This paper investigates competition between open source and proprietary software. Open source software is divided into two types: free open source and commercial open source. Free open source software can be available from the not-for-profit community, and Commercial open source software is software product based on free open source software. The usability of both free and commercial open sourc...

Empirical studies have shown that, in many fields, product end users rather than product manufacturers are the first to prototype and apply innovations that later become the basis of important commercial products. This fundamental finding has the potential to significantly affect the way that product developers and market researchers go about the idea generation stages of new product and servic...

Sophisticated commercial products and product assemblies can greatly benefit from novel IT-based approaches to the conditioning of these products and of „product knowledge‟, leading to what we call Smart Products. The paper motivates the need for such novel approaches, introduces important relevant challenges and research domains, and provides an early definition of Smart Products.