Swedish embedded software and vertically integrated industries: an appraisal

In this paper, we use an evolutionary economic framework on knowledge management to make a first assessment of Swedish production of “embedded software”. The assessment starts by reviewing definitions and measurement techniques of software production. The reviews objective is to capture statistically relevant dimensions of software production in different countries to offer a first approximation of Swedish software production. In this paper, we focus on one type of software production, namely “embedded software”, and propose to measure it thanks to aspects of knowledge assets in vertically integrated industries. Our suggestion in this paper is to treat Swedish “embedded software production” within a classical product cycle model (Vernon, 1966). From that point of view, one can derive some characteristics relevant to industrial sectors. This paper limits itself to the link between “embedded software” and “industrial sectors” leaving the location dimension of software production for another paper1. Here, one considers (1) basic evolutionary economic characteristics on the linkage between vertical integration of the manufacturing industry and the measurement of embedded software, (2) measurement boundaries of software production regarding the existing indicators in the US, OECD and Sweden. (3) descriptive statistics on the Swedish software expenditure per industrial sectors.