Innovation capabilities in software industry through the interfaces creation between users and producers: the case of the Mexican Firms

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyze the interface construction process amongsoftware firms and other social actors and how, through the interface, the software firms createtechnological knowledge and innovation capabilities. The central research question I will try toanswer is about: How do Mexican software firms build up interfaces with other social actors andwhy it is important in the knowledge generation process and in the creation of innovationcapabilities? The cases to be studied of this research will be Mexican firms which develop and design‘customized-software’. Some of them have created technological knowledge and accumulatetechnological capabilities through simple and stable interfaces, in which the information flowpredominates on the knowledge flow. Others of them have created complex interfaces, in whichpredominate the knowledge flow and a high level of interaction among user and producer firms.In these terms, the user-producer interaction supports the firms to create new knowledge andincrease the innovation capabilities. The Mexican firms have developed and designed proprietarysoftware (PSW), however, there are firms that have migrated to the development and design ofopen-source software (OSW). The firms that develop and design OSW have at least threeopportunities in a short term: a) to create new technological knowledge, b) to accelerate theinnovation capabilities accumulation, and c) to open and to diversify the software market in a‘transversal’ way. This paper is organized in 5 sections. After this introduction, section 2 presents the principalbodies of literature. Next section explains the research strategy has been followed in this paper.Section 4 describes the Mexican Information Technology Industry. Finally, section 5 presentsimportant results and conclusions.