What influences the speed of prototyping? An empirical investigation of twenty software startups

It is essential for startups to quickly experiment business ideas by building tangible prototypes and collecting user feedback on them. As prototyping is an inevitable part of learning for early stage software startups, how fast startups can learn depends on how fast they can prototype. Despite of the importance, there is a lack of research about prototyping in software startups. In this study, we aimed at understanding what are factors influencing different types of prototyping activities. We conducted a multiple case study on twenty European software startups. The results are two folds, firstly we propose a prototype-centric learning model in early stage software startups. Secondly, we identify factors occur as barriers but also facilitators for prototyping in early stage software startups. The factors are grouped into (1) artifacts, (2) team competence, (3) collaboration, (4) customer and (5) process dimensions. To speed up a startups progress at the early stage, it is important to incorporate the learning objective into a well-defined collaborative approach of prototypingComment: This is the author's version of the work. Copyright owner's version can be accessed at doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57633-6_2, XP2017, Cologne, German

Chasing Sustainability on the Net : International research on 69 journalistic pure players and their business models

This report outlines how online-based journalistic startups have created their economical locker in the evolving media ecology. The research introduces the ways that startups have found sustainability in the markets of ten countries. The work is based on 69 case studies from Europe, USA and Japan. The case analysis shows that business models can be divided into two groups. The storytelling-oriented business models are still prevalent in our findings. These are the online journalistic outlets that produce original content – news and stories for audiences. But the other group, service-oriented business models, seems to be growing. This group consists of sites that don’t try to monetize the journalistic content as such but rather focus on carving out new functionality. The project was able to identify several revenue sources: advertising, paying for content, affiliate marketing, donations, selling data or services, organizing events, freelancing and training or selling merchandise. Where it was hard to evidence entirely new revenue sources, it was however possible to find new ways in which revenue sources have been combined or reconfigured. The report also offers practical advice for those who are planning to start their own journalistic site

Comparison of UX evaluation methods through evaluation of UX of the prototype of a matching platform for the rental housing market in Finland – Sopia.

Key concepts of this Master’s thesis are user experience (UX), usability, startup and UX evaluation methods. The research question is how startups should evaluate their website’s UX. To answer it I conducted a study of five UX evaluation methods: heuristic evaluation (HE), cognitive walkthrough (CW), tree testing, system usability scale (SUS), brainstorming through theoretical and empirical analysis. I collected empirical data in two ways. First, I interviewed seven UX field practitioners on their experiences of different UX evaluation methods. Second, I applied the evaluation methods to the website prototype of a digital startup called Sopia. To be able to consistently compare the UX evaluation methods, I created a theory-based framework that includes a set of generic parameters describing evaluation methods, and the constraints of the startup. Based on my findings three UX evaluation methods would be useful in the startup context: heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough and brainstorming. Practitioners tend to select flexible, fast and simple evaluation methods. Cognitive walkthrough and brainstorming match these criteria. Cognitive walkthrough when conducted with potential end users, reveals UX mistakes at an early stage of UX design. Brainstorming carried out within the design team afterwards helps to find resolutions for the revealed usability problems. Heuristic evaluation should not be carried out in its traditional definition with usability experts. However, startups should learn 10 heuristics as 10 usability principles to create the ground of good UX. The key contribution of my study is the framework of Minimum Viable UX Evaluation Methods for Startups. The framework represents the list of necessary UX evaluation tools that each startup, despite time, money and human resource constraints, should follow. Each evaluation method, based on my findings, is unavoidable to help the startup to progress with product development

The impact of Artificial Intelligence on Design Thinking practice: Insights from the Ecosystem of Startups

Design Thinking (DT) is spreading out in the managerial community as an alternative way to innovate products and services respect to the classical stage-gate model mostly linked to technology-push innovative patterns. At the same time few disruptive technologies – like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning – are impacting the ways companies manage their knowledge and activate innovation and design processes. What is the impact that AI is exerting on DT practices? What are the main changes that DT is undergoing? These questions are analyzed in this paper, where the aim consists in increasing the understanding of the transformation that is occurring in DT and more general in innovation practices. Through a qualitative case study analysis made on startups offering AI based solutions supporting multiple or individual DT phases, the article pinpoints few main changes: i) a facilitation in blending the right mix of cultures and creative attitudes in innovation teams; ii) the empowerment of the research phase where statistical significance is gained and user analysis are less observer-biased; iii) the automatization of the prototyping and learning phases

