Small is beautiful: customer driven software development

Summary form only given. The topics addressed in this paper is how networking can be used as a way for small software houses to enhances their innovative capabilities by using different kinds of collaboration in order to overcome the problems of lacking knowledge as well as resources in order to develop their software. In small software houses operating in markets with complex products such as ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, networking is necessary in order to gain the needed knowledge and resources in the production development process. Network is not seen as a magic word but leads to different benefits and short comings for the collaborative companies depending on the specific context. In this paper we discuss three types of networks: collaboration between users and producer(s), collaboration between a software house and third party suppliers, and a collaboration between academics, professional associations and software houses. The paper presents a case study of the product development for a Danish owned software house