Back-propagation of user innovations: The open source compatibility edge

Open source software (OSS) is a dramatically disruptive force in the software industry. While businesses see OSS succeeding, many of them have trouble gleaning the lessons that can be learned from the OSS phenomenon, since OSS development appears to be far removed from traditional business practices and principles. A major observation resulting from our research on OSS products is that OSS product development is not only enabling innovations by its users, but also providing a structure for them to back-propagate into OSS products, a process that enhances compatibility in OSS products and presents a low-cost solution to the more general problem of servicing highly segmented markets. We argue that this innovation management process carries important insights for both commercial software vendors and companies outside the software industry.