Strategic Value Proposition Innovation Management in Software Startups for Sustained Competitive Advantage serves as a practical resource for startups looking to have a sustainable competitive advantage based on continuous value propositions. This book's main objective is to help startups to build their dynamic capabilities to foster open innovations with freelancers, customers, and academia strategically in highly fluctuating business environments. The information as part of this book stems from multiple research approaches like systematic mapping studies, multiple case studies, surveys, experience reports, and their combinations, which makes findings more reliable and valid. Through the prism of dynamic capabilities theory, the findings' potential to strengthen the startups dynamic capabilities and promote ongoing innovation had been envisioned. According to the book, if open innovation components like freelancers, customers, and academia could be strategically incorporated into startups as strategic resources for value proposition innovation, then startups would be able to develop their dynamic capacities. Strengthening dynamic capabilities is justified by how these strategic resources and startup organizational flexibility work together. This book provides a genuine and interesting case of a social startup along with teaching notes. With the aid of this material, students can apply the knowledge presented in the book to actual situations, practice their business creativity by discussing it with peers, faculty members, and business professionals, and ultimately take away the most important elements from the discussions.

The contributions made by this book include the following.

· Book expands the corpus of knowledge regarding value proposition innovations in a startup setting, particularly through gathering important dataduring pandemics.

· Book introduces new approaches to encouraging value proposition creation in a highly dynamic context that differ from what has previously been done. The book adds to the body of knowledge in the fields of management and technical sciences about value proposition innovation. Despite the fact that the findings are mainly management-oriented, technical researchers will find them valuable in bridging the gaps through technical improvements, such as computationally enhanced algorithms or tools. As a result, managers, entrepreneurs, and technological researchers will be able to share information in a two-way fashion.

· Book included the application of numerous research methods in real-world contexts, the use of both qualitative and quantitative data, and the careful selection of good startup samples. This enhanced the reliability and validity of the information as disseminated in this book. The book has emphasized the important idea of value proposition innovations for businesses based on open innovations, which has implications for entrepreneurs, clients, independent contractors, and academics. Entrepreneurs should use the findings to improve their business methods, such as using online feedback gathering technology, freelancing platform technology, and freelancer associations. Customers, freelancers, and academics can use the results to assess a company and make informed judgments about their long-term relationship with them.

Autorentext

Varun Gupta is a Professor at GISMA University of Applied Sciences, Potsdam, Germany. He had maintained various associations with Universidad de Alcalá (UAH) in a number of capacities, most notably as a postdoctoral researcher, researcher and co-Director of master's degree in Innovation Economics, Management and Technology (Online & Presential). He was a visiting postdoctoral researcher with Software Engineering Research Group (SERG), Department of Computer Science, Lund University, Sweden. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Access (published by IEEE, and SCIE indexed with a 3.367 impact factor), PeerJ Computer Science (published by PeerJ, SCIE indexed with a 1.39 impact factor), PLOS One (SCIE indexed with a 3.752 impact factor), International Journal of Computer Aided Engineering & Technology (published by Inderscience Publishers, Scopus indexed), IEEE Software blog, and Journal of Cases on Information Technology (JCIT), and is a former editorial team member of the British Journalof Educational Technology (BJET) (published by Wiley, SCIE indexed). He earned the Bachelor of Technology (Hons.), Master of Technology (by research), and Ph.D. degrees in computer science and engineering. He holds an M.B.A. (general) and a Máster en Dirección Internacional de Empresas as well. He is serving as a Reviewer of IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computational Intelligence. He was awarded with the "Best Editor Award" by Inderscience Publishers for his contributions to the International Journal of Computer Aided Engineering & Technology (Scopus Indexed) as Associate Editor. His area of interest is evidence based software engineering and innovation management.