Software Business Foundations: Establishing Platform for Research and Teaching
by Nilay OZA

Abstract

This talk is in four parts. Part one highlights software business research issues across six categories – People, Uses, Software artifacts, Side effects, Ownership and Monetization that are relevant to the broader issue of doing research on the software business. A community-building effort for identifying and developing research in software business is presented through Wiki platform. This work is based on the ongoing Software Business Foundations (SBF) project at Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. The objective of the SBF project is to develop a knowledge-base for research community development in Software Business research.

Part two presents an empirical study to address the issue of identifying and aligning innovation enablers with stakeholder values in agile practices software development practices. A practical spreadsheet-based tool for better alignment is presented in the talk. The key innovation enablers found are categorized across ‘Knowledge and Skills', ‘Work process and Culture' and ‘Innovation capacity'. The study revealed that the participants' perceptions of key innovation enablers did not align with new development in agile practices or stakeholder values. Such situation may lead to investment into innovation programs and capabilities that may not turn out to be productive.

Part three presents software business as a prospective teaching module in MBA programs.

Part four presents presenter's observations on prospective collaboration opportunities with SMU.

About the speaker

Dr. Nilay OZA is a Senior Research Scientist at VTT – Technical Research Centre of Finland and a Senior Researcher at Helsinki University of Technology (HUT), Finland. At VTT, he initiates large scale research projects and contributes his research time in the national and EU level R&D projects. AT HUT, he conducts academic research and advises project managers at Software Business Lab (SBL). Dr. Oza's research interests include inter-disciplinary issues in software business, growth and relationship management in high-tech companies, trust, innovation integration, business relevance of software process improvement and qualitative research. He also takes advisory role in Finnish high tech companies and EU projects. Earlier, Dr. Oza completed his PhD on ‘client-vendor relationship management' at the University of Hertfordshire, UK.