ICSOB Call for Submissions

We are pleased to invite you to submit your research work to the 14th International Conference on Software Business (ICSOB 2023) to be held in the vibrant city of Lahti, Finland on November 27-29, 2023. The conference aims to bring together researchers and practitioners to discuss and exchange ideas related to the latest trends, challenges, and solutions in software business, software product management, and digital services.

ICSOB 2023’s conference theme is “Digital Agility: Mastering Change in Software Business and Digital Services”. The conference aims to address the challenges of managing and leading software-intensive businesses in the digital age, where the pace of technological change is relentless, and the need for innovation is paramount. We encourage submissions related to topics such as software product management and development, digital services and transformation, software ecosystems and platforms, software business development, startups and new venture creation.

We welcome both research and industry papers to the conference. The papers should be original and not submitted to or accepted by any other conference or journal. We are looking for short position and practice papers (maximum 6 pages) that provide insights in industry case studies or in promising new areas; and full research papers (maximum 15 pages) describing novel approaches in software-intensive business for software products and digital services.

The topics that ICSOB welcomes, but are not certainly limited to:

Software Product Management and Development – software product management, product strategy and product portfolio strategy; product roadmapping; product discovery, continuous experimentation; software engineering management and productivity; lifecycle perspective; speeding up time-to-market; continuous delivery; agile development to support software businesses; business agility and dual-track agile; product operations; pricing strategies.

Digital Services, Systems and Transformation – initiating deep structural changes; managing digital transformation processes; large-scale transformation; sustaining software productivity and performance throughout a transformation process; development and implementation strategies; corporate and entrepreneurial culture; development of digital competencies.

Software Ecosystems and Platforms – open digital platforms; open innovation; app store architectures; application programming interface (API) architectures; digital and data platforms; software ecosystems health; ecosystem orchestration and governance; app economy; actors and network analysis; incentives; ecosystem-based business models; token economy.

Software Business Development – developing and introducing new digital business models; business modeling for software products and services; effective business model change and improvement; economics of software companies; mergers and acquisitions; internationalization, outsourcing and other strategies for realizing new business models; licensing, intellectual property and patents aspects.

Startups and new venture creation – lean startup for software business and digital transformation; environment success factors; entrepreneurial process; entrepreneurial software engineering; novel software startup processes; disruptive innovation and adoption; establishing new competence; risk management; managing startup growth.


Each paper will be reviewed by at least three reviewers. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings by Springer in the Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP) series.

The proceedings will be published with an Open Access (OA) license.
Important dates
Research Papers:
• Deadline for submissions:: September 10, 2023
• Notification of acceptance: October 16, 2023
• Camera-ready papers due: November 13, 2023
• Conference: November 27-29, 2023

Poster and Demo Track:
• Deadline for submissions: October 23, 2023
• Notification of acceptance: October 30, 2023

PhD Retreat:
• Deadline for submissions: October 23, 2023
• Notification of acceptance: October 30, 2023
Call for Workshop and Tutorial Proposals

ICSOB 2023 welcomes proposals for tutorials and workshops hosted during the conference in Lahti. The proposals should describe the content of the event and the overall structure. Please use the Springer’s LNBIP template for formatting the proposals. The timetable for the proposal is:

The deadline for workshop and tutorial proposals: October 1, 2023
Notification of acceptance: October 22, 2023

SLUSH 2023

The world's leading startup event, SLUSH, will take place right after ICSOB. SLUSH will be from November 30 – December 1, 2023, in Helsinki, Finland.During the past few years, SLUSH has been able to attract several thousand startups, investors, academic and journalist from more than 130 countries to share experiences and meet new promising business ideas. The participants of ICSOB 2023 are highly encouraged to utilize the opportunity and take part in the SLUSH 2023. Since there is a high demand for SLUSH, we strongly recommend registering for SLUSH early if you are interested.
Submission format and system

All papers should be submitted in PDF format. The submission should be anonymized for double-blind review. The results described must be unpublished and must not be under review elsewhere. Submissions must conform to Springer’s LNBIP/LNCS format and should not exceed the given page limits, including all text, figures, references and appendices. Three to five keywords characterizing the paper should be indicated at the end of the abstract. Submissions are done through Easychair.

Information about the Springer LNBIP/LNCS format, as well as templates for MS Word and LaTeX, can be found at:

http://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings…

All submissions should be done through Easychair at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icsob2023
Special Journal Issue on “Software Production”

Attention all researchers and experts in software production! The prestigious "Information and Software Technology" journal is thrilled to announce a special issue on software production . Highly appreciated conference submissions from 2023 will be asked to submit an extended version to this special issue. This is an exceptional opportunity to share your insights and expertise on software production with a global audience of professionals and scholars. For more information on this call for papers, please visit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/information-and-software-technology/about/call-for-papers#software-production