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Project INNODES
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Project Outline
The innovation push of German federal government heads to one
question: To what extent do German firms, working in the field of
information and communication technology (ICT), have the essential
capability to contribute to the necessary economic revival and
stabilisation of the Federal Republic?
Being a key technology ICT will always be a constitutive factor for
the economical activities of modern developed nations. Therefore the
solution for this question is of particular importance for both
sides -- industrial and federal -- in order to influence the
development and undertake regulations.
Since there has not been any research aiming directly at the
innovation behavior of German ICT businesses in the primary sector,
two studies regarding this topic will be conducted in a first step.
Both of them are based on each other, whereas the firms choosen
via interviews in the first step will provide
the basis for the following overall online survey. Basically it is
necessary to find out, how firms face the problem of innovation
and to what extend the potential of innovation, demanded by the
federal government, can be found or realised and which exemplary
developments may be generalised. Regional varieties, which may
have subsidy political reasons, are to consider as well
as nearby universities, research establishments or other
conducive facilities, e.g. Gruenderparks.
For our first theses we use the following circumstances:
We assume, that:
- relating to innovation ability significant deficits will be found.
- there is no own innovation culture to small and medium software firms in the Federal Republic.
- corporate unions support the Governments efforts to use
innovations to encourage economic growth, but are not able to point out how to
realise them and which organisational requirements are necessary in the
companies, especially when it comes to innovation in the field of software
development.
- beneath a lack of innovation culture many software
companies are "satisfied" with their achievements or rather are so
occupied with handling the existing tasks an extension of the range of
products seems neither necessary nor possible or reasonable.
- operational knowledge about product lifecycles or setting up a product
range are non-existent or being ignored.
- companies, using software, often see it as an expense factor but not as a
business enabler which could be used to gain competitive advantage. Therefore
innovative products are often seen as a source of irritaion (never touch a
running sytem) but not as a the chance they might be.
- companies, using software, rarely have regular innovation cycles.
- in case of small and medium sized companies software development is by no
means at all done as a disciplin of engineering. Mainly for this reason
insufficient design occurs and makes innovative redesign of software virtually
impossible. The ressources for a redevelopment, structured after software
engineering aspects, are often missing.
- possible methodical enhancements like using open source
structures carry as little weight as the potential use of
external sources for the the improvement of products and
quality. This problem will not be eased instantaneously,
amongst other things because of software engineering often
not being an essential part of computer scientists'
training. This results in innovative potential not being
used / that can not be used like it would be possible by
knowing and using "modern" methods.
Contrarily we assume companies not complying with our presumption (may it be
completely or partly) are innovative organisations.
Therewith both the basic aim of the interviews and the direction of possible
solutions is specified. Admittedly we act on the assumption that the
hypotheses will be stated mor precisely, expanded and validated during the
study.
Because of also expecting open source software development having a huge
impact on innvovation behaviour, frequency and quality, this has to be checked
appropriate as well.
Therefore we offer to perform a metastudy based on the multiplicity of
surveys, reports and scientific disquisitions on OSS already existing.
The following questions need to be noticed and answered in this study:
- To what extent can OSS structures be used as a fundamental solution
archetype on software development?
- Could the positiv effects, originating when developing OSS software (e.g. use of reticular / distributed structures during the development,
internationalisation, documentation etc.), be utilised for traditional
software developement companies?
- Could OSS projects possibly produce changes of the innovation and
organisation behaviour of German ICT companies?
- Does the participation in OSS projects (uncompensated, during spare time, predominantly in English etc.)
comply with the cultural and social fundamental of German software developer?
- Are there examples for the participation of German for OSS projects and how are the (seemingly?) conflict of the
economic attitude and the resulting marketing interests dissolved?
Here we act on the assumption that the
hypotheses will be stated more precisely, expanded and validated during the
study, too.
At the end three surveys will be on hand, which are to summarise and delimited
against each other in order to frame recommendations the BMBF, the Federal Government and
especially the corporate alliances, development organisations and similar institutes can use to support their members and clients (ICT experts, software developer, managers) when it comes to innovation.
We will try to show approaches on how to keep up with the high innovation rate, how to project OSS organisation schemes
onto traditional software development if necessary, which possibilities of balancing large groups of developer with authoring tools, which qualification ist necessary for ICT experts and managers ect.
To us this appears to be extraordinarily important when it comes to unions and development
organisations. Many of them adopted the innovation idea of the Federal Government positively but can not explain how to manage possible innovations (cf. the internet presence of the German Association of Chambers of Commerce and Industry).
We take this for one of the major problems of realising the "innovation push" of the Federal Government.
Despite a large choice of supportive services (the often client often has to pay for) to be called upon
when needing help for the innovative process those offers rarely go down well with the affected companies and
are often rejected because of the operational shakiness
being inherent to innovations. The results of the study
will assist here by revealing possibly ways to innovation.
The study will be split up in four stages of development and two additional stages, whereas some parts of the
development can be done at the same time. Following we present the possible workflow:
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Phase 1: Direct interviews with software development companies
In a first step software development companies in the primary sector are analysed. For reasons of economy it will be mainly (small and medium-sized) companies known
to the company operating the study which are located near Berlin. It es planned to survey about ten companies about innovation, range of products, quality management, use of software engineering methods and the attitude towards using / producing OSS etc.
A structured interview will take place.
The surveys aim is to find out to what extent the interviews companies develop innovative products and which reasons the consider potentially hindering and which enhancing for innovative developments.
In order to not adulterate the study with regional destinctions, about five companies from other regions will be surveyed additionally.
The structure / question will be developed in cooperation with the future agency Brandenburg (Zukunftsagentur Brandenburg, ZAB) and the university of Potsdam, Prof. Dr. Guido Reger. The interviews will be performed companies offices.
In the course of the project the ZAB and Prof. Dr. Reger will bring their know how and expert knowledge to the
evaluation of the results and the structuring of further
proceeding. They will support the project at all stages and provide content.
In addition to the companies, supportive and mediative institiutions will be surveyed as well,
whereas the focus lies on innovation behaviour of software development companies.
Besides the ZAB and other national institutions (i.e. the IBB/ProFit from Berlin as well as organisations from the Old Laender) it will also be university-basedtechnology and
innovation service centres (i.e. the TIBS of The University of Applied Sciences Brandenburg) and executive consultants
integrated in the process of formation and innovation (i.e. INSTI Innovation e.V., Hamburg).
It is planned to do about six interviews, whereas the regional diversity is guaranteed.
The third part of the survey involves about five managing boards of large software development companies. They will be questioned about
the problem as well but the interview guideline will be slightly different.
It is desired to enlist companies like SAP AG, Software AG etc., whereas one has to consider it probably will not be the boards of the five largest
software development companies who will agree to participate.
Still we expect to gain enough relevant data.
The results of the survey will be discussed with the consulting institutions (ZAB, University of Potsdam).
If necessary the companies will be questioned a second time to concretise
unclear answers.
Results:
- Documentation of the results; structured by question categories
- Preliminary study about innovation behaviour in software development companies
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Phase 2: Online survey
In cooperatin with the ZAB, University of Potsdam, University of Applied Sciences Brandenburg and i.TEC a online survey will be provided.
The online survey will base on the results of phase 1, which are influenced by the regional and specific destinctions of the companies,
and try to map them to a larger universe as well as to validate them.
Furthermore we will try to find out whether there are regional / local differences in the innovation behaviour, what might potentially cause this -
if differences exist - and how positive effects could generalised.
At this point the latest we should be able to dissolve any regional distortions that occured in phase 1.
It is planned to involve all of the round about 11.00 known software development companies of the primary sector in the surveys. With an unsual response rate of two to five percent we expect to achieve a universe of about 220 to 550 answered questionnaires. Statistically this is enough to get valid results.
Additionally the company carrying out the survey will check a random sample against the universe and set off follow-up examintions if necessary. The analysation of the results will be done by i.Tec (Prof. Dr. Michael Stobernack).
The results of this survey will be put into another report, containing the parameters relevant for innovation at software
development companies.
Results:
- statistical analysation of the answered questionnaires
- rated result of the representative online survey
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Phase 3: Metastudy about open source software
The metastudy about OSS will be integrated in the process of the study right from the start.
We will examine the substantial studies and reports provided about OSS under the aspects mentioned in the announcement,
that are, for example, to detect which effect do distributed programming and other open source related organisational
aspects have on internationalisation as well as which impact does using technical development tools have on large groups
of software developers, etc.
Furthermore we will have a closer look at the myths O'Reilly mentions.
The problem of software patents are closely connected with OSS and therefore are to include in the analysis.
For years supporters and opposers face each other unforgivingly, wherefore one should try to find clues for evaluating
the different positions within the metastudy. Thus we will turn our attention on analysing literature and reports discussing
and comparing both positions.
We attach great importance on comparng the FLOSPOLS results with those from other surveys. On this it is neccessary to
discuss with the colleagues in the FLOSPOLS group and exchange results.
Results:
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commented German / English bibliography on OSS
- Metastudy on state of OSS and it's impact on innovation behaviour.
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Phase 4: Summing-up the results of all three phases and development of recommendations
During the last phase of the project the results of the three earlier studies will be combined and the
innovation ability of the German software industrie will be evaluated for the BMBF and the Federal Government.
Depending on the results we may decide to add a fifth phase for developing supporting products for corporate alliances or
other organisations in order to maintain there ability to give advise on topics of innovation.
Results:
- Summary of phases 1 - 3
- Recommendations on innovation facilitating
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INNODES Webmaster, $Revision: 1.15 $,
$Date: 2005/07/26 10:32:49 $
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