Patterns of Innovation in SaaS Networks: Trend Analysis of Node Centralities

As software vendors provide their software as a service (SaaS) and allow users to access the software functions via open interfaces, the innovation style has shifted from local innovation of a software user, to collective innovation of an entire system of users and software. This new innovation trend directs the innovation research to the structural and evolutionary patterns of SaaS networks, in which a node represents a software service and a link the combined use of two software services for provisioning a new service. However, prior research concentrates only on the static properties of network structure and the position of nodes in the network, but misses the dynamics in the evolution context. In this paper, we close this gap by investigating the trend of centralities of five representative software services in a SaaS network. The data has been obtained from www.programmableweb.com. Our results suggest that each software service of a SaaS network follows the typical life cycle from growth to decline. In addition to this, the innovation trend shifts from image services to social networking services, involving a transition of network structure. Our results also show the necessity of innovation studies that investigate the changing patterns of evolving innovation networks.