A method for defining a regional software ecosystem strategy: Colombia as a case study

Software ecosystems (SECO) have been related to products or to a community of developers around a product. The SECO concept can also be applied to describe regional software ecosystems in which different software companies collaborate in a specific market based on a set of concrete technologies and using a set of capabilities. This paper details a regional SECO concept and a method based on regional endogenous capabilities and country needs to define a SECO strategy. Traditional strategy definition approaches are top-down, whereas this approach is a blended approach that merges bottom-up based on current regional capabilities and top-down based on market and technology trends. This paper presents a large case study performed in 6 regions of Colombia. We conducted 49 interviews and 16 workshops in which 654 attendees participated, and we developed the Colombian ICT national strategic plan based on this approach.