Innovation Initiatives in Large Software Companies: A Systematic Mapping Study
Henry Edison, Xiaofeng Wang, Ronald Jabangwe, Pekka, Abrahamsson

TL;DR
This systematic mapping study reviews innovation initiatives in large software companies, highlighting existing research, challenges, and proposing an innovation initiative tree based on literature and expert insights.
Contribution
The paper maps existing literature on innovation initiatives in large software companies, introduces an innovation initiative tree, and identifies key challenges faced by these initiatives.
Findings
Seven studies focus on innovation in large software companies.
Five types of initiatives identified: intrapreneurship, bootlegging, internal venture, spin-off, crowdsourcing.
Large software companies are influenced by Internet technology and use open innovation.
Abstract
To keep the competitive advantage and adapt to changes in the market and technology, companies need to innovate in an organised, purposeful and systematic manner. However, due to their size and complexity, large companies tend to focus on maintaining their business, which can potentially lower their agility to innovate. This study aims to provide an overview of the current research on innovation initiatives and to identify the challenges of implementing the initiatives in the context of large software companies. The investigation was performed using a systematic mapping approach of published literature on corporate innovation and entrepreneurship. Then it was complemented with interviews with four experts with rich industry experience. Our study results suggest that, there is a lack of high quality empirical studies on innovation initiative in the context of large software companies. A…
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