Entrepreneurial design of a digital health business

Software startups are an important source of innovation and wealth creation. Startups must develop and release software quickly to gain early cash flow and legitimacy for firm survival. They must search and identify a suitable market in a tight time frame. A ambiguity in the quality of the novel software designed can further intensify uncertainty for startups. Also, the entrepreneur-investor relationship is a critical conduit for financial and social resources, yet the investors’ influence on software design is understudied. This leads to the following research question: How does the entrepreneurial context in which the startup operates affect software design process and product in the early years? Given the exploratory nature of the research question, I drew on an eighteen-month, participant-observation case study of a three-year-old, digital healthcare startup, HealthCom. HealthCom designed a software to facilitate knowledge transfer between nurses and patients. I leveraged the attention-based view (ABV) as an organizing framework for analysis. By looking at how the environmental context influences the designers’ attention and actions, researchers can begin to understand the rationale behind design decisions. The findings illustrate how the attention of the designers were directed by financial-focused and quality-focused attention drivers. Financial-focused attention drivers originated from players (e.g. clients and investors) that intensified pressures for funding and led to the reframing of software as an enabler of funding. This contradicted quality-focused design alternatives grounded in user requirements and software design rules. It underlined the move from attention to designs that accommodated user requirements towards those that captured emerging business opportunities. Designers had to balance the tensions between financial and quality-focused design decisions that could lead to inhibition of future growth, compromises in quality or over-optimization of quality. Designers simplified and coupled requirements throughout the design process and postponed investments of design resources to meet client-imposed deadlines. The design product became disposable, quick to build, limited in adaptability, spartan, and vulnerable, and it enabled the startup to capture the business opportunities amidst time constraints, financial pressures, and high uncertainty.Information, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM

Agile, Stage-Gate, And Their Combination: Exploring How They Relate to Performance in Software Development

This exploratory study investigates the relationship of plan-driven Stage-Gate and flexible Agile models with new product development performance through an original conceptualization that focuses on their underlying principles for managing uncertainty and the resulting changes. While Stage-Gate attempts to control uncertainty up-front to avoid later changes, Agile seeks to adapt to uncertainty and accommodate changes for a longer proportion of the development process. In addition, we examine the interaction effects of combining the two models. The analysis of survey data on 181 software developers shows that the adoption of Stage-Gate principles is negatively associated with speed and cost performance. For Agile, the use of sprints is positively related to new product quality, on-time and on-budget completion, while early and frequent user feedback would seem to prolong time-to-market. Finally, the results highlight a nuanced interaction between Stage-Gate and Agile, both positive and negative depending on the principles considered

Strategies for Improving Technology Startup Capital

Funding is one of the most critical resources high potential technology startup (HPTS) ventures need to achieve success. Some startup founders lack access to capital, a critical resource for HPTS founders to create value for customers and capture value for their organizations. Capital constraints can hinder business performance, endanger growth and the ability to grow and scale into the global markets. This multiple case study explored the strategies HPTS firms used to access capital to grow and scale into global markets. Mishra\u27s venture capital investment model and Blank\u27s customer development model served as the conceptual framework for this study. Data were collected from semistructured face-to-face interviews, direct observations, member checking, and a reflective journal. Participants were selected using a purposive sampling of 5 founders from the Silicon Valley of California, who were involved in equity finance decisions in the last 5 years. Yin\u27s 5-step data analysis plan was used in the final data analysis. Eight themes emerged from the study: capital constraint; identification of potential investors; collaboration, guidance, and support; investment potential; investment thesis; measurement of success; passion and preparedness; and prevention of stock dilution. The findings of this study have implications for positive social change. HPTS ventures can use the study findings to gain approval of investment proposals and increase ventures that create value for customers and for the organizations

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming

This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Agile Software Development, XP 2020, which was planned to be held during June 8-12, 2020, at the IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was postponed until an undetermined date. XP is the premier agile software development conference combining research and practice. It is a hybrid forum where agile researchers, academics, practitioners, thought leaders, coaches, and trainers get together to present and discuss their most recent innovations, research results, experiences, concerns, challenges, and trends. Following this history, for both researchers and seasoned practitioners XP 2020 provided an informal environment to network, share, and discover trends in Agile for the next 20 years. The 14 full and 2 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 37 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: agile adoption; agile practices; large-scale agile; the business of agile; and agile and testing

