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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