Digital Innovation and Incubators: A Comparative Interview Study from the Perspective of the Automotive Industry

As non-corporate (herewith referred to as “independent”) incubators gain in popularity for propelling digital innovation, traditional automotive firms have set up in-house incubators (herewith referred to as “corporate”) to accelerate innovation without disrupt-ing too much the inherent organizational structures and corporate cultures. The overarching objective is to establish the expected benefits for automotive firms from independent incubators when organizing corporate incubators. Using a comparative interview study, ten successful independent incubators in North America are discussed in terms of their ability to provide support in the digital domains. Our work has resulted in novel operating models for categorizing incubators to describe variations in focus areas and support for digital innovation. The results sheds light on how corporate incubators (internal to automotive firms) have the potential to shield digital ventures from the complexities of large and traditional establishments, and to promote interactions with other business units within the firm when performing digital innovation

Transition UGent: a bottom-up initiative towards a more sustainable university

The vibrant think-tank ‘Transition UGent’ engaged over 250 academics, students and people from the university management in suggesting objectives and actions for the Sustainability Policy of Ghent University (Belgium). Founded in 2012, this bottom-up initiative succeeded to place sustainability high on the policy agenda of our university. Through discussions within 9 working groups and using the transition management method, Transition UGent developed system analyses, sustainability visions and transition paths on 9 fields of Ghent University: mobility, energy, food, waste, nature and green, water, art, education and research. At the moment, many visions and ideas find their way into concrete actions and policies. In our presentation we focused on the broad participative process, on the most remarkable structural results (e.g. a formal and ambitious Sustainability Vision and a student-led Sustainability Office) and on recent actions and experiments (e.g. a sustainability assessment on food supply in student restaurants, artistic COP21 activities, ambitious mobility plans, food leftovers projects, an education network on sustainability controversies, a transdisciplinary platform on Sustainable Cities). We concluded with some recommendations and reflections on this transition approach, on the important role of ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and student involvement, on lock-ins and bottlenecks, and on convincing skeptical leaders

Digital Affordances and Digital Capabilities: Evidence from Six AI Startups

Many digital startups fail in their pursuit of niche business value for three reasons: underdeveloped digital affordances, inadequate digital capabilities, and perhaps most importantly, a misalignment between digital affordances and digital capabilities. Digital affordances depict the potential involvement of digital technologies by groups in value creation while digital capabilities represent the ability to leverage and make changes to digital resources to fulfil specific objectives (e.g., affordance actualization). Based on insights derived from a longitudinal in-depth case study of six AI startups, we propose a co-evolution framework that illustrates several iterative loops between digital capabilities and digital affordances. Our analysis also reveals key properties of digital affordances and digital capabilities. Specifically, we find that digital startups with mutually reinforcing digital affordances and digital capabilities are most likely to succeed. We also develop a typology of digital startups using a 2 by 2 affordance-capability matrix

Practical requirements elicitation in modern product development: A multi-case study in discontinuous innovation

Practical modern product development, specifically rapid, lean efforts to create new disrupting or specialized products, face constraints that require modified requirements elicitation (RE) techniques. Requirements elicitation conventions have not been updated to address the challenges of these approaches, and industry practitioners lack the tools to select the most efficient techniques. This study examines the RE approaches performed by three resource-limited teams conducting discontinuous new product development through a multi-case study to identify gaps between the literature and practice, with suggestions to fill them. Our findings suggest modern RE practices and challenges closely reflect those found by studies on RE in agile development, highlighted by a limited variety of techniques and a focus on user feedback despite user unavailability, resulting in partially complete and validated requirements. We suggest further investigation into practical technique selection, development of technique metrics, and a technique selection literature review to practitioners prior to RE