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This doctoral thesis establishes an initial understanding, by providing an insight, on the way employees' creativity can be enhanced. Specifically, the primary focus of this study is to explain the different ways through which creative organisations mobilise creativity within the workplace environment. The findings of this research revealed the emergent substantive process of mind stretching. The process of mind stretching is about developing the conditions where creative individuals can extend their creative potential within project based environments. This substantive theory has emerged through the study of organisational behaviour of creative professionals within three organisations, namely a corporate identity consultancy, a multidisciplinary design consultancy and an architectural firm. Mind stretching has two sub-core variables, "perpetual challenging" and "confidence building". Perpetual challenging encompasses the processes that creative organisations use in order to enhance employees' internal drive to perceive every project as a new creative challenge. Confidence building refers to the ways through which creative organisations assist their employees to build a belief in themselves. Each of the aforementioned sub-core variables has categories which explain the way the theory works within its context. The emergence of the theory of "Mind Stretching" was made possible by using the orthodox grounded theory method. The researcher followed specific stages of analysis and synthesis of data. After having identified the basic social process of mind stretching, it was then compared with the existing bodies of literature. The mind stretching theory provides an original perspective into the behaviour of the people under investigation. It provides an integrated conceptual explanation of the different ways adopted by creative organisations to mobilise creativity within their workplace environment. Furthermore, as with all grounded theory studies conducted in organisational settings,the mind stretching theory can be considered as methodologically original since it provides a holistic and in-depth insight into current business practices. Keywords: Creativity, Innovation, Grounded theory, Employees, Organisational culture.

The research investigates the processes of adoption and implementation, by organisations, of computer aided production management systems (CAPM). It is organised around two different theoretical perspectives. The first part is informed by the Rogers model of the diffusion, adoption and implementation of innovations, and the second part by a social constructionist approach to technology. Rogers' work is critically evaluated and a model of adoption and implementation is distilled from it and applied to a set of empirical case studies. In the light of the case study data, strengths and weaknesses of the model are identified. It is argued that the model is too rational and linear to provide an adequate explanation of adoption processes. It is useful for understanding processes of implementation but requires further development. The model is not able to adequately encompass complex computer based technologies. However, the idea of 'reinvention' is identified as Roger's key concept but it needs to be conceptually extended. Both Roger's model and definition of CAPM found in the literature from production engineering tend to treat CAPM in objectivist terms. The problems with this view are addressed through a review of the literature on the sociology of technology, and it is argued that a social constructionist approach offers a more useful framework for understanding CAPM, its nature, adoption, implementation, and use. CAPM it is argued, must be understood on terms of the ways in which it is constituted in discourse, as part of a 'struggle for meaning' on the part of academics, professional engineers, suppliers, and users.

Over the course of three to four decades, most well-established companies lose their dominating position in the market or fail entirely. Their failure occurs even though they have resources for sensing shifting market trends, skills and assets to develop next-generation technologies, and the financial means to fill skill gaps and afford risky investments. Nevertheless, incumbents obviously find it very difficult to invest in innovation that takes attention and resources away from a highly successful core business. A solution to this "innovator's dilemma" is the concept of "organizational ambidexterity," which has garnered considerable attention among researchers in organization and innovation. According to empirical findings and emergent theory, companies can improve their financial performance and ensure their long-term survival by balancing their innovation activities, so that they are equally focused on exploratory (discontinuous) and exploitative (incremental, continuous) innovations. But how can such a balance be achieved? The literature on the organizational theory and related fields (product innovation, knowledge management, creativity, etc.) identifies more than 300 contributing factors to innovation and ambidexterity: many are interdependent so that their impacts compound or cancel each other. Moreover, for many factors, there is limited empirical data and the size of impacts is unknown. To understand which managerial actions lead to ambidexterity, this dissertation develops a novel approach to the study and analysis of complex casual systems with high uncertainty: exploratory fuzzy cognitive mapping. Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) is a semi-quantitative system modeling and simulation technique. It is used to represent qualitative information about complex systems as networks of casual relationships that can be studied computationally. Exploratory modeling and analysis (EMA) is a new approach to modeling and simulation of complex systems when there is high uncertainty about the structural properties of the system. This work is the first to combine both approaches. The work makes several contributions: First, it shows that only a small fraction of management interventions will actually lead to ambidexterity while most will, at best, improve one type of innovation at the expense of the other. Second, it provides a simulation tool to management researchers and practitioners that allows them to test ideas for improving ambidexterity against a model that reflects our current collective knowledge about innovation. And third, it develops a range of techniques (and software code) for exploratory FCM modeling, such as methods for transforming qualitative data to FCM, for exploratory simulation of large and complex FCM models, and for data visualization. They can be utilized to study other similarly complex and uncertain systems.

Organizations are seeking ways to become more innovative as a response to increased global competitiveness. While innovation is clearly important, many strategies have been attempted with this goal but no clear method has proved successful. This study shows that firms who are considered to have innovation as one of their core competencies utilize mentoring to facilitate and cultivate innovation. Utilizing a qualitative, case study approach, interviews were conducted with key stakeholders at four major U.S. companies considered to be among the most innovative in the world. The transcripts, archival data, and popular magazine and newspaper articles were included in the content analysis. Findings support that mentoring is a key aspect of creating and sustaining a culture of innovation at large U.S. corporations.