Lessons Learned from Applying Social Network Analysis on an Industrial Free/Libre/Open Source Software Ecosystem

Many software projects are no longer done in-house by a single organization. Instead, we are in a new age where software is developed by a networked community of individuals and organizations, which base their relations to each other on mutual interest. Paradoxically, recent research suggests that software development can actually be jointly-developed by rival firms. For instance, it is known that the mobile-device makers Apple and Samsung kept collaborating in open source projects while running expensive patent wars in the court. Taking a case study approach, we explore how rival firms collaborate in the open source arena by employing a multi-method approach that combines qualitative analysis of archival data (QA) with mining software repositories (MSR) and Social Network Analysis (SNA). While exploring collaborative processes within the OpenStack ecosystem, our research contributes to Software Engineering research by exploring the role of groups, sub-communities and business models within a high-networked open source ecosystem. Surprising results point out that competition for the same revenue model (i.e., operating conflicting business models) does not necessary affect collaboration within the ecosystem. Moreover, while detecting the different sub-communities of the OpenStack community, we found out that the expected social tendency of developers to work with developers from same firm (i.e., homophily) did not hold within the OpenStack ecosystem. Furthermore, while addressing a novel, complex and unexplored open source case, this research also contributes to the management literature in coopetition strategy and high-tech entrepreneurship with a rich description on how heterogeneous actors within a high-networked ecosystem (involving individuals, startups, established firms and public organizations) joint-develop a complex infrastructure for big-data in the open source arena.Comment: As accepted by the Journal of Internet Services and Applications (JISA

Research on technology entrepreneurship and accelerators

The last few years, accelerators are quickly proliferating across the globe. To illustrate, the F6S-platform for founders indicates that the worldwide number of accelerators has grown from 194 in 2012 to 793 in 2015; an increase of 308%. However, there is quite some confusion about what an accelerator is and what its impact is on early-stage technology ventures. To add to the confusion, many programs are continuously evolving their models. Understanding the organizational design of accelerators, its effectiveness, and its role in the startup ecosystem is key if we want to properly advise policy makers, investors, and corporates looking for new ways to spur the development of innovative ventures. Furthermore, focusing on accelerators provides an opportunity to extend the learning and experimentation literature as it offers a natural lab setting. Accordingly, the overarching research question of this dissertation is: what do accelerators do and how do they impact the entrepreneurial trajectory of ventures? This study uses theory elaboration methods to suggest how accelerators are configured and what happens within an accelerator program. The research setting is 40 accelerators across Europe—cohort-based startup support programs that accelerate learning and are seen as problem solvers for various actors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem such as venture capitalists, governments, corporates and even incubators. For instance, setting up an accelerator benefits venture capitalists by facilitating investments in a larger number of early-stage ventures at relatively low cost. It also benefits governments and corporates to streamline technology commercialization efforts. Thus, accelerators are an important phenomenon and this study provides several insights. On the one hand, it opens the ‘black box’ by highlighting the design and practices of the accelerator. By recognizing the heterogeneity among accelerators, it is clear that more robust metrics have to be developed in order to monitor the effectiveness of the different models. Although classifications of accelerator programs based on their relative performance (e.g. the Seed Accelerators Ranking Project) could be of importance to startups, it may also provide a distorted view considering programs can differ in their strategic objectives. On the other hand, it explains to policy makers, accelerators and early-stage technology ventures the boundary conditions of acceleration. First, policy makers need to take a long-term budget view when they consider to support startups through accelerator programs. Second, many ventures may not be investor-ready or commercially viable at the end of an accelerator program. Therefore, a systematic policy approach is needed for startups to thrive. Third, both early-stage technology ventures and individuals interested in setting up an accelerator should take into account the specific program components such as the selection process and the learning approach when respectively considering to apply for a program or configure one. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that accelerators occur in various forms, are constantly evolving and can differently impact the development of early-stage ventures

Adaptive Big Data Pipeline

Over the past three decades, data has exponentially evolved from being a simple software by-product to one of the most important companies’ assets used to understand their customers and foresee trends. Deep learning has demonstrated that big volumes of clean data generally provide more flexibility and accuracy when modeling a phenomenon. However, handling ever-increasing data volumes entail new challenges: the lack of expertise to select the appropriate big data tools for the processing pipelines, as well as the speed at which engineers can take such pipelines into production reliably, leveraging the cloud. We introduce a system called Adaptive Big Data Pipelines: a platform to automate data pipelines creation. It provides an interface to capture the data sources, transformations, destinations and execution schedule. The system builds up the cloud infrastructure, schedules and fine-tunes the transformations, and creates the data lineage graph. This system has been tested on data sets of 50 gigabytes, processing them in just a few minutes without user intervention.ITESO, A. C

Ethiopian and Eritrean Businesses Growth Barriers in the Washington, DC Area

Prior studies have revealed that recent Asian and Hispanic immigrant entrepreneurs have made significant contributions to social change in the United States. Although African immigrant entrepreneurs have made such contributions, few studies exist about them, and there is limited knowledge about this business community. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to identify the barriers of growth in Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrant-owned firms in the Washington, DC area who were in business for a minimum of 3 years and represented various trade lines and geographical locations. The enhanced integrated model of ethnic business development, which proposes growth strategies by analyzing the interaction of opportunity structures, ethnic resources, and entrepreneurial and management skills, was used as the conceptual framework to guide this study. Semistructured interview data were gathered from the business owners and then analyzed by employing a pattern matching technique. The data analysis revealed the themes of management deficiencies and the lack of organizational support system as the main growth barriers of the firms studied. These findings suggested the improvement of management skills and the creation of an organizational support system. This effort demands a collaboration of public, private, and community organizations. The results of this study may have positive social change implications to local economies by facilitating the growth of immigrant-owned businesses and enhancing their job and income-creating potential

ORGANIZING FOR THE DIGITAL WORLD: A PATHWAY TOWARDS THE AGILE MARKETING CAPABILITY

The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to explain how agility intersects in the field of marketing capabilities, in order to deepen the understanding about a new marketing capability: the Agile Marketing Capability. My dissertation consists of three papers. The first paper inquires how the Agile Marketing Capability can be formally theorized and conceptualized, identifying its key theorizing elements and putting the basis for its further exploration and analysis. The outcomes of this first study identify the core dimensions (or constructs) of the Agile Marketing Capability, advance a holistic theoretical model, and discuss the underlying constructs and relationships. With this first conceptualization of a marketing-focused capability of agility, I start outlining a new path of marketing capabilities, seeking to redefine marketing capabilities by learning more about Agile Marketing implementation. Thus, I lay the terrain for future exploration and forecast of this topic, and enrich the debate on the opportunity to integrate agile principles into marketing studies, and ultimately impact marketing capabilities. The second paper provides an initial empirical investigation of agile capability in marketing field, exploring its main defining features and thus elaborating some key theoretical and empirical dimensions which may characterize and compose the Agile Marketing Capability. The outcomes of this second study identify and organize the key theoretical concepts and dimensions of the Agile Marketing Capability in a theoretical framework. To summarize study results I also formulate some propositions, which could stimulate future theoretical and empirical research towards this topic. The findings of this research considerably advance extant knowledge on capabilities greater aligned with digital transformation challenges, which is a topic still at an early stage in current literature. Specifically, the analysis carried out in the second paper improves the understanding on agility in digital and international marketing settings, contributing to extend dynamic capabilities and marketing capabilities literature. In the meantime, the framework and propositions of this study, as well as the empirical findings, contribute to explain what strategic actions are needed to foster marketing agility, thus pursuing and implementing an Agile Marketing Capability. The third and final paper extends the body of knowledge of agile capabilities in marketing field by looking at how different organizations pursue and implement the Agile Marketing Capability. The outcomes of this third study deepen the conceptualization and definition of the Agile Marketing Capability dimensions, proposing a four-stage Agile Marketing Capability maturity framework. The framework provides key actions, activities and behaviours organized in progressive maturity levels to enable organizations to assess and improve their capabilities in Agile Marketing implementation. The findings of this work contribute to deepen the body of knowledge on marketing capabilities and agility research streams, explaining the benefits that could derive from employing agile approaches and capabilities in marketing, and how their employment actually may enhance organizations’ extant marketing capabilities, particularly in turbulent and fast-changing contexts. Notably, the analysis performed in this third study sheds light on progressive behaviors and actions representative of different maturity levels in the development and management of the Agile Marketing Capability. The maturity framework proposed in this paper and the empirical findings clarify to managers and practitioners how to assess current maturity level in the development of such capability, understand potential improvement actions, and, thus, achieve higher levels of performance. Briefly, it provides useful guidelines for organizations to become more agile in their marketing capabilities