The Innovation Sources in Software Engineering: A Systematic Literature Review

During the last century many researches on the business, marketingand technology fields have developed the innovation research line and large amount of knowledge can be found in the literature. Currently, the importance of systematicand openness approaches to manage the available innovation sources is well established in many knowledge fields. Also in the software engineeringsector, where the organizations need to absorb and to exploit as much innovative ideas as possible to get success in the current competitive environment. This Master Thesis presents an study related with the innovation sources in the software engineeringeld. The main research goals of this work are the identication and the relevance assessment of the available innovation sources and the understanding of the trends on the innovation sources usage. Firstly, a general review of the literature have been conducted in order to define the research area and to identify research gaps. Secondly, the SystematicLiterature Review (SLR) has been proposed as the research method in this work to report reliable conclusions collecting systematicallyquality evidences about the innovation sources in software engineeringfield. This contribution provides resources, built-on empirical studies included in the SLR, to support a systematicidentication and an adequate exploitation of the innovation sources most suitable in the software engineeringfield. Several artefacts such as lists, taxonomies and relevance assessments of the innovation sources most suitable for software engineeringhave been built, and their usage trends in the last decades and their particularities on some countries and knowledge fields, especially on the software engineering, have been researched. This work can facilitate to researchers, managers and practitioners of innovative software organizations the systematizationof critical activities on innovation processes like the identication and exploitation of the most suitable opportunities. Innovation researchers can use the results of this work to conduct research studies involving the innovation sources research area. Whereas, organization managers and software practitioners can use the provided outcomes in a systematicway to improve their innovation capability, increasing consequently the value creation in the processes that they run to provide products and services useful to their environment. In summary, this Master Thesis research the innovation sources in the software engineeringfield, providing useful resources to support an effective innovation sources management. Moreover, several aspects should be deeply study to increase the accuracy of the presented results and to obtain more resources built-on empirical knowledge. It can be supported by the INno- vation SOurces MAnagement (InSoMa) framework, which is introduced in this work in order to encourage openness and systematicapproaches to identify and to exploit the innovation sources in the software engineeringfield.