Purpose - The purpose of this study is to explore the impact that implementing lean has on a company’s ability to innovate, especially their ability to produce radically innovative products.   Framework – The framework developed for the purpose of this study is made out of four propositions. Each of the propositions is aimed at covering a certain aspect of the area under investigation. The propositions are constructed through a comparison of the main principles and characteristics of both lean thinking and innovation management that are seen to be relevant to the area of product development.   Methodology – The study employs a qualitative multi-case study design. Four Swedish SME’s that have been implementing lean in both manufacturing and product development are investigated. The data for the study is collected using two methods; an online questionnaire and a face-to-face interview.   Findings - The study leads to the belief that the implementation of lean could lead to a company’s ability to produce radically innovative products being negatively impacted, but that this impact could be avoided if a company wishes to do so.   Managerial Implications – Managers are made aware of the possible consequences of the implementation, as well as, of the possible balance. Solutions to achieving a balance are offered.   Limitations – The approach to exploring the subject in hand, the choice of participating companies, and the interview guide employed, are all seen as limitation for this study.

Denna studie syftar till att ta reda på vilka element som höjer det innovativa klimatet i företag och organisationer. Utifrån dessa element har författarna skapat kriterier som heter ”Soft innovation”. Visionen är att framtiden skulle kunna standardisera dessa kriterier. En abduktiv metod har använts. Metodvalet har motiverats med att kriterierna lättare accepteras om de är socialt konstruerade. Man kan påverka innovationsklimatet i företag, då det tar kortare tid än att förändra organisationskulturen. Dock antas att organisationsklimatet på sikt kan påverkar organisationskulturen. Kriterierna ska ses som vägledande riktlinjer för att stimulera ett innovativt klimat. Teori och empiri visade på många gemensamma faktorer som påverkar innovationsklimatet i företag. Resultatet av teori och empiri visade att de viktigaste faktorerna för att uppmuntra till kreativitet hos medarbetare var ett bra ledarskap, uppmuntran, belöning av kreativt beteende och misslyckande, projektgrupper som driver idén till verklighet och strukturer för hur kreativiteten ska hanteras.

Denna studie syftar till att ta reda på vilka element som höjer det innovativa klimatet i företag och organisationer. Utifrån dessa element har författarna skapat kriterier som heter ”Soft innovation”. Visionen är att framtiden skulle kunna standardisera dessa kriterier. En abduktiv metod har använts. Metodvalet har motiverats med att kriterierna lättare accepteras om de är socialt konstruerade. Man kan påverka innovationsklimatet i företag, då det tar kortare tid än att förändra organisationskulturen. Dock antas att organisationsklimatet på sikt kan påverkar organisationskulturen. Kriterierna ska ses som vägledande riktlinjer för att stimulera ett innovativt klimat. Teori och empiri visade på många gemensamma faktorer som påverkar innovationsklimatet i företag. Resultatet av teori och empiri visade att de viktigaste faktorerna för att uppmuntra till kreativitet hos medarbetare var ett bra ledarskap, uppmuntran, belöning av kreativt beteende och misslyckande, projektgrupper som driver idén till verklighet och strukturer för hur kreativiteten ska hanteras.

In the telecom manufacturing industry, the business environment is characterized by high competition and challenging tasks. To be able to thrive in this environment, companies have to work hard in order to develop innovations in the form of products, services and solutions to the marketplace. R&D departments, in collaboration with other functional departments and external agents, become the main engine for innovation development. R&D managers face the difficult challenge of effectively managing innovation projects, which are surrounded by high complexity, uncertainty and risk. To help address this issue, this thesis explores four successful innovation projects within four distinct international telecom technology suppliers, namely Nortel, Alvarion, ZTE and ST-Ericsson, to identify the factors that directly influenced the success behind each innovation. To do so, a comprehensive study of the telecom innovation system was conducted; this study enabled the researchers to devise a framework that describes the innovation process in the industry and that highlights the value of the marketing department, the importance of early customer involvement and that clearly demonstrates the self-sufficiency of today’s telecom manufacturing department. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of the human factor and the substantial value of nurturing staff and fostering different roles within the innovation team, such as that of the gatekeeper, entrepreneur, technology specialist and senior manager. R&D management literature lists over 250 different success factors; the framework included in this thesis presents only the 60 factors that are relevant to the industry. These factors are categorized in two ways: (1) As either order winners or order qualifiers and (2) as either being affected or unaffected by the innovation type. The first categorization serves to identify 25 factors that can become a source of competitive advantage if managed accordingly and 35 factors that are considered to be the status quo of the industry, and while very important are not a source of competitive advantage. The second categorization brings awareness to the R&D manager by identifying nine factors, namely: the source of the idea, access to information, the probability of commercial success, the comprehensiveness of the requirements, newness to firm, market strength, innovation receptiveness, degree of innovation and supportive environment. The research showed that these nine factors are directly affected by the innovation type (incremental, architectural or radical).

