Abstract

«Soft» innovations are strongly emerging in modern competitive arenas in the form of dematerialization of the offering system. Thanks to the use of services, de-materialization aims to make mass production processes evolve, in order to make them suitable to face competitive environment changes. However, in its most complete examples firms go beyond mere «servitization» of products, exploring dimensions such as culture, arts, social topics, traditions, narratives regarding the firm and the entrepreneur, tales and stories by customers and employees, in order to innovate its offer and its value production processes. The article provides some insightful cases of such strategies.