Multiple pathways to radical service innovation in manufacturing firms: a fuzzy-set analysis within digital innovation ecosystems

Radical service innovation (RSI) has become a critical pathway for manufacturing firms to enhance their core competitiveness. However, many antecedents of RSI have been identified independently without considering their synergistic effects and lack a comprehensive analysis combined with the digital innovation ecosystem. Based on the resource-based view (RBV), this study uses survey data from 493 manufacturing firms and adopts the fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis method to explore how configurations of six factors, namely digital innovation ecosystem embedding (DIEE), digital integrative capability (DIC), digital decoupling capability, top management team (TMT) cognitive diversity, TMT shared vision, and digital governance mechanism, influence manufacturing firms’ achievement of RSI. The findings reveal five configurational patterns leading to high RSI: (1) ecosystem-driven integration, (2) capability-oriented, (3) governance-guided vision replacement, (4) cognition–governance alignment, and (5) full-spectrum alignment. Notably, DIC emerges as a core condition in most patterns. Additionally, the lack of digital readiness serves as a key underlying factor across the three configurations that lead to non-high RSI. This study expands the service innovation literature from a configurational perspective and enriches the understanding of the development of RSI based on the RBV. Furthermore, it provides significant implications for management practice.