IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/indinn/v30y2023i1p17-41.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Coding for intangible competitive advantage - mapping the distribution and characteristics of software-developing firms in the Swedish economy

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Andersson
  • Anna Kusetogullari
  • Joakim Wernberg

Abstract

Software is at the core of digitalisation and is often claimed to play a central role in innovation and in shaping competition across industries and firms. There are yet few studies of the extent and nature of software development across firms. We employ a unique firm-level survey comprising 3,929 firms across Sweden to analyse the distribution and characteristics of firms that invest in software development and the orientation of their investments. The results confirm that software development activities are present in most industries, but heterogeneously distributed across firms. Internal software development is associated with innovation-oriented large firms in high-tech and knowledge-intensive industries, and is often affiliated with MNEs. The results suggest that software development is comparable to R&D investments and constitutes an example of digital innovation. This strengthens the value of studying software development activities to understand how firms invest in and build competitive advantage in the digitalised economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Andersson & Anna Kusetogullari & Joakim Wernberg, 2023. "Coding for intangible competitive advantage - mapping the distribution and characteristics of software-developing firms in the Swedish economy," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(1), pages 17-41, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:indinn:v:30:y:2023:i:1:p:17-41
    DOI: 10.1080/13662716.2022.2112396
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13662716.2022.2112396
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13662716.2022.2112396?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eva Erjavec, 2023. "Going digital and intangible: intangible investments effects on a company’s success," Ekonomista, Polskie Towarzystwo Ekonomiczne, issue 3, pages 275-294.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:indinn:v:30:y:2023:i:1:p:17-41. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CIAI20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.