Aligning customer relationship and product strategy at internet speed

The Internet has changed the way many software developing companies have to work – They have to reconsider their IT strategy. Theory on IT strategy suggests a close intimate relationship between supplier and customer. Theory also suggests a job shop or a batch job organization of the software production. In 2002 we set out to study a number of Danish Internet software companies. Through careful interviewing and analysis we found that the theory actually fitted well with our empirical findings. But we also found an emphasis on building trust in customer-supplier relationships that were not well-developed in the theory we studied. In the paper we give an account of our findings and we characterise the element of trust building in internet customer-supplier relationships.