Outcome-Driven Innovation and Smart Product-Service Systems: Case Evidence from a Sports Goods Manufacturer

As smart products and services become increasingly integrated into daily life, companies face the challenge of understanding nuanced customer needs to develop value-creating smart product-service systems (SPSS). This study addresses that challenge by proposing a jobs-to-be-done approach combined with the Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) framework to guide SPSS development in closer alignment with customer needs. Focusing on the sports wearable market of a major German sports goods manufacturer, our research shows how to generate actionable insights through ODI, delivering both qualitative and quantitative data on customer needs. These insights help firms design SPSS that not only meet but anticipate user preferences, strengthening the value proposition. By introducing a customer-centric approach to digital innovation, this paper equips practitioners with a tool to innovate and compete in the evolving smart product domain. More broadly, it adds a conceptual lens that highlights the often-overlooked social dimension in developing sociotechnical systems in IS.