Part 5: Service Orientation in Collaborative NetworksInternational audienceSoftware industry has become a very important sector, mostly comprising SMEs. New ICT paradigms have arisen to face new challenges of the economy, namely the Service-oriented architecture (SOA). SOA has the potential to leverage SMEs to new degrees of competitiveness. One of the most relevant drivers for that is innovation. However, SMEs use to be very limited in their resources, and both innovation and SOA are complex, costly and risky. This paper presents preliminary results of an ongoing research towards developing an innovation model that relies on collaboration, enabling software/SOA providers to work as an open network and hence to jointly carry an innovation out. This is important as SOA/software/services sector is very different than manufacturing, to which most of the innovation models are devoted to. The proposed model also identifies the most relevant supporting issues that should be taken into account along the innovation and collaboration processes. The model is presented as well as its rationale. Final considerations about the work are presented at the end

Companies from the software sector have been seeking new, sustainable business models. A key strategy to achieve is innovation. Being a sector largely formed by SMEs, a general problem is to keep innovation a sustainable practice. Many companies have been shifting their systems' architectures to SOA, but despite its potentials, SOA projects are often costly, complex and risky. One approach to mitigate this is endowing companies with means to innovate collaboratively. Current innovation models are mostly devoted to the manufacturing sector, without supporting the many software and SOA specificities. We present a collaborative innovation process model as a contribution to fill this gap. The model combines open and network innovation approaches and allowing the tailoring of process composition to accommodate the uniqueness of innovation projects. The proposed model was evaluated by industry.

Software sector plays a very relevant role in current world economy. One of its characteristics is that they are mostly composed of SMEs. SMEs have been pushed to invest in innovation to keep competitive. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a recent and powerful ICT paradigm for more sustainable business models. A SOA product has many differences when compared to manufacturing sector. Besides that, SOA projects are however very complex, costly and risky. This can be mitigated if SMEs can innovate together. This paper presents an innovation model to assist groups of disparate SMEs to work together towards providing a SOA-based software product. The model is flexible and adaptive to every innovation project. Final considerations about the work are presented at the end.

The software sector plays a very relevant role in the current world economy as a means to face many societal challenges, especially considering that the sector mostly consists of SMEs. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a recent ICT paradigm to help face new challenges in ICT developments and market. ICT companies should invest in innovative products and services to be sustainable, but SOA can be complex and a SOA "product" has many differences compared to manufacturing, which most innovation models are directed to. We present results of an innovation model directed at independent SMEs of SOA providers interested in innovating together, sharing costs, risks and benefits. The model is flexible so as to support the intrinsic uniqueness of innovation processes. The model is complemented with so-called functional guidelines, informing SMEs managers of the most important issues to handle during various steps of an innovation. An example of the model usage is presented, as well as the preliminary results of its evaluation by users.

Software sector plays a very relevant role in current world economy. One of its characteristics is that they are mostly composed of SMEs. SMEs have been pushed to invest in innovation to keep competitive. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a recent and powerful ICT paradigm for more sustainable business models. A SOA product has many differences when compared to manufacturing sector. Besides that, SOA projects are however very complex, costly and risky. This can be mitigated if SMEs can innovate together. This paper presents an innovation model to assist groups of disparate SMEs to work together towards providing a SOA-based software product. The model is flexible and adaptive to every innovation project. Final considerations about the work are presented at the end.