are the most important dimensions to assess innovation in this field? Can we measure innovative processes carried out by software companies and what kind of innovation do they develop? Are FOSS solutions more innovative than proprietary ones? These are the research questions we endeavor to answer in this paper providing some empirical evidence, obtained using an original methodology of collecting experts' evaluations on the innovation level of 134
IntroductionThe issue of innovation in the software industry is of great interest for both academic and practitioners (Bloch, 2007). Which is an innovative software solution? Which aspects should be considered to highlight the most important elements of innovation processes?In this framework, the success of Free/Open Source Software (FOSS) highlights new research issues, dealing with whether and how FOSS programs turn out to be more innovative than proprietary ones (Klincewicz, 2005). The theme is intriguing as FOSS represents a disruptive process innovation affecting industrial dynamics (Dalle et al., 2007), and it can be regarded as an important instantiation of the Open Innovation model (West and Gallagher, 2006
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.