybrid value chain and argues that effective territorial servitization requires a value adding fit between manufacturers and KIBS. Also, we provide a number of yet unresolved topics that deserve academic attention.

Peer Reviewed