This conceptual article identifies major changes in the 21st century society that gave birth to a new generation of cultural tourists and to an innovative type of cultural tourism business that meets their needs – transformative tourism. The transformative tourism business is analysed as an integral part of a transition from the paradigm of industrial to post-industrial servitized economic system by implementation of three major paradigm innovations. The research related to the development of paradigm innovations in cultural tourism provides an opportunity to supplement the existing knowledge not only about innovative ways of cultural tourism development in rural regions, but also about general challenges facing the rural development in the post-industrial society.

The shift from an industrial to a post-industrial economic system encourages an alternative to the globalized food chains—short food supply chain initiatives, which come alongside the servitization concept and are often discussed in the context of sustainability. However, short food supply chain literature is mainly focused on the aspects typical of the industrial economic system and neglects new important business drivers arising in the post-industrial era. This research aims to discuss the evolution of short food supply chain theory and practice in the context of three paradigm innovations that emerged in the post-industrial economic system and suggest new paths for sustainable agri-food system building. All three paradigm innovations are closely related to each other, but each changes a certain dimension of the mental model concerning the food production and delivery system. The article examines the organizational model of the alternative local food market in Lithuania that has been designed according to the “new rules of game” suggested by the post-industrial economic system.

Recently, the EU policy measures have been widely applied to encourage early retirement from farming. Current age structure of society requires opposite approach. Key challenges for rural development policy aiming to increase quality of life of elder people are dealing not only with traditional help and support measures, but also with the involvement of elder generation into economic and social life. New EU agricultural policy measures should ensure that funding and institutional incentives support extending working and active social life of elder farmers. One of the possible ways to change the approach deals with servitization. However, despite implementation of service-driven business model in agriculture, which opened new possibilities to use knowledge and experience of old generation, the servitization movement is still weak in agriculture. Restricted adoption of service-driven business models in agriculture largely depends on the lack of research on this topic and guidelines for practitioners. The aim of this paper is to conceptualize the organizational model aiming to implement product-service system in agricultural business by joint efforts of elder farmers and beginning gardeners. Case study on innovative servitization initiative “Rent a piece of garden” in rural areas of Lithuania is used as an illustration of innovative business model in agriculture and territorial servitization with multifaceted impact on vitality of ageing rural community and as a source to gain new knowledge on how to organize similar projects.

The concept of sustainable development was born as a new way to solve the problems of the mature industrial economic system. Naturally, sustainability management was focused on the product-oriented business model. However, the global economy is experiencing an unprecedented expansion of the services sector through servitization processes in manufacturing and agriculture implemented through innovative service-oriented business models. This study discusses the differences between sustainability management challenges in the agricultural industry and post-industrial farming. It explores how service-oriented business models bring various benefits to farming and help overcome barriers to sustainable farm development compared to traditional product-driven business models. The research follows a case study design, with an in-depth analysis of how a new small family farm successfully integrates three dimensions of sustainability by building a service-dominant logic-based business model. The case study findings demonstrate how service-driven farming naturally solves several main challenges reported in the academic literature on sustaining business in traditional product-driven farms and agribusinesses and avoids the need to balance traditionally competing environmental, economic, and social dimensions of sustainability because of the opportunity to achieve their symbiotic integration in a natural way.

This article aims to fill the cognitive gap by providing evidence for different barriers hampering the innovative activity in ecotourism which concerns the promotion of the so-called transformative tourism concept. The research is devoted to identifying what are the most important barriers in the two areas: i) policy and regulation; ii) regional economic development. The observed absence of appropriate representative data for defining the state of the art in the field of transformative ecotourism as a new phenomenon is evident; therefore, it is suggested to use an expert survey for barriers identification in the field. The expert survey was done in the four post-socialist Baltic Sea countries/regions: Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the St. Petersburg region (Russia) in autumn 2020. Research results disclose the existing similarities among barriers in researched regions and highlight the key areas for improvement in policy and regulation and economy-related fields, aiming to create a more favorable environment for promoting transformative ecotourism as prosperous innovation of future tourism.

The post-industrial service economy suggests new ways of thinking about food system design and building processes. This article discusses the need to explore best practices in the servitization of farming and theorize them as a new approach to food production, supply, and consumption. In contrast to prevailing theories that suggest reorganization of the global agri-food supply chain on the basis of the short supply chain concept or according to the community-supported agriculture model, servitization of farming puts forward a „made-to-order” food system. The purpose of this article is to develop theoretical and practical guidelines that suggest new ways of thinking about food system design and building processes. The article demonstrates the potential of a farming servitization to create new food system configurations through the combination of three approaches: holistic, design thinking, and evolutionary by providing a case study on a farm that uses a „service-driven” business model and makes-to-order organic vegetables, fruits, and greens. The case study approach allows in-depth, multi-faceted explorations and conceptualization of an innovative business model building process according to 5 phase design thinking model, which suggests gradual reorganization of the industrial food system as the result of farming servitization.