Abstract not only influence on development of basic industries in a country but relate with business cycle. Hi-tech industries grow rapidly and play a key role with ¡§innovation¡¨ in stock market. The trends of hi technology make people forget that traditional industries not only keep existing but play a great role of economic activities. Historically speaking, Electric wire and cable industries still exist and even stably develop.¡C I hope to apply the following theories including innovation management, dependence of resources and product life cycle to explain why traditional industries are not sunset industries. Besides, I also chose Feng-chin Corporation as a case with best skills at magnet wire manufacturing to explain how a company keeps his competitive advantages in the matured market. Through case study and theory applied, the followings are concluded. 1. With less possibilities the products are replaced, the greater possibilities of continuity of the industry. In aspects of attributes of product itself, no alternatives appear to substitute for the copper and therefore the magnet wire industry would not disappear as the raw materials with the copper. Even though we can find the new material to replace the copper, the magnet wire industry will still exist with other alternative to replace the copper. When PLC model are applied, the products with greater continuity represent highly matured products. Hence, the products with greater continuity have the following characteristics including less possibilities to be replaced, highly matured and unclear decline stage, and high dependence of the below companies. 2. In low value added industries, individual company should emphasize on process innovation and diversified customers. The Feng-chin Corporation struggles to innovate technologically and in process by the following ways. (1) They make traditional products into hi-technology industries by raise added values. (2) They concentrate on costing down and their own field (3) They well utilize their resources to enforce the mutual-depend relationship with the below companies. Likewise, in the industries which pursue economic scales to reduce the cost, it is more important to diversify the costumers when they have the following characteristics including high matured products, high pricing products and lower mobility of the equipments. Key words: innovation management product life cycle magnet wire industry continuity

The proposed research aspires to provide new insight on issues of applied Roadmapping and advance the state of the art in Roadmapping and its practice. It provides a conceptual model and an integrated process framework for the development of a Third Generation, Meso-level, Co-innovation Dynamic Roadmapping (from now on called ‘Dynamic Roadmapping’), which integrates policy, research, industry, and organisational roadmapping methodologies, in order to manage the development and adoption of systemic innovations in complex domains. It has been developed to meet the needs of increasingly complex systemic innovations where multiple organisations are involved as co-innovators and many other intermediaries and decision makers need to be included in the innovation adoption process. These types of innovations are usually driven by the interplay of multi-dimensional and cross-impacting factors derived from changes in social, market, economic, political and technology systems. Thus, the ‘Dynamic Roadmapping’ does not presuppose a single desired future for complex domains, but several futures, based on the complementary strategic perspectives of inter-dependent stakeholders, which need to be contextualised and negotiated at various sectoral, national and regional levels in order to be adopted. The ‘Dynamic Roadmapping’ approach supports the achievement of the realisation of the desired futures through two main components: a ‘co-innovation group’ and an ‘observatory function’. The co-innovation group is formed from all the necessary co-innovators, adopters, decision makers and users that are needed in order for the innovations to be developed and adopted. Their function is predominately ‘normative’ describing “what they want to happen” and “how” it will happen. The observatory function provides foresight and sense making methodologies to the co-innovation group, in order to constantly review and adapt their roadmaps in light of the emerging changes that can impact the roadmaps’ realisation and adoption. A conceptual model and its theoretical grounding have been built in order to bridge support for roadmapping activities among different innovative communities (e.g. in policy, research, industry and practice) and foster their collaboration via stakeholders’ innovation networks. The proposed conceptual model and its process framework have been evaluated in a case study in order to establish its validity in the European context and provide implications to theory and practice. A pilot of this framework is first implemented for the area of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL). The impact of this research is: - Managing uncertainty in Future planning - Managing and implementing emergent Roadmaps for systemic innovations - Monitoring and adapt the produced Roadmaps according to change factors in emerging reality - Ensure their adoption in complex domain This research work has been funded by an EU Marie-Curry Fellowship grant via the DYRECT project no. 255182. The proposed integrated framework has been adopted by the EU TEL-Map project (in education sector) and EU CRe-AM project (in creative industry sector). It has been documented in many European project deliverables as well as in international conference papers, and in journal papers.

