The concept of platforms emerges in an increasing number of industries and affects customers' changing expectations, industries themselves, and new technologies' availability. Today, most platforms act as a technical foundation and distribution channel for complementary software products. Organizations can join platforms and use them to develop and distribute software products. They become complementors on the platforms. Platforms influence the motivations as well as the organization and affects software products of the complementors. Among other things, when using platforms, complementors must accept the platforms' specifications (for example, the technologies to be used). These requirements lead to additional work for complementors. The effort for complementors increases if software products are to be offered in parallel on multiple platforms. This publication examines how platforms affect organizations that use multiple platforms. It gives organizations recommendations for action on how to accommodate the platforms' influence.

The European workshop on software ecosystems is a perfect forum to discuss software ecosystems, platform ecosystems and business networks topics in research and practice.

Ebook: Strategic Management of Technological Innovation

This work highlights the importance of informal control modes on software platforms regarding their positive effects on third-party developers’ behaviors and outcomes. The author presents studies in the mobile software industry, demonstrating how self-control and clan control positively affect developers’ outcome performance, app quality and intentions to stay on software platforms. Moreover, the studies’ findings shed light on the underlying explanatory mechanisms of why informal control modes can be exercised effectively on software platforms and how especially clan control may be facilitated through developers’ social capital.

'Its focus is the major theme of digital innovation and it tries to go beyond the hype associated with much of the discussion of this important area … The discussion in the book stresses the need to move our thinking about innovation beyond the level of enterprise to consider ecosystems and complementary assets … Overall this is a useful book, not least because in addition to opening up key lines for further research enquiry the book also has a strong international flavour with contributions from a wide and diverse set of contexts.'International Journal of Innovation ManagementThere is no doubt that digital technologies have the potential for disruptive innovation in a wide range of sectors, both in manufacturing and services, and the commercial and social domains. However, popular commentaries on the potential of digital innovation to disrupt have suffered from two extreme positions: either, simplistic technological determinism, often promoted by technology vendors, claiming that the impending widespread automation of products and services will provide step-changes in productivity and new products and services; or alternatively, very high-level broad discussions of business model innovation in traditional sectors, private and public. However, the impacts will not be universal, and the outcomes will be highly-differentiated. More fundamentally, neither a narrow technological perspective or broad business view adequately captures the appropriate level of granularity necessary to understand the potential and challenges presented by digital innovation. In this book, Digital Disruptive Innovation, we apply innovation concepts, models and research to provide greater insights into strategies for, and management of, digital innovation.

Software Product Management (SPM) is a key success factor for software products and software-intensive products. This book gives a comprehensive overview on SPM for beginners as well as best practices, methodology and in-depth discussions for experienced product managers. This includes product strategy, product planning, participation in strategic management activities and orchestration of the functional units of the company. The book is based on the results of the International Software Product Management Association (ISPMA®, SPM Body of Knowledge V.2) which is led by a group of SPM experts from industry and research with the goal to foster software product management excellence across industries. This book can be used as textbook for ISPMA®-based education and as guide for anybody interested in SPM as one of the most exciting and challenging disciplines in the business of software.

Digital Transformation Management for Agile Organizations highlights and explores new dynamics regarding how current digital developments globally scale, by examining the threats, as well as the opportunities these innovations offer to organizations of all kinds.

This book contains the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Software Business (ICSOB) held in Brussels, Belgium, in June 2011. This year's conference theme "Managing Software Innovation for Tomorrow's Business" reflects the specific challenges in the research domain of software business. The 14 papers accepted for ICSOB were selected from 27 submissions covering topics like software ecosystems, usage of open source software, software as a service, and software product and project management. The volume is completed by a short summary of the keynote and the two workshops (EPIC 2011 "Third Workshop on Leveraging Empirical Research Results for Software Business," and IWSECO 2011 "Third International Workshop on Software Ecosystems") preceding the main conference.

Sport Entrepreneurship: An Economic, Social and Sustainability Perspective is about innovation, competitiveness and futuristic thinking. This work focuses on how digital technology is driving transformations in the sport industry, enabling readers to understand the shift in sport towards integrating more entrepreneurial activity.

It is the fundamental challenge of the high-tech sector: A firm must innovate internally to succeed-yet its success may equally depend on corresponding innovations by external firms. Whether a company develops a ubiquitous operating system or the software that runs on it, a VCR or the movies we play on it, every participant in a high-tech network is vulnerable to the innovative moves of its partners and competitors. Yet, in spite of this perilous situation, some firms have developed strategies that have made them industry powerhouses and world-class innovators. How? By becoming platform leaders -companies that provide the technological foundation on which other products, services, and systems are built. Platform leadership is the Holy Grail of high-tech industries, but it is difficult to achieve. In Platform Leadership , high-tech strategy experts Annabelle Gawer and Michael A. Cusumano reveal how Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco, as well as companies including Palm and NTT DoCoMo, have orchestrated industry innovations to support their products-and, in the process, established dominant market positions. Based on these in-depth case studies and on incisive analysis, the authors present their Four Levers Framework for designing and implementing a successful platform strategy-or for improving an existing strategy: 1. Determine the scope of the firm : Is it preferable to create product complements internally or let the "market" produce them? 2. Design product technology strategically : What degree of modularity is appropriate? Should product interfaces be open or closed? What information should leaders disclose to outside firms? 3. Shape relationships with external complementors : How can the company balance competition and collaboration with outside players? 4. Optimize internal organizational structures : What processes and systems will allow the company to manage internal and external conflicts of interest most effectively? For executives, strategists, and entrepreneurs in many high-tech arenas, this book shows how firms can orchestrate innovation to ensure their own competitive futures-and drive the evolution of their industry. AUTHORBIO: Annabelle Gawer is Assistant Professor of Strategy and Management at INSEAD. Michael A. Cusumano is the Sloan Management Review Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School, editor-in-chief and chairman of the board of the Sloan Management Review , and coauthor of the bestseller Microsoft Secrets .