Charging for services involves an organizational shift. Stephen Brown, director of the Center for Services Leadership, says companies must move away from what he calls the logic of manufacturing — how to make things, how to cut costs, how to increase efficiency — towards a logic focused on addressing customers’ needs. Unsurprisingly, the product-dominant firms themselves prove most resistant to this shift. "A service logic focuses on how to help customers solve their problems. This requires a deep and intimate understanding of customers beyond what most product-dominant companies have ever even considered," said Brown.

Many companies have been shifting away from a sole focus on products and have added services in order to drive continued growth and differentiate themselves in an increasingly saturated marketplace. In fact, services account for 80 percent of the U.S. GDP and similarly high percentages in the GDPs of other developed nations. In China, where the Center for Services Leadership recently hosted a symposium on the subject, services now account for 40 percent of GDP, up from 34 percent a few years ago. The key to a successful move into services, experts say, is to recognize that running a service business is not the same as running a product business, and that the transition will not happen overnight.