Post by Daniel Heinz

🎓 𝐈’𝐯𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐏𝐡𝐃 𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐊𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐬𝐫𝐮𝐡𝐞 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲 (𝐊𝐈𝐓) My dissertation, titled “Smart Service Innovation in Incumbent Firms”, examines how established manufacturers design, implement, and scale smart, data-driven services on top of their existing products and legacy systems. It’s been an intense few years of case studies, interviews, workshops, paper deadlines, and many late nights – but above all, a time of learning with and from great people! First and foremost, I want to thank Gerhard Satzger for the opportunity to pursue my PhD at KIT and for his continued trust, guidance, and honest feedback throughout this journey. I have also greatly benefited from the support and inspiration of Christoph Breidbach, Jürgen Anke, Niklas Kühl, Christian Bartelheimer and Christoph Peters among many others in the wider community. I’m deeply grateful to my close colleagues and collaborators Marcel Fassnacht, Carina Benz, Philipp Spitzer, Joshua Holstein, Dr. Lara Riefle, Dr. Fabian Hunke, Dr. Ronny Schüritz, Dr. Felix Sterk, and many more – for joint projects, paper sprints, and all the fun in between. You turned this into much more than my own project. A sincere thank you as well to the members of my dissertation committee – Christof Weinhardt, Orestis Terzidis, and Ingrid Ott – for engaging so deeply with the work and for their constructive feedback. Also, a big shoutout to all the great KIT students who contributed with their excellent theses to this work and to our broader research over the past years – it was a pleasure to supervise and learn from you – and to all our corporate partners who trusted us with their challenges, data, and time. Your openness and collaboration made this research both possible and relevant. The good news is that my academic journey does not end here 🚀 I’ll continue working as research lab lead at KIT and now officially as a post-doc, together with a fantastic group of PhD students – Linda Sagnier Eckert, Jonas Liebschner, and Ida Meier – exploring how digital technologies, data, and AI can enable new forms of value creation. For now, I’m simply grateful for everyone who has been part of this chapter – thank you all, I'm excited for what comes next! Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) KSRI@KIT KIT Institute for Information Systems (WIN) KIT Wirtschaftswissenschaften Die Wirtschaftsinformatik SIG SVC - AIS Special Interest Group for Services