Third International Conference on Software Business

June 18-20, 2012, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts

http://www.icsob.org

Theme: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Software Business
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Advancements in the software industry have had a substantial impact not only on productivity and on GDP growth globally, but also on our daily work and life. Software business refers to commercial activities in the software industry, aimed at generating income from the delivery of software products and software services. Although the software business shares common features with other international knowledge-intensive businesses, it carries many inherent features making it a challenging domain for research. In particular, software companies have to depend on one another to deliver a unique value proposition to their customers. New developments like Apps that run on pre-existing platforms have emerged as a major force and are creating what is being labeled as the App Economy.

Call for Papers:
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You are invited to submit papers addressing contemporary issues emerging at the intersection of the software and business domains, broadly defined. Both papers reporting research results and industrial experiences are welcome. Invited are original submissions on the topics listed below, including but not limited to:

• Software Development and Product Management
− Software engineering management and productivity
− Software quality, benchmarking and strategic management
− Economic aspects of engineering of e.g. requirements, testing, design
− Software product management, product life-cycles and product-line strategy
− Return on investment from software engineering process improvements
− Pricing strategies
• Software Platforms and Ecosystems
− Dynamics of software ecosystems: networks, ecologies, communities
− Mobile APIs and platform competition
− Mobile apps and business models
− Managing complementors and external innovation
• Organizational Transformation
− Business impact of the Cloud, SaaS, PaaS and managed services
− IPR, copyrights, innovation management and software assets
− Impact of new revenue generation models, e.g., ads, subscriptions, term licenses
− Current issues in operational efficiency, lean enterprise and competitive advantage
− Internal software business processes
− A look at future resources and competences for the software business
• Industry Transformation
− Increasing verticalization of some software markets
− Impact of industry evolution and technological change, e.g. mobile, on-demand, cloud
− Open-source software business and management
− Empirical research issues in software business and management
− Issues in user experience, security and “green” software
− Internationalization of software firms and outsourcing
• Emerging Trends in Technology and Entrepreneurship
− Mobile apps and app stores
− Software game business
− SaaS and Cloud-based enterprise software startups
− Economics of new business models for software startups

Submission:
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Full research papers (12 pages), short papers (6 pages), industrial track presentations (abstract) and posters are all welcome. Accepted full papers and short papers will be included in the conference proceedings published by Springer as a volume in Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP) series (if at least one author of the paper attends the conference and present the paper). You may also submit tutorial proposals and workshop proposals to the conference. For details and updates visit http://www.icsob.org.

Important Dates:
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Paper Submission: Jan 21, 2012
Workshop & tutorial proposal submission: Dec 1, 2012
Notification: Mar 1, 2012
Camera-Ready: Mar 12, 2012
Conference: Jun 18-20, 2012

Conference Officers:
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General Chair
Michael Cusumano, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Program Chairs
Bala Iyer, Babson College
N. Venkatraman, Boston University

Steering Committee
Kalle Lyytinen, Case Western Reserve University
Sjaak Brinkkemper, Utrecht University
Pekka Abrahamsson,University of Helsinki
Slinger Jansen, Utrecht University
Pasi Tyrväinen, University of Jyväskylä
Björn Regnell, Lund University
Inge van de Weerd, Utrecht University