Modelling Influence in Software Ecosystems: Navigating a New Frontier

New Zealand can be considered, in one view, as a nation-state set in a small, remote set of islands in the Pacific. However, the history of New Zealand and its people is one of existing as a pioneer and leader in the technologies of the day. Now we face the challenge of how to successfully co-exist and thrive within today’s global communities and the technologies that link them, to surf the waves of the internet (even if we are for now restricted to our own shores by the COVID-19 pandemic).

The collaborative research project supported by Catalyst: Leaders funding, outlined below, aims to help us understand the dynamics of software ecosystems and how New Zealand as a country can succeed in evolving models of open innovation. The project is summarised below.

Our project in context

Live in a new globally linked world with software ecosystems as a critical piece of the jigsaw. So how do we learn to “live local” and “compete global” in a world driven by software? One publication generated from the project, for instance, looks at the implications for the hybrid skillset that developers will need to work effectively in a software ecosystem (Clear, 2020). Our history as a country with a mobile, intelligent, tech-savvy, collaborative, open, and interculturally competent set of people can give us an edge. Our project aims to contribute to that.

In this project, A/Prof Tony Clear and Prof Stephen MacDonell have joined with leading Canadian software engineering researcher, Professor Daniela Damian, to investigate the emerging phenomenon of software ecosystems, where software developers work to incorporate their software components through defined interfaces for a common platform. Facebook and Xero in New Zealand are two such examples. The software sector in New Zealand is growing but suffers from the challenges facing most industries dominated by small firms. Nonetheless, it is an agile and intelligent sector with the potential to achieve truly global reach and scale. The new phenomenon of software ecosystems offers an important path to global interconnectedness. Yet we lack understanding of their operation. How does knowledge exchange operate, and how can participants in these large social networks of developers and firms position themselves for optimal influence? Therefore, this partnership between a leading Canadian researcher and a network of New Zealand software engineering researchers and software firms aims to develop models and theories related to these questions, resulting in a set of tools based on artificial intelligence techniques. It is intended that the outcomes of this research will assist NZ software firms to achieve global interconnectedness within large, international business ecosystems and position themselves optimally for sustained delivery of software in collaboration with international partners.

Publication

>Devathasan, K., Chen, J., Yan, P., Rodríguez-Pérez, G., Clear, T., & Damian, D. (2025). Diversity’s Role in Collaboration and Conflict: A Case-Study of React.js [submitted for review]. In  Software Engineering (ICSE), 2025 IEEE/ACM 47th International Conference on (pp. TBA). IEEE.

>Johnson, D., Damian, D., Tizard, J., Blincoe, K., & Clear, T. (2020). Open CRowdRE Challenges in Software Ecosystems In M. Bano, E. Groen, I. Hadar, & S. Mahmoud (Eds.),  4th International Workshop on Crowd-Based Requirements Engineering (pp. 1-4). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/CrowdRE51214.2020.00007.

>Clear, T. (2020). THINKING ISSUES: Software Ecosystems: what do we need to know?  ACM Inroads, 10(2), 18-20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3395963

>Damian, D., Linaker, J., Johnson, D., Clear, T., & Blincoe, K. (2021). Challenges and Strategies for Managing Requirements Selection in Software Ecosystems. IEEE Software, 38(6), 76-87.
https://doi.org/10.1109/MS.2021.3105044