This research focuses on developing a framework for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax) technology adoption by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). WiMax has emerged as a technology to overcome the limitations of traditional and existing broadband technologies and support a great number of organisations and consumers/citizens in providing a higher speed over substantial distances i.e. in areas that are difficult for wired infrastructure to reach. Despite all the interest in the types of broadband adoption as demonstrated by SMEs in several countries, there seems to be slow progress and lack of information supporting the decision making process for WiMax technology adoption by SMEs specifically in the context of KSA. This may illustrate that SMEs adopt WiMax technology solutions at a slower pace and make them characterised as laggards in terms of new technologies adoption. This research takes into consideration this literature gap and makes a step forward and investigates on WiMax technology adoption by SMEs in KSA with an organisational cultural view, vendors’ commercialisation strategies and government policies by analysing the normative literature related to this research. The data collection of this study was carried out in two phases including quantitative and qualitative approaches. The first phase of the research provided results indicated that, the Saudi SMEs who participated in this research are strongly dominated by clan culture and adhocracy culture. These cultures also have a positive impact on the Internet technologies adoption such as WiMax by SMEs. It is found that, the combination of clan and adhocracy cultures in Saudi SMEs is making them more likely to adopt latest Internet technologies. In the second phase, the results showed a wide difference in views among SMEs, WiMax vendors and government agencies involved in WiMax technology diffusion to SMEs in Saudi Arabia. Although WiMax technology started as an innovation that has the potential to be disruptive and could replace the widely diffused fixed wire line Internet connection, the research findings showed an interesting deviation from this path. In particular, the WiMax technology market analysis in Saudi Arabia highlighted the vendors’ tendency to treat WiMax technology as a sustaining innovation. Research findings also indicated that, the Saudi government provided funds for Information and Communications Technology‘s diffusion in the country. However, the level of awareness displayed by SMEs is persistently low. Knowledge deployment, mobilisation, innovation directive and subsidy have been emphasised by SMEs as the most important government interventions that might have an impact on WiMax adoption by them. Finally, further important issues have been uncovered by the research such as taxation, experience exchange, herd culture/bandwagon, consumer right protection and customer service in relation to the adoption of WiMax by SMEs. The perceived future prospect of these additional issues has been considered as an influence on adoption of WiMax technology by SMEs. The findings of this research can be useful to guide analysts and researchers in determining critical aspects of the complex issues involved in technologies adoption, and lead to suggestions for further valid research.

This thesis aims to provide clarity on which factors within an organization positively affect its performance in terms of innovation.  Innovation is seen as a critical component of a company’s strategy in achieving market differentiation and profitability, yet for many, it remains a frustrating pursuit.  This study aims to empirically model the relationship between a firm’s investment in innovation and the effect of this investment on its performance.  The method used is Structural Equation Modeling with data gathered from our online survey of 128 respondents from firms within the EU.  This work addresses two research questions, the first being to confirm that a firm’s innovation performance is influenced by both a commitment to human factors focusing on softer values in combination with strong R&D and technical capability.  Secondly, whether the presence of innovation inhibitors influences this relationship.  The findings showed that a firm’s innovation performance is improved when it prioritizes creating an environment and culture that nurtures innovation only when activated through a strong commitment to technical and R&D excellence, but not without this technical capacity.  Secondly, the introduction of innovation inhibitors reconfirmed the first finding, and the relationship between both the human factors within a company and its technical capability, as well as the relationship between this technical capability and its performance was stronger in their presence.

