Many organisations need to increase their use and knowledge of service innovation in order to answer up to the increased demand for sustainable services and offerings that cater to the needs of their users. They need to become better at understanding that the best starting point for organisational development is outside the organisation where the value of their products and services are Co created with other actors and stakeholders. This paper explores the possibility of creating a serious game that introduces service innovation using the design science research and workshops as a collaboration method. The most important Service Innovation elements to include in the game are evaluated and the game ideas generated are examined through the lens of two different game design frameworks.

This thesis presents a series of inter-related case studies (Kurismaa 2015; Kurismaa and Pavlova 2016; Pavlova, Berlov and Kurismaa 2017) aiming to reexamine, from modern perspectives, one of the most significant and integrative approaches to neurophysiology in the 20-th century - the study of the dominant (учение о доминанте) by the physiologist acad. A.A. Ukhtomsky (1875-1942) and his scientific school. Although recognized as a critical contribution and framework for organism-centered study of physiology, knowledge of this school has remained minimal in the West, and to this day, almost entirely unexplored for its prospects of integration and interrelation with respective foreign research programs in biology and neuroscience, both past and present. In recent years, and partly on the initiative of the present author, some of the first attempts have been made to overcome these limitations, and to more systematically address the legacy of Ukhtomsky's school from modern perspectives of Western science (Nadin 2015). The present thesis, growing out from these efforts, contributes further materials to such comparative and methodological investigation. It aims specifically to clarify the modern status and significance of the dominant framework as an integrative and organismic paradigm for neuroscientific...

Den tekniska utvecklingen har skapat en unik möjlighet för den traditionella handelns verksamheter att övergå till en digital plattform eller e-handel. E-handeln har sett en stor ökning de senaste åren och anses vara ett seriöst alternativ till den traditionella handel då det ger konsumenter en möjlighet att anpassa tjänsten efter sina egna krav och behov.    Syftet med studien är att undersöka informationsutbyte mellan aktörer inom e-handelns dagligvaruhandel. Digitaliseringen innebär att konsument och leverantör av tjänsten inte möts som de tidigare gjort. Detta innebär att kommunikationen måste bli tydligare för att hjälpa konsumenten. Informationsutbytet mellan konsument och handlare måste ersättas med tillräcklig produktinformation för att underlätta kundens inhandling. E-handel och fysiska butiker skiljer sig på många sätt och hanteringen av färskvaror är en viktig aspekt.  Service-dominant logic (SDL) används som studiens primära ramverk för att analysera empirin och förstå vad som drar konsumenter till dagligvaruhandelns e-handel. SDL är en logik som till skillnad från sin föregångare ställer aktörer i centrum, inom dagligvaruhandeln inkluderar det primärt kunden och handlaren. Aktörerna skapar gemensamt ett value co-creation vilket kan ses som ett samskapat värde där båda parter måste finnas för att skapa ett värdeerbjudande.      Studien valde att utforma en kvalitativ undersökning utifrån tre centrala punkter: konsumentperspektivet, tekniska perspektivet och tjänsteperspektivet. Utifrån det gjordes intervjuer som sedan transkriberades och analyserades för att besvara studiens frågeställningar.    Analysen av resultatet gjordes genom studiens ramverk (SDL) samt den omskrivna litteraturen för att komma fram till ett resultat. Resultatet av analysen visar att studiens informanter upplever informationsutbytet som otillräckligt samt att det inte uppfyller deras krav kring tjänsten. Bristen av information påverkar därför även hanteringen av färskvaror, det framgår inte tydligt hur konsumenten ska gå till väga för att lösa situationen. / The technical development has created a unique opportunity for the traditional trade businesses to move to a digital platform or e-commerce format. E-commerce has seen a large increase in the past years and is considered a major alternative to the more traditional trade since it gives consumers an opportunity to adapt the service to meet their needs. The aim of the study is to investigate information exchange between actors involved in grocery stores e-commerce. The digitization means that consumers and suppliers of the service do not physically meet, which means that that communication must be replaced to help the consumer. The exchange of information between consumer and retailer must be replaced with sufficient product information to facilitate customer needs. E-commerce and physical stores differ in many ways and the handling of fresh produce is an important aspect. Service-dominant logic (SDL) is used as the study's primary theoretical framework for analyzing the empirical data and to better understand what draws consumers to the grocery trade's e-commerce. SDL is a logic that, unlike its predecessor, puts actors at the center, in the grocery trade it primarily includes the customer and the retailer. The actors create a value co-creation, which can be seen as a co-created value where both parties must be present to create the joint value. The study chose to design a