An Innovative company can apply new thinking faster than its competitors or surprise its customers by offering products that makes the customers first realize its need and then consume it. There are substantial evidence stating the positive impact of innovation in the automotive industry; however, corresponding research is lacking on the two-wheeler industry which is growing at a healthy pace. The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the role of innovation in a two-wheeler company and to analyse its influence in the growth of such companies.  Two research questions are addressed: What role does innovation play in the firms' product portfolio management? Does innovation lead to increased sales and market share for a company? The thesis is based on a case study of Bajaj Auto Ltd (BAL). Starting with a focus on the theme and motives involved in marketing of its products, the study revolves around the trends of innovation in the core business and its contribution to BAL’s success. Central to this report is the innovative ways employed by BAL to maintain a balanced portfolio followed by the comparison of the BAL’s sales growth with the Indian two-wheeler industry over the years and also the increase in market share of BAL in the same period. The descriptive part of “Bajaj Auto Ltd” is based on interviews via e-mail with management staffs and employees plus revenue data of the company. In addition the analysis builds upon secondary data from various sources of references like, journals, news paper reports, internet and articles. The results from the case company have been used together with a theoretical framework to explain the empirical patterns. From just taking a cue from the market trend to fine tuning a product’s operational efficiency, Bajaj Auto was not only able to sustain in the market but is able to compete with the leader in the two-wheeler segment in India. The world had a lot of offer and Bajaj gladly grabbed the opportunity by precisely managing innovation in all its business activities. Being intuitive and proactive in understanding the changing needs of the market has made this possible for BAL. Conclusively, the findings suggest that Innovation is proving to be a critical entity in a business firm and managing it effectively certainly favours the company in leaping ahead in times of competition.

Purpose: The study that has been conducted is a comparative one, where the group compared different innovation management strategies used by three different globally- known Swedish firms that are in the manufacturing industry. The study is aimed at describing, analyzing and making conclusions of the innovation strategies used during the process of product development in the chosen companies bycomparing their similarities and differences. Method: The Study was carried out using a comparative study drawing on the qualitative data. Conclusion: Volvo CE and ABB CRC have similar strategies in internal idea generation because both firms have formalized systems, by using strong online data bases for idea sharing and evaluation. Volvo CE uses a pronounced forum called “Innovation Jams” for online idea sharing among Volvo Group employees whereas ABB CRC uses a strong data base called “ABB Inside” to evaluate ideas within the group. On the other hand, Scania R&D’s internal idea generation process is more informal as it is based on “person-to-person”. When it comes to external idea generation, Scania R&D has a more established strategy of using suppliers and customers for inspiration of ideas. However, ABB CRC generates inspirations from customers through its business centers, whereas Volvo CE has no customer system in place. But one thing that is common in all the three companies is that they are highly collaborating with universities for idea generation and human resource.

Introduction It is now well established in the literature that innovation constitutes a key process underpinning economic change within capitalism. This does not, however, imply that there is a single perspective that informs policy thinking about innovation. Over the preceding decades diverse interpretations have emerged resonating with the general idea that “...a national system of innovation can only be judged as healthy if the knowledge, technologies, products and processes produced by the national system of science, engineering and technology have been converted into increased wealth, by industry and business, and into an improved quality of life for all members of society” (DACST, 1996: 18). Whilst the South African reading of the literature has attempted to draw together commercial and social interpretations, both interpretations have generally derived ‘innovation’ narrowly from the science and technology (S&T) sector of the economy (Scerri, 2009 and Maharajh, 2011). This interpretation typically represented S&T as the key element of ‘the engine of growth’ and thus, by proxy, the route to increased productivity, competitiveness and economic prosperity and consequently argued that an improved S&T sector would result from increased expenditure on research and development (R&D). Within mainstream economics and its attendant planning framework, the S&T sector is generally viewed as an important but essentially exogenous component of the general economy. This approach represents, in our view, a fundamentalist orthodoxy and remains largely embedded within the teaching of mainstream neo-classical economics. In effect, in mainstream economic thinking innovation is seen as an important exogenous determinant of the value added content of production which increases the competitiveness of firms and economies, leading to economic growth and therefore to an increase of overall societal welfare. This approach to the causal relationship between innovation and economic growth even if somewhat simplified here, represents the core of orthodox thinking on the economic role of innovation. As we will argue below, this questionable reasoning stems from the internal logic of mainstream economic theory.

This thesis seeks to identify a generalized strategy for businesses to follow in order to sustain long term growth. In particular, it focuses on innovation as the catalyst that drives the growth. To establish the foundation for building this strategy, it first looks at the need for businesses to sustain growth in order to remain healthy. After developing this link, existing research in business growth is examined. With this information, the strategy is then formulated. From here, two of the largest companies in the world based on market capitalization are evaluated over time against this strategy to show its ability to drive sustained growth and long term success. / text

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