Paper info

The role of third parties in the software innovation processes

François Scheid

The paper was published at the 28th IMP-conference in Rome, Italy in 2012.

The software industry is characterised by a regular flow of innovation, but also by a high failure rate which leads companies in this sector to reconsider a better integration of the first customers in the projects applying new concepts. Radical innovations are usually developed by start-ups that take part in a market-creation process and come up against resource scarcity in terms of time and manpower. In fact, the software industry is ruled by a phenomenon called “winner takes all” (Cusumano, 2004) : only a few pieces of software survive in each category. This means that software publishers have to focus on their technology to be among the leaders in the domain. In addition, they also have to combine their offer with software designed by other publishers so as to be able to offer attractive solutions to their customers. According to Cusumano (2004), the initial implementation of a new concept within the customer organisation represent a key stage in the innovation process, enabling the transition from the concept to the product. But at the same time, when it comes to more mature software applications, innovation generally comes from big software companies whose products already hold a strong position on the market and can be considered as a platform to which other software can be plugged. In both cases, we observe the existence of partnerships between software companies involved in innovation processes.