In response to increasing competition and the need for new revenue streams, manufacturing firms are embracing servitization (Bustinza, 2024; Bustinza, Vendrell-Herrero, & Gomes, 2019; Nebuloni, Hernandez, & Carter, 2019). This transformation, while promising significant financial benefits, also introduces new challenges. The dissertation addresses three critical, yet underexplored, aspects of servitization: strategic alignment, commercialization, and the operational execution by service technicians. The first study investigates the financial performance implications of offering advanced services, the most complex form of servitization. It focuses on a sample of 1,626 publicly traded U.S. manufacturing firms and explores how the success of advanced services depends on the firm’s current strategic emphasis—whether it emphasizes value appropriation or value creation. The study relies on financial data from Compustat and a newly developed dictionary used to analyse 10-K financial reports. The findings show that advanced services positively impact firm performance, but only when aligned with a strategic emphasis on value creation. Moreover, this relationship is moderated by environmental factors such as demand and technological uncertainty, highlighting the conditions under which advanced services can thrive .The second study shifts focus to the commercialization of services, a domain where many manufacturing firms struggle (Driedonks, Hengstebeck, & Vrietler, 2019). Through a systematic literature review of 113 papers supplemented by 25 interviews with Dutch manufacturing firms, this study discusses the multi-level nature of servitization-related commercialization challenges. It identifies how commercialization issues span the organizational micro (individual), organizational meso (structures and processes), organizational macro (strategies and capabilities), interorganizational (dyads) and ecosystem levels. The study emphasizes the interconnectedness of these levels, showing, for instance, how strategic choices influence organizational structures and salesforce requirements. This integrative perspective not only consolidates fragmented research but also results in a future research agenda to guide research on the intersection between servitization and sales. The third study delves into the operational challenges of servitization by examining the repair performance of service technicians—key actors in delivering after-sales services. Using a large dataset containing 20,242 monthly observations for 854 field service technicians within a robotics manufacturer, the study explores how technician performance in the form of repeat visits after unsuccessful repair services is shaped by two types of learning: repair task experience and customer familiarity. Interestingly, while repair task experience alone can lead to more repeat visits, familiarity with customers enhances performance, but only when technicians are already highly experienced. This interaction underscores the importance of aligning technician deployment strategies with both learning curves and customer relationships. Together, these three studies provide interesting new insights into different aspects of the servitization journey of manufacturing firms. The dissertation addresses strategic aspects of servitization in the alignment of the advanced service strategy with current corporate goals, tactical aspects regarding service commercialization, and helps to optimize service delivery through technician performance on the operational level. Each study stands alone in its contribution, yet collectively they offer a richer understanding of how manufacturing firms can successfully transition into service-oriented business models.