Managing the Software Market Evolution – a Network Approach to Value Creation in Software Business

Traditionally software companies create solutions independently. The present orientation is changing towards more collaborative and open one also on software business branch. Maturity of the ICT market enables and also enforces the orientation from technology to content and/or services. Customer’s role is changing rapidly, and technological infrastructures have opened global markets even for individual consumers. Emergence of different internetbased developer communities also reveals that the customer is not a passive buyer anymore, but can be an active network player. To succeed in this complex environment software companies should be able to create strategies that are synchronized with market evolution to support their capability to follow constantly changing markets. In the present interconnected world of organisations, activities in the nets are worth exploring, not only the actors. This study focuses on discussing one key topic of present software business: How software companies can develop more customer-centred business strategies via value nets in order to manage their value creation processes on constantly changing markets? Proposals of how to analyse this important area will be made on the basis of literature and results from two software company case studies.