Product as a Service: Buying the Lumen, Not the Lightbulb

What if instead of buying a light bulb you paid a company to provide you with light? That’s the idea behind product as a service (PaaS)—a business model that could extend to any type of building product and seeks to bring about a circular economy.

This is how it works. An owner specifies the desired performance level for a certain system. For lighting this might include illumination level, occupancy responsiveness, and maintenance obligations. Then a service provider chooses and installs a system that meets those specifications. In the lighting example, owners would choose lumens; providers would pick the luminaires.