Manufacturing companies are nowadays facing an unprecedented series of challenges to their survival: global competition and product mass-customization are the shaping forces of tomorrow’s business success. The consequent need for agile and sustainable production solutions is the utmost motivation behind the development of innovative approaches which often are not in line with the state of art. It is well documented that companies fail in recognizing how such disruptively innovative approaches can yield an interesting economic output. This, in turn, enhances the risk of leaving the aforementioned promising technologies conceptually and practically underdeveloped.  In the field of automatic production systems the Evolvable Production System paradigm proposes modular architectures with distributed, autonomous control rather than integral design and hierarchical, centralized control. EPS technology is thus disruptive: it refuses the present paradigm of Engineer to Order in industrial automation by proposing an advanced Configure to Order system development logic. This dissertation investigates the possibility of using the recent sophisticated developments of the concept of Business Model as a holistic analytical tool for the characterization and solution of the issue of bringing disruptive and non-fully mature innovation to proficient application in production environments. In order to purse this objective the main contributions in the relevant literature have been extracted and combined to an original definition of business model able to encompass the aspects deemed critical for the problem. Such a construct is composed of three elements: (1) Value Proposition that describe the features of a technology that generates value for a given customer, (2) the Value Configuration and the (3) Architecture of the Revenue which describe the mechanisms that allows to create and capture such value respectively.    The subsequent work has focused on the EPS paradigm as a specific case of the overall problem. The first step has been a full characterization of the related value proposition through an innovative approach based on a bottom-up decomposition in its elementary components, followed by their aggregation into meaningful value offerings: with reference to the EPS paradigm such an approach has disclosed an overall value proposition composed of six potentially independent value offerings. This collection of Value Offerings has then been used as a basis to generate the EPS business models. In particular for each single offering a possible set of necessary activities and resources has been devised and organized in a coherent value configuration. The resulting creation mechanisms have then been linked among each other following a logical supplier-customer scheme for capturing the value: this allowed establishing the architecture of revenue, last element of the overall production paradigm. Finally the results have been validated in a semi-industrial system developed for the (IDEAS, 2010-2013) project through the individuation of the areas of application of such business models. / <p>QC 20121120</p> / FP7-IDEAS- Instantly Deployable Evolvable Assembly System / FP6- EUPASS-Evolvable Ultra-Precision Assembly Systems / XPRES- Initiative for excellence in production research

The study is focus on intangible assets of medical biotech industry, which is to analyze the factors of value drivers. It is utilizing the value chain, complementary assets, type of industries evolve and momentum formula of physics to build up the model of intangible assets value drivers. The power of intangible assets value drivers can be described as a formula as: (mass ¢® velocity)•direction of industries evolve. Not only we can understand the meaning of factors of intangible assets value drivers through the model, but also we are able to analyze the power of intangible assets value drivers about Taiwan medical biotech industries. Following, is the result of this study: 1. Taiwan biotech pharmacy/chemical pharmacy and gene detector chip industry don¡¦t have ability of intangible assets value drivers. 2. Taiwan medical device industry has the lower ability of intangible assets value drivers. 3. The direction of Taiwan medical biotech industry evolvement is the creative type. 4. All factors of intangible assets must be taken care. If any factor is neglect, the overall power of intangible assets value drivers will have a lower affection. Following, is the meaning of the result of this study: 1. Both of internal resource and external industry structure will influence the power of intangible assets value drivers in medical biotech industry. 2. The companies strive hard by placing more resources and trying to produce the intangible assets, which might not be able to create the value positively. 3. The three key factors of intangible assets all must be taken care in order to create the value. It is impossible to be success, if only depends on single factor that even has the good performance.

High oil price causing high cost of chemical industry, therefore the companies must pay attention to recycle of petrochemical sources, especially the reusing of wasted plastics which speeded global innovation of related techniques and formulas. The cost competition impact forced the plastic companies to raise effective strategy to avoid being expelled from the market. The research aims at three points: firstly, discussion of the facts of plastic recycles between Taiwan and China; secondly, discussion of the strategies of plastic recycles between Taiwan and China and the third, setting up the disruptive innovation strategy module of plastic recycles. The discussion of the theme focuses on organizational strategy, key success factors analysis, the third generation R&D and disruptive innovation. Through the analysis and discussion of some companies as well as the testing of plastic recycles disruptive innovation strategy module, it turns out to be the conclusion and suggestion for plastic recycles disruptive innovation strategy module.

