A enação da inovação de produtos de software : revendo o pivotamento da ideia à realidade do mercado

Abstract

It is no longer news that entrepreneurs are challenged to change their course of action in the attempt to survive in the market, with limited resources in chaotic contexts of rapid evolution and "absolute uncertainty". Entrepreneurs, need to make strategic decisions about the future of the innovative product in construction, without complete information of the market and their associated milieu These strategic changes represent processes coined as the pivot term in the LSA approach. It is difficult for leaders of the initiatives to choose how and when to pivot, and, still, find a systematic way to do it. Despite the contemporary importance of pivots in the performance of a startup, these processes have still been little explored and studied. Recent research has provided knowledge about the characterization of the pivot concept, the types, the antecedents or triggering factors of pivot processes, and the main impacts of these processes on the performance of software startups. However, several uncertainties emerge about, how in practice, a software product evolves through different pivotal processes and how entrepreneurs develop crucial strategies to adapt the technical object to the market and its associated milieu, strategies to mobilize different resources and interest different stakeholders until find a scalable business model. The present research has aimed to explore the evolution of an innovative software product with emphasis on critical events defined as pivots, and to understand how the construction of a technical object occurs in a certain market and ecosystem. A simondonian perspective was adopted, which implies the analysis of an object in a state of permanent transformation, defined as a condition of metastability that evolves through a process of individuation and concretization. Three longitudinal case studies were developed, from the perspective of enaction, which allowed us to understand the particularities and similarities existing in the evolution of the construction processes of each innovative product using a situational approach. The results show that the development of a software product, that seeks to become a successful startup, represents a process of permanent evolution in the form of an expanded and recursive spiral that evolves through different startup life cycle stages. Empirical data have revealed the emerged strategies developed by the entrepreneurs because the performance of the technical object and its business model. Performance achieved through various interactions between stakeholders, combination of individuals and technical elements, and contextual factors within an associated milieu.