It allowed for enriching discussions on the economic and legal challenges of servitization, both for companies and consumers. Industry experts mentioned business cases that fuelled the academic debate. The challenges to overcome include the lack of awareness and trust by businesses and consumers, the difficulties of financing novel business models, but also the absence of harmonised rules for services contracts and the linear thinking that still dominates our legal systems. This linear thinking not only dominates contract law but also property law.

Additional challenges (but also opportunities) are posed by the increased data collection in servitization and potentially also by the future digital product passport. Contract law, however, not only creates problems, it can also be used to overcome some of these challenges. A further gap identified in the current legal and economic framework was the absence of sufficient incentives to ensure the truly circular and sustainable character of many of the servitization models discussed. A book on the Conference proceeding is expected to be published at end of 2022 (with Intersentia).