The creative destruction of existing industries as a consequence of discontinuous technological change is a central theme in the literature on industrial innovation and technological development. Established competence-based and market-based explanations of this phenomenon argue that incumbents are seriously challenged only by ‘competence-destroying’ or ‘disruptive’ innovations, which make their existing knowledge base or business models obsolete and leave them vulnerable to attacks from new entrants. This paper challenges these arguments. With detailed empirical analyses of the automotive and gas turbine industries, we demonstrate that these explanations overestimate the ability of new entrants to destroy and disrupt established industries and underestimate the capacity of incumbents to perceive the potential of new technologies and integrate them with existing capabilities. Moreover, we show how intense competition in the wake of technological discontinuities, driven entirely by incumbents, may instead result in late industry shakeouts. We develop and extend the notion of ‘creative accumulation’ as a way of conceptualizing the innovating capacity of the incumbents that appear to master such turbulence. Specifically, we argue that creative accumulation requires firms to handle a triple challenge of simultaneously (a) fine-tuning and evolving existing technologies at a rapid pace, (b) acquiring and developing new technologies and resources and (c) integrating novel and existing knowledge into superior products and solutions. / Knowledge Integration and Innovation in Transnational Enterprise

Background: There is an increasing amount of arguments made that new business models are the solution when companies and industries face radical changes in the environment. To be able to prosper in the long run, organizations must reinvent themselves over and over again. Many authors (e.g. Abernathy &amp; Utterback, 1978; Christensen, 1997; Kim &amp; Mauborgne, 2005; Ries, 2011) claim that big, radical, reconfigurations are needed in order to prosper in the long-term. Theories, concepts and framework have been developed to answer how this reconfiguration should happen within organizations. However, the concepts derived are just parts of the solution, and none take a holistic approach, trying to cover them in a practical framework that could be used by organizations. Aim: The aim of the thesis is to propose a framework that enables organizations to systemize their innovation processes, making them flexible enough to repetitively seize opportunities through business model innovation where new value can be created and captured. The proposed framework aims to enable organizations to start discussing how they should create and capture new value and give them a more pragmatic view on the innovation process. It also aims to act as a starting point for future research. Methodology: The thesis follows March &amp; Smith’s (1995) design science methodology in order to build and evaluate the framework. This is done in three steps; first by building a model from theory. Second, the emergence of business models in three different case companies are compared and investigated qualitatively. Lastly the model and the factors derived from the data are contrasted and a framework is built and evaluated. Findings &amp; Conclusion: The basis of the derived framework proposes for big steps to change, and create and capture new value; analyze the basis of competition in the macro and micro environment, analyze and experiment with different non-customer tiers, experiment with the creation of value and experiment and analyze the capture of the value created. More tangible tools are proposed for each of these steps. Actually testing the framework and further evaluating and theorizing of the framework is proposed as future research directions.

Denna studie behandlar teorin om disruption samt hur högskolan kan med hjälp av denna teori skapa nya utbildningar som är mera meningsfulla för studenterna. Fokus ligger på hur världen runt omkring högskolan förändras vilket gör att högskolan behöver förändras för att kunna erbjuda utbildningar som är relevanta för studenter i framtiden. För att klara av detta behövs en ny affärsmodell utvecklas som kan skräddarsy utbildningar till studenter efter deras unika behov. Orsaken till varför inte den traditionella högskolan kan erbjuda skräddarsydda utbildningar är för att affärsmodellen är standardiserad och ömsesidigt beroende. Även sättet att leverera kunskap på behöver förändras från traditionell undervisning till en datorbaserad undervisning. En av slutsatserna i denna studie är att en disruptive affärsmodell sannolikt inte kan implementeras inom högskolan, eftersom den då skulle bli omformad så att den liknar den gamla. Istället måste en separat affärsmodell bildas som kan verka oberoende från den traditionella högskolan.

