Introduction: Do Only Manufacturers Are Potential Drivers of Servitization?

The introductory chapter of the monograph gives the reasoning and describes the background for opening up new scientific discussions regarding servitization. Rural development paradigms after the Second World War depended on a set of assumptions relevant to the mass-scale industrialization of the agricultural sector. However, most of these assumptions are now invalid and strategies are needed for redesigning the industrial economic system to cocreate value according to the rules of post-industrial society. The servitization of farming is examined here as the key post-industrial paradigm innovation which shows the evolutionary path for rural development policy transformations.