Rural development paradigms after the Second World War depended on a set of assumptions relevant to the mass-scale industrialization of the agricultural sector. However, most of these assumptions are now invalid and we need strategies for redesigning the industrial economic system to co-create value according to the rules of post-industrial society. To grasp better what drives today's rural development, this book conducts an analysis of qualitative changes in economic and social life caused by a major innovation model inherent to post-industrial society – servitization.

The book...