A study of patent thickets

Report analysing whether entry of UK enterprises into patenting in a technology area is affected by patent thickets in the technology area

Investigating the relationship between software process improvement, situational change, and business success in software SMEs

While we have learned a great deal from Software Process Improvement (SPI) research to date, no earlier study has been designed from the outset to examine the relationship between SPI and business success in software development small- to- medium- sized companies (software SMEs). Since business processes are generally acknowledged as having an important role to play in supporting business success, it follows that the software development process (a large and complex component of the overall business process) has an important contribution to make in supporting business success in software development companies. However, to date we have very little evidence regarding the role of SPI in supporting business success, especially for software SMEs. The need for SPI is dependent on the extent of situational change in a software development setting, and therefore any examination of the relationship between SPI and business success would be deficient if it did not also examine the extent of situational change. Therefore, this thesis describes a novel approach to examining SPI, situational change and business success in software development companies. Furthermore, having discharged this new approach to 15 software SMEs, this thesis makes the important new discovery that the amount of SPI implemented in a software SME is positively associated with the extent of business success – especially when the degree of situational change is taken into account. This thesis describes the first published study to examine the relationship between SPI, situational change and business success in software SMEs. The findings suggest that there are business benefits to implementing SPI in software SMEs, with the degree of situational change being an important factor informing SPI initiatives. Furthermore, this research has yielded valuable new insights into the nature of SPI, situational change and business success in software SMEs

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

Exploring the relationship between software process adaptive capability and organisational performance

Software development is a complex socio-technical activity, with the result that software development organisations need to establish and maintain robust software development processes. While much debate exists regarding the effectiveness of various software development approaches, no single approach is perfectly suited to all settings and no setting is unchanging. The capability to adapt the software process is therefore essential to sustaining an optimal software process. We designed an exploratory study to concurrently examine software process adaptive capability and organisational performance in 15 software development organisations, finding that companies with greater software process adaptive capability are shown to also experience greater business success. While our exploratory study of the complex relationship between these phenomena is limited in some respects, the findings indicate that software process adaptive capability may be worthy of further integration into software process engineering techniques. Software process adaptive capability may be an important organisational strength when deriving competitive advantage, and those responsible for the creation and evolution of software process models and methodologies may want to focus some of their future efforts in this area

Strategy and small firm performance

The objective of this study is to contribute to the debate on the relationship between strategy and firm performance, especially for SMEs. The research questions are: Can different strategic groups of SMEs be identified and to what extent does the selected strategy influence the firm performance of SMEs?For the empirical analysis, data from the SME panel of EIM is used. The analysis shows that four distinct groups of companies can be identified: service differentiators, stuck-in-the-middle companies, innovation and marketing differentiators and process differentiators. Companies in the first two groups are relatively small and are less active with strategic issues like planning etc. Companies in the last two groups are relatively large and deal with strategy in a more professional way (written-down strategy, regular updates et cetera). If controlled for size, there are no significant differences in terms of turnover and profit.

Measuring Software Process: A Systematic Mapping Study

Context: Measurement is essential to reach predictable performance and high capability processes. It provides support for better understanding, evaluation, management, and control of the development process and project, as well as the resulting product. It also enables organizations to improve and predict its process’s performance, which places organizations in better positions to make appropriate decisions. Objective: This study aims to understand the measurement of the software development process, to identify studies, create a classification scheme based on the identified studies, and then to map such studies into the scheme to answer the research questions. Method: Systematic mapping is the selected research methodology for this study. Results: A total of 462 studies are included and classified into four topics with respect to their focus and into three groups based on the publishing date. Five abstractions and 64 attributes were identified, 25 methods/models and 17 contexts were distinguished. Conclusion: capability and performance were the most measured process attributes, while effort and performance were the most measured project attributes. Goal Question Metric and Capability Maturity Model Integration were the main methods and models used in the studies, whereas agile/lean development and small/medium-size enterprise were the most frequently identified research contexts.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2016-76956-C3-2- RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-71938-RED

Innovation Policies for Small and Medium Size Enterprises in Asia: An Innovation Systems Perspective

The point of departure for this chapter is that in developing countries SMEs2 are responsible for the largest part of employment and a significant share of added value. And that innovation policy supporting the particularities of SMEs has been widely ignored (occasionally SMEs have even been discriminated). This chapter aims at shedding soe light on the immensely complicated issue of innovation policy for SMEs in developing countries, or more specifically Asian SMEs. The chapter applies the so-called regional innovation systems approach. In this paper, we analyze four clusters of SMEs that have been especially successful in entering the global market; special attention is paid to the so-called soft infrastructure, the industry specific needs for cluster (e.g. interaction) and RIS dynamics/polices (e.g. needs for devolution; industry specific needs for building knowledge creating institutions).The chapter is structured as follows. After introducing stylized facts on SMEs innovative performance attention is turned to the theoretical framework. Taking into account the localized nature of SMEs economic activity, our level of analysis is the regional system of innovation (RIS). We provide a general introduction, contextualize this to Asian situation, and introduce the industry differences (inspired by Pietrobelli and Rabelotti’s typology). Then we turn to the empirical section where special attention is paid to the four cases. Finally, we turn to drawing general conclusions on innovation policies and need for restructuring of Asian innovation systems (the accent is on the former).Innovation Policy; Developing countries; Innovation systems

Business services as actors of knowledge transformation and diffusion: some empirical findings on the role of KIBS in regional and national innovation systems

Over the last years, there has been a significant increase in the attention paid to the activities of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). KIBS produce and duffus knowledge, which is crucial for innovation processes. The paper gives an overview of the role and function of KIBS in innovation systems and their knowledge production, transformation and diffusion activities. Focusing on innovation interactions between manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and KIBS; the empirical analyses gasps KIBS in position in five contexts. The analysis leads to the conclusion that innovation activities links SMEs and KIBS through the process of knowledge and diffiusion. --