Our approach toward the engineering of robust and resilient (service) systems originates in the Resource-Based View (Penrose, 2009) and the Capability-Based View (Teece, 2011). Taken together, these synergetic views support systems to adapt, change, innovate and emerge to the system’s environment and service ecology. Centre to our engineering of robust and resilient systems is (Maurer, 2020) Strategic Management Framework to Engineer Organizational Robustness and Resilience.

The heart of this strategic management framework is the Resource-Based View thinking and adopts Alter’s (2013) Work System Framework. The Work System Framework supports to structurally analyze and evaluate “ordinary” resources as well as to design, develop and (re-) engineer them to VRIN resources – resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable. Objective is to increase the robustness and resilience of the system on a resource level and to develop organizational capabilities.

Since resources are never the only input parameters to organizations (Penrose, 2009), our approach to increase the robustness and resilience of systems is accompanied by the design, development and (re-) engineering of responsive capabilities, cognitive capabilities and dynamic capabilities. As depicted in the Strategic Management Framework for Engineering of Organizational Robustness and Resilience, responsiveness capabilities are about operational management: the system’s adaption and change towards (identified) risks and hazards. Cognitive capabilities are about the tactical management in systems and includes increased system stakeholder interaction and value co-creation mechanisms. Cognitive capabilities are about the system innovation based on knowledge and organizational learning. The strategic management within the used framework adopts Teece‘ (2011) Dynamic Capability Approach which is about the long-term strategic sensing, seizing and management of challenges and threats as well as the transformation into opportunities.