Approaches for the Development of Digital Products in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Digitalisation confronts small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in machinery and plant engineering with new challenges in product development. Due to the resulting new requirements such as service development and shorter product lifecycles, there is a considerable uncertainty about how to implement this paradigm shift. In this paper, we identify the most innovative enterprises from a group of 34 SMEs and analyse their applied approaches in product development. The clustering of activities results in a model of the four roles digital leader, digital native, digital accelerator and digitalized customer. These are essential for the successful implementation of the identified approaches.