This dissertation evaluates and elevates the perception of the strategic use of design for airlines, especially a Silent Design airline like Saudia Airlines. Saudia Airlines is an international airline located in the Gulf region in the Middle East. In comparison to some other Gulf state airlines, Saudia Airlines benefits from its large geographical coverage, and is considered to be one of the richest and longest established carriers in the industry. However, the rapid growth during the past few years of other Gulf carriers (e.g. Emirates Airlines, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways) highlights the necessity for improvements to be made by Saudia Airlines so that it can sustain its position in the global market. These three mega Gulf airlines have shown major developments in their strategic use of design in delivering innovative and differentiated design touch points in their customer journeys. The purpose of this research is to ‘create a design management conceptual framework (DMCF) to assist Saudia Airlines in evaluating and elevating the perception of the strategic value of design.’ To date, airlines adopting a Silent Design approach have rarely been addressed in empirical studies. To achieve this, secondary research investigated several topics, mainly the perception of the strategic use of design, the operational use of design and how design was managed based on design management evolution. Furthermore, design outcomes are presented after implementing the strategic use of design, to deliver innovative and differentiated results. Moreover, the case studies of several companies are presented that use design at a strategic level, especially in the airline industry. The primary research investigated key stakeholders’ views (customers, design experts and Saudia Airlines’ employees and design consultants). The findings from these investigations, and emergent key themes and sub-themes created the prototypes that led to the formulation of the DMCF, which is the main contribution of this study. The DMCF was developed and tested with experts in the field. The proposed framework is considered a significant starting point for airlines that want to evaluate and elevate their perception of the strategic use of design. The DMCF addresses the significant results of this study and key points are made, as follows: 1) Four key dimensions are identified: a) organisational mind-set, b) structure and design capabilities, c) design process and communication, and d) customer experience, which could evaluate and elevate the strategic use of design. 2) The Silent Design culture is identified as pertaining to Saudia Airlines in this study. This culture emphasises the moderate ambition of the strategic use of design by using it at an operational level. It also includes an ill-defined structure for managing design and a lack of design capabilities. In addition, it has an unclear design process and ad hoc cross-departmental collaboration. The overall result is that the Silent Design organisations’ customer experiences are characterised by undifferentiated products and services. 3) The Strategic Design culture is identified and addresses the airlines that make good use of design. This culture emphasises the strong ambition of the strategic use of design by using it at a strategic level. It also includes a systematic and clear structure for managing design. It has a clear design process and clear cross-departmental collaboration. The overall result is that Strategic Design organisations maintain their position as innovators and differentiators within the airline industry. 4) Some recommendations are made that target how to bridge the gap between these two cultures, including appointing a design leader within a Silent Design culture airline. This would elevate the airlines’ perceptions of the strategic use of design.

This thesis describes how Innovation Management Consultants (IMCs) can promote changes in R&D/marketing relationships. The research was motivated by the scarce number of studies about the impact of IMCs on organisational relationships in general, and particularly on R&D and marketing relationships. This thesis contributes to knowledge in four strands of literature: technology management, organisational change, management consulting and conflict studies. Firstly, its main contribution is to technology management literature. Empirical evidence indicates that IMCs can modify the relationship between R&D and marketing functions, even though they are not hired explicitly for that purpose. Nonetheless, the main impact on the relationship is perceived at the personal level and it is dependent on the format of the intervention process. Additionally, the changes in the R&D/marketing relationship and its continuity seem to be conditional upon contextual factors such as specific company and consultant characteristics, as well as the nature of the consultant-client relationship. Secondly, this study has added to scholarly knowledge in organisational change by providing empirical evidence that IMCs advocate for the same dynamics used by Organisational Development (OD) consultants. The results highlight the importance of a facilitative-participative approach and organisational learning to generate change. The results suggest that certain OD theories such as sociotechnical systems theories and Lewin’s model can be used to explain the effect of IMCs on intra-organisational relationships. Thirdly, this research also augments knowledge about IMCs in management consulting literature because it provides evidence about the activities conducted by IMCs and their unexpected effects within client organisations. This addresses a gap identified in the literature, since the contributions of this type of Management Consultant (MC) have not been significantly investigated and the focus of previous studies has been on expected results. Finally, this research contributes to the area of conflict studies, particularly to the intersection between R&D/marketing integration and conflict, since it provides certain evidence about some IMCs’ mediation techniques that can be used to diminish conflict between different areas within an organisation. The research followed an inductive approach to understanding the changes that IMCs can promote in R&D/marketing relationships in large firms. The research is based on empirical evidence gathered through twelve case studies, feedback interviews and a small-scale survey. A framework describing the possible changes that IMCs can promote in the R&D/Marketing relationship was then built from grounded, within-case, and cross-case analysis. Lastly, in order to verify the observations obtained during the case studies, as well as the pertinence of the proposed framework, a set of eight feedback interviews with company participants and IMCs were carried out, as well as a small-scale survey. The results of these verification activities indicate that the proposed framework is reasonably complete and its elements are coherent.

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The thesis focuses on the topic of innovation management in the large companies and presents specific analysis of Georg Fischer Piping Systems