ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a broad overview on the increasing role of services: how the phenomenon has been addressed in research on services and what it implies for the forest-based sector. It highlights that in addition to forestry and traditional forest industries of pulp and paper and wood products, other industries and service sectors also utilize forests and forest-based resources for their activities. The chapter summarizes the trends and drivers perceivable in research on services and also provides an overview on the forest-based sector research and its interest in services. It seeks to improve understanding about the increasing role of services, how it has been addressed in different fields, and what kind of opportunities and challenges unfold addressing this phenomenon in the forest-based sector context. The traditional division of economic sectors, especially the borderline between manufacturing and services has become blurred: business services contribute an important input to the manufacturing operations.
