Product Life Cycle Management of Packaged Software

Management of technology (MOT) concerns the processes by which innovations in technology are transformed to ultimately diffuse into the marketplace. As such, operations management contributes to the multidisciplinary realm of MOT through its study of a firm's resource capabilities. This special issue offers a broad and deep discussion on the interface between MOT and POM. The contributions of the MOT special issue are fourfold. First, we invited scholars from a variety of disciplines to write papers that highlight a broad perspective of emerging problems in MOT that can be addressed by POM researchers. Second, a set of contributed papers is included in the special issue spanning several themes at the intersection of POM and MOT. Third, much of this article is devoted to a deep discussion of an emerging theme that represents a fundamental challenge to the modern, knowledge‐intensive firm. Specifically, we explore how firms develop and leverage internal and external knowledge‐based resource capabilities to respond to the dynamic opportunities and threats created by innovations in technology. Lastly, we provide a comprehensive discussion of future research opportunities that relate to the challenges in managing the knowledge‐intensive firm.

Section: Fundamentals Of the Management Of Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Building Multidisciplinary Knowledge on Management of Technology: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Gaimon

Hora

Ramachandran

2017

“…, Mehra et al. , Ramdas ) and examine how DevOps strategies impact the survivability of apps in mobile platform ecosystems. Thus, as shown in Figure , our study brings together three distinct literature streams on software production and operations, product lifecycle and portfolio management, and digital platform ecosystems for examining issues related to the competition among and the survival of mobile apps.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat Traps in Mobile Platform Ecosystems

Pervin

Ramasubbu

Dutta

2019

Even with the rapid proliferation of applications (“apps”) running on smart handheld devices, achieving success in mobile platform ecosystems is challenging for developers because of the heavily crowded marketplaces and easy substitutability of apps. In this study, we draw inspiration from biological ecosystems research and from the operations management literatures on software production, product management, and digital platforms to empirically examine the sustainability of newly launched apps in the Apple and Google mobile platform ecosystems. In the ecology literature, a “habitat trap” refers to the instinctive but detrimental behavioral response which can potentially lead to the extinction of organisms facing dynamic changes in their habitats. Applying the habitat traps concept to mobile platform ecosystems, we investigate whether seemingly beneficial actions of app developers can indeed become detrimental to the sustainability of their apps. Using lifecycle data of 57,117 newly launched paid apps, we examine the impact of five developer actions (updating the apps, offering price promotions, and diversifying into functional variants, similar apps, and other platforms) on the sustainability of the apps. The results of our analysis show that while frequent app updates are beneficial, engaging in price promotions and diversification‐oriented activities indeed have the risks of turning into traps for developers. We utilize the empirical results to draw attention to the heterogeneity of traps in mobile platform ecosystems, shed light on the need to develop strategies for overcoming the traps, and discuss the implications of the presence of platform traps for emerging theories on digital ecosystems.

“…(), Mantena and Saha (), Mehra et al. () use a similar assumption to account for the network utility. Further note that when a feature‐restricted trial is released, the entire market gets covered—some consumers buy the full version and the remaining consumers use the feature‐restricted version for free.…”

Section: Firm Strategies For Launching Network Productsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Utilizing Public Betas and Free Trials to Launch a Software Product

Mehra

Saha

2018

Self Cite

Many software product firms release a public beta prior to launching its product. Public betas are adopted by innovator consumers and firms use free feedback from these consumers to improve the quality of the product. While trying out the public beta, innovators also learn their product preferences accurately. In addition, opinions expressed by the innovators about the software on public forums like blogs, etc., can introduce a perception bias about the product's quality among the imitator consumers. Therefore, there are demand and cost side tradeoffs in introducing public betas. In addition to public beta, firms can introduce product trials along with the product. Product trials serve as a learning mechanism for all consumers (innovators and imitators), unlike in the case of public betas where this benefit accrues only to innovators. We examine the firm's optimal strategies to introduce public beta and/or product trial. We show that introducing public beta does not necessarily result in a higher‐quality product. However, even when the quality is lower, consumer surplus and social welfare can be higher. Interestingly, while introducing public beta in addition to trial may appear to be optimal, it may not always be so. We show that similar results hold for products with network effects. We also find that even though the marginal value of quality to consumers is higher for products with network effects, the quality of the product can sometimes be lower than the quality in absence of network effects.