A Case Study on the Software Culture at a Rank Startup: An Argument for Adopting a Mature, Corporate, and Process-Driven Mentality

Startup companies comprise a significant percentage of the U.S. software industry as the demand for software continues to exceed the supply available, minimizing the risk to new ventures. The challenges faced by startups are unique in each entrepreneurial enterprise. However, the implications for failing to manage the stages of software development are the same as those cited in mature organizations. The establishment and adherence to software processes can guide less experienced managers of startups and help these often struggling firms to avoid pitfalls that may reduce their chances of long-term survival and financial success. This conclusion is based upon examination of the software processes at IntraSoft Inc., a startup firm supplying intranet solutions

Innovation Initiatives in Large Software Companies: A Systematic Mapping Study

To keep the competitive advantage and adapt to changes in the market and technology, companies need to innovate in an organised, purposeful and systematic manner. However, due to their size and complexity, large companies tend to focus on maintaining their business, which can potentially lower their agility to innovate. This study aims to provide an overview of the current research on innovation initiatives and to identify the challenges of implementing the initiatives in the context of large software companies. The investigation was performed using a systematic mapping approach of published literature on corporate innovation and entrepreneurship. Then it was complemented with interviews with four experts with rich industry experience. Our study results suggest that, there is a lack of high quality empirical studies on innovation initiative in the context of large software companies. A total of 7 studies are conducted in such context, which reported 5 types of initiatives: intrapreneurship, bootlegging, internal venture, spin-off and crowdsourcing. Our study offers three contributions. First, this paper represents the map of existing literature on innovation initiatives inside large companies. The second contribution is to provide an innovation initiative tree. The third contribution is to identify key challenges faced by each initiative in large software companies. At the strategic and tactical levels, there is no difference between large software companies and other companies. At the operational level, large software companies are highly influenced by the advancement of Internet technology. Large software companies use open innovation paradigm as part of their innovation initiatives. We envision a future work is to further empirically evaluate the innovation initiative tree in large software companies, which involves more practitioners from different companies

Fostering Chinese firms through entrepreneurship, globalisation and international finance

The success of ventures that have pursued non traditional marketing approaches may be attributed to a range of forward thinking practices which it is argued here, should be the starting and finishing points for Chinese companies. Chinese multinationals need to develop entrepreneurial ability more compatible with their growth in the international markets. Chinas educational framework is still largely based on rote learning, which is a method typically seen as ill suited to modern needs. Many Chinese high tech sectors are still dominated by overseas know-how and the ongoing strength of wholly foreign- owned enterprises

Dynamic Leadership: Toolbox for the Values-Based Entrepreneur

Four entrepreneurship models are proposed which lend guidance in the development of a business, from birth to exit, each examining ways to maintain the business founder’s initial vision and to continue to infuse values and ethical decision-making at each stage of development

Global Software Innovators Strengthening the Software Innovation Capacity of Europe and Korea

Global entrepreneurial talent management is a key challenge for the software sector internationally where competition for high-end skills is intense. SMEs are at a significant disadvantage when competing with major multinationals to access these skills. The Information and Communications Technology sector accounts for 5% of all employment in the EU and there are 900,000 vacancies in this sector in 2017 [1], however over 50% of senior ICT managers believe graduates lack the necessary combination of technical, business and interpersonal skills [2]. In addition, only 4 in 1000 women work in the ICT sector [3]. To address these challenges, HubLinked, an EU-funded Knowledge Alliance partnership of 11 industry and HE partners in the EU and Korea, is developing an integrated curriculum for industry-oriented, internationalised, innovation focused and interdisciplinary Computer Science degrees (“CSI4”). CSI4 features Global Labs, where teams of students work across timezones to prototype software, an internationalization-at-home experience which mimics working in a global ICT campany

New Hampshire University Research and Industry Plan: A Roadmap for Collaboration and Innovation

This University Research and Industry plan for New Hampshire is focused on accelerating innovation-led development in the state by partnering academia’s strengths with the state’s substantial base of existing and emerging advanced industries. These advanced industries are defined by their deep investment and connections to research and development and the high-quality jobs they generate across production, new product development and administrative positions involving skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)

Digital entrepreneurship in a resource-scarce context: A focus on entrepreneurial digital competencies

Purpose – Thepurpose of this paper is to criticallyexplorehow context asan antecedent to entrepreneurial digital competencies (EDCs) influences digital entrepreneurship in a resource-scarce environment. Design/methodology/approach – The data comprises semi-structured interviews with 16 digital entrepreneurs, as owner-managers of small digital businesses in Cameroon. Findings – The results reveal the ways in which EDCs shape the entry (or start-up) choices and post-entry strategic decisions of digital entrepreneurs in response to context-specific opportunities and challenges associated with digital entrepreneurship. Research limitations/implications – The data comes from one African country and 16 digital businesses thus the research setting limits the generalisability of the results. Practical implications – This paper highlights important implications for encouraging digital entrepreneurship by focussing on institutional, technology and local dimensions of context and measures to develop the entrepreneurial and digital competencies. This includes policy interventions to develop the information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, transport and local distribution infrastructure, and training opportunities to develop the EDCs of digital entrepreneurs. Originality/value – Whereas the capabilities to adopt and use ICTs and the internet by small businesses have been examined, this is among the first theoretically sensitised study linking context, EDCs and digital entrepreneurship

Toward a process theory of entrepreneurship: revisiting opportunity identification and entrepreneurial actions

This dissertation studies the early development of new ventures and small business and the entrepreneurship process from initial ideas to viable ventures. I unpack the micro-foundations of entrepreneurial actions and new ventures’ investor communications through quality signals to finance their growth path. This dissertation includes two qualitative papers and one quantitative study. The qualitative papers employ an inductive multiple-case approach and include seven medical equipment manufacturers (new ventures) in a nascent market context (the mobile health industry) across six U.S. states and a secondary data analysis to understand the emergence of opportunities and the early development of new ventures. The quantitative research chapter includes 770 IPOs in the manufacturing industries in the U.S. and investigates the legitimation strategies of young ventures to gain resources from targeted resource-holders.Open Acces

2008 State New Economy Index: Benchmarking Economic Transformation in the States

Scores and ranks states' economic structures on their competitiveness in the New Economy, as measured by the prominence of knowledge jobs, globalization, economic dynamism, transformation to a digital economy, and capacity for technological innovation