In late November 2025, we had the great pleasure of welcoming colleagues from across industry and academia to celebrate Chris Borrill’s appointment as a Visiting Professorial Fellow at Aston University and the Advanced Services Group. It was a fitting recognition of a remarkable career and of a man who has become, in every sense, a servitization heavyweight.
I have known Chris for many years and have had the privilege of observing – and at times supporting – long stretches of his servitization journey at Thales. What he has achieved there is nothing short of transformational. From a modest “product support department” tucked away in a 1930s bus depot, to a global services organisation generating over a billion euros in revenue and representing around 25% of the business, Chris has helped reshape the strategic direction of a major international enterprise.
In this 20-minute highlights video of his notable lecture, Chris reflects candidly on the challenges and triumphs of that journey. He speaks with refreshing honesty about the realities of change: the struggle to explain the intangibility of services in product-dominated firms, the danger of “productising” what should be co-created with customers and the internal battles required to win senior-level engagement.
As Chris puts it in the lecture, “If you could describe it as if it were a product and develop it as if it were a product, everything would be fine. Well, it’s a trap.” That insight alone is worth the watch.
Yet this is not simply a retrospective. Chris also explores emerging trends, from data-driven services and predictive maintenance to software-defined products and as-a-service models, and looks ahead to the profound implications of AI, autonomy and sustainability for our field.
The result is both insightful and entertaining. It is grounded in lived experience, delivered with warmth and humility, and rich with practical wisdom for anyone leading service transformation.
I strongly encourage you to take 20 minutes to watch. Whether you are early in your servitization journey or deep into scaling advanced services, there is much here to reflect upon – and much to be inspired by.
Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/3mT29n40iRc