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Making Internal Software Startups Work: How to Innovate Like a Venture Builder?

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Software Business (ICSOB 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 434))

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Abstract

With the increasing availability of software usage and the influence of the Lean Startup mindset, more and more companies choose to innovate through internal software startups. Such startups aim at developing new business models while at the same time relying on the resources from the companies where they emerged. The evidence from both researchers and practitioners indicates that driving internal software startups is challenging. This paper seeks to address this problem by asking the research question: how to make internal software startups work? We examined a unique case of a venture builder – a company primarily focusing on building internal software startups and launching them as independent companies. Applying a Grounded Theory approach, we analyzed data on four internal software startups at the case company. The results suggest that four strategies drive the examined startups: cultural, financial, personnel, and venture arrangement. We interpret our results by drawing on earlier literature on intrapreneurship and internal ventures and suggest four recommendations to succeed with internal software startups: 1) establish shared arenas for the employees; 2) provide necessary resources for experimentation in the initial phase and increase them incrementally; 3) build up in-house product management competence through coaching, and 4) harness employees’ own motivation to develop their own ideas.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. SINTEF Digital, 7034, Trondheim, Norway

    Anastasiia Tkalich, Nils Brede Moe & Rasmus Ulfsnes

Authors
  1. Anastasiia Tkalich
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  2. Nils Brede Moe
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  3. Rasmus Ulfsnes
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anastasiia Tkalich .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy

    Xiaofeng Wang

  2. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Antonio Martini

  3. University of South Eastern Norway, Bø, Norway

    Anh Nguyen-Duc

  4. University of Oslo and SINTEF, Oslo, Norway

    Viktoria Stray

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Tkalich, A., Moe, N.B., Ulfsnes, R. (2021). Making Internal Software Startups Work: How to Innovate Like a Venture Builder?. In: Wang, X., Martini, A., Nguyen-Duc, A., Stray, V. (eds) Software Business. ICSOB 2021. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 434. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91983-2_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91983-2_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-91982-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-91983-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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