Title: When customers design a new product architecture: the software case
Authors: Francois Scheid, Florence Charue-Duboc
Addresses: EMLYON Business School, 23 Avenue Guy de Collongue, 69132 Ecully cedex, France. ' PREG-CRG Ecole Polytechnique, 32 Blvd. Victor, 75739 Paris cedex 15, France
Abstract: We study the case of an innovation designed by two software companies, which combined their software to build a new kind of software platform. Those companies have had to implement this new platform for two customers. We have undertaken a longitudinal study of those two implementation projects to analyse the role of the first customers, who are lead users, in these projects. This leads us to define four kinds of roles to enrich the lead user notion and to describe a new kind of modularisation process.
Keywords: user innovation; project management; lead users; key users; software development; modularisation; innovation process; new product architecture; modular software.
DOI: 10.1504/IJPOM.2010.035345
International Journal of Project Organisation and Management, 2010 Vol.2 No.3, pp.286 - 309
Published online: 23 Sep 2010 *
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