Purpose
The aim of this master thesis is to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of research and the possibilities of the knowledge economy combined with digitalization for companies in terms of new business models. In addition, a part deals with the evaluation of potentials of the knowledge economy and new business models based on knowledge, expertise and experience for Primetals Technologies GmbH besides its core area in plant engineering for the metal industry. This is done based on interviews with different contacts of Primetals Technologies GmbH.
Design/methodology/approach Systematic literature review was used as the research method. The search for information on the topics was conducted by searching databases for scientific articles, such as Scopus, Google Scholar, and Science Direct. These searches were basics to get an insight into the topic and to determine a structure for the work.
Findings
The main conclusion of this thesis is that knowledge and information have a significant impact on the economic activities of a company. Along with this, the redesign of business processes based on this resource becomes more important than ever, because in the established industry a competitive advantage is created by redesigning the business model better than the competitors. Primetals Technologies GmbH has incredibly great potential with its existing knowledge and expertise to offer new products and services through service-based business models. However, persuasion is needed vis-à-vis the customer to illustrate the importance and benefits of such resulting services, starting with maintenance and repair, followed by technological training and consulting as well as digitalization of processes and data processing and analysis.
Originality/value
The special feature of this thesis is to give people who have hardly dealt with the topic of knowledge-based economy in combination with digitalization as well as potential business models in plant engineering a well-founded overview.