Experimenting with Servitization in the Contract Furniture Sector

The Italian contract furniture sector, an important component of national manufacturing, faces increasing pressure to align with sustainability goals. Servitization, shifting from product-centric to service-oriented business models, offers promising potential to support this transition but remains underexplored in practice, especially in traditional industries. This research investigates how strategic design can act as a catalyst for implementing servitization to support companies’ sustainable transition, and specifically, how strategic design supports companies in integrating sustainability into their innovation and development processes. In the ACTAS pilot project, an Italian furniture company is involved in a series of co-creation workshops to prototype a product service system development process that is aligned with long-term sustainability objectives. The findings show that strategic design enables internal alignment, fosters long-term visioning, and translates sustainability goals into actionable strategies. The study proposes a conceptual model that highlights the importance of design interventions across multiple organisational levels and phases of innovation. This research contributes both empirically and methodologically to the field of design for sustainability transitions by demonstrating how strategic design can bridge business innovation and systemic change, offering a framework for traditional manufacturing contexts navigating sustainability challenges.