Thesis chapter 12: Conclusions

This thesis described how an R&D organisation can create new business opportunities by selecting appropriate ways-of-working, new architectures, and possibly support new ecosystems. These ways-of-working and new architectures could enable new business models for OEMs delivering mass-produced
embedded systems, while at the same time mitigate some of the problem presentably common in the domain.
The main contributions of the thesis, described in chapters 5-11, are based on 7 papers (5 already being published and 2 submitted to peer-reviewed journals):

• Chapters 5 and 6 describe three detailed cases of how architectures presently are developed and maintained for automotive embedded systems. The rich description provides a background of current practice of software development of mass-produced embedded systems.
• Chapter 7 identifies and models 5 approaches to develop embedded software, based on a mapping study of 23 papers.
• Chapter 8 describes agile development for individual teams in the context of large MPES projects. This would allow the length of iterations from idea to implementation to be determined by the potential speed of the individual development teams and not the overall product development project.
• Chapter 9 designs a compositional architecture for embedded software as precursor for open software ecosystems.
• Chapter 10 explores open software ecosystems as possible approach to development of embedded software. This would extend the base of innovators beyond what is presently hierarchically directed by the OEM to support delivery of innovative features with value for the customer.
• Chapter 11 describes innovation experiment systems for embedded products and defines a reference architecture supporting such an R&D approach.