AbstractTitle: Incumbent firms and Response to Disruptive Innovation through Value Network Management - Lessons from Eastman Kodak‟s failure in the digital eraAuthors: Helen Gebremeskel Tesfaye &amp; Thi Hong Nhung NguyenSupervisor: Marie BengtssonBackgroundThe question of why incumbent or established firms get into difficulties when they are faced with disruptive innovations has been extensively researched and discussed by many authors. Many explanations given for such failure seem to take “inside-out” approach by focusing on problems of organizational inertia, complacency, lack of insight and incompetence. On the other hand, Christensen‟s (1997; 2003) explanation takes an “outside-in” approach by focusing on the role of established firms‟ value network, particularly mainstream customers, as a determining factor to what incumbent firms can and cannot do.Purpose(i) Examine comprehensively the impacts of the value network on the incumbent firms when they are challenged by the arrival of disruptive innovations; (ii) Developing a model for the incumbent firms to recognize and manage effectively changes occurring in the value network in the face of disruptive innovations; and (iii) Gain a new insight into Kodak‟s failure in the reign of digital technology from the value network management perspective.DefinitionsDisruptive Innovation: Disruptive innovations in this study are considered as new products based on new technologies and which provide different attributes or product characteristics than what the company‟s mainstream or established customer segments historically value, while at the same time bringing new performance attributes to the market.iiValue Network: Value network is the context or environment within which a firm identifies and responds to customers‟ needs, solves problems, procures input, reacts to competitors and strives for profit.ResultsA Value Network Management model is developed for the incumbent firms to recognize and manage effectively changes occurring in the value network caused by the arrival of disruptive innovations. More specifically, the model aims at helping firms to overcome insight and action inertia and to choose the right partners among various new actors entering the value network. This model is iterative in essence and incorporates steps of searching/scanning, value network analysis and partner selection on the basis of appropriate role selection in the value network.

Abstract The more and more IC makers take the Research job in Silicon Valley, development in Taiwan and China, Design for Manufacturing in Taiwan and Marketing in China. There are plenty of complete Supplier Chains with organizing the companys of IC Resign, Foundry, Si-IP, Subcontracted Assembly & Test Service. The capacity offered is almost over 60% worldwide with very high technique and quality level. This is getting more dominantly important to provide turn-key service durin IDM shrinking trend. Meanwhile the great gap in the supply chain is expanding in IC testing design and manufacturing, which is the bottle neck of IC industry in either cost, technical or turn-around time. The research is subjected to get a workable business model of IC testing Design Service working with a right product Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning to compensate the gap. The research takes kinds of reference of Competitive Advantages, Competition Strategies, Co-petition Strategy, Competition, Strategy, and Disruptive Innovation to construct the research model. IC Testing Design is an innovative business model in Taiwan Industry. Conseguently the research collects opinions from high level managers of IC industry. It also does a case study by using the case of BEST-itech, which is the first supplier of IC Testing Service in Taiwan market. We could learn the SWOP to see how to provide the Testing Design Service in right positioning and strategy. The targeting customers are all in the Supply Chain of Virtual IDM, including IDM, Foundry, Design House, Design Service, Test & Assembly, ATE Vendor, FA House etc. During the resession of 2008, much more demand toward Virtual-IDM is firmed. The outsourcing demand of IC testing design is getting clear. ATE vendor¡¦s market scale growth is getting slow as well as the ASP. So the requirement and opportunity of IC Testing Design Service is happening. The research concludes the IC Testing Design is a workable and necessary sub-chain in IC-subcon supply. The Value Network is a good model to tell how to transfer the comptition to be the compensator or customers for all players in the supply chain. The research also concludes 4 segments necessary in the IC Testing Design business model. Those are 1. Tester Opt ionization of Utilization. 2. Device Interface Integrated with Testing Design. 3. Add-on Solution Implement in Testing Tech-Gap. 4. Test Floor Automation and SPC Testing. Hopefully this research could provide a good picture to start the innovative business model to help the IC industry.