We analyze the characteristics of new businesses in the German ICT industry, distinguishing them based on their choice between two IPR regimes: open source software (OSS) or closed source software (CSS). The share of new firms with an OSS-based business model has increased considerably over the...

Our study aims at shedding light on the innovative business strategies in the software sector and particularly providing a better understanding of the economics underlying the supply of Open Source Software (OSS). We use survey data collected from 170 Finnish software companies to investigate...

The primary findings of our study suggest that software firms that adopt the OSS-based business model are notably less productive than companies that merely offer proprietary software solutions. Our estimation results further show that the OSS business model adopters have not become notably less...

There is considerable debate regarding the use of intellectual property rights (IPR) to spur innovation in the software industry. In this paper we focus on the choice of intellectual property right regimes and industry growth. We begin by developing a growth optimal mixture of open source and...

Recently the software industry has experienced fundamental changes in market structure through the entry of open source competitors, e.g. Linux‘s entry into the operating systems market. In a simple model we examine the effects of such a change in market structure from monopoly to duopoly...

The private-collective business models that involve both private investment incentives and the production of public goods are not well understood. This empirically oriented research uses the unique data from the software industries of five European countries (Finland, Germany, Italy, Portugal...

This paper addresses the question of the software companies’ timing of adoption of the open source software (OSS) business models comprising the supply of OSS products and/or services. The game-theoretic technology adoption models do not explain well the observed diffusion patterns of the OSS...

This paper investigates the role of skills and the division of labor among participants in collective inventions. Our analysis draws on a large sample of projects registered at Sourceforge.net, the world's largest incubator of open source software activity. We test the hypothesis that the level...

This dissertation consists of four essays in the economics of digital transformation and specifically considers the link between geography and digitalization in the know-ledge economy.