Servicizing: The Quiet Transition to Extended Product Responsibility

This lengthy document, written in 1999, explores the possibilities of developing an environmentally focused economy through servicizing, the emergence of product-based services that blur the distinction between the manufacturing and service sectors. Servicizing proposes to divorce economic growth from production and consumption of natural resources by enhancing and redefining the role of the service sector. In the extreme case, the service sector would reduce the need for manufacturing by motivating consumers, for example, to buy cleaning services instead of washing machines or transportation services rather than cars. More probable is the call for extended product responsibility: Through warranties, maintenance agreements, disposal arrangements, and more, companies and consumers can work together to prolong a product’s life and reduce its impact on the environment when it becomes waste. While the idea remains mostly theoretical, the authors have done their best to make servicizing a comprehensible and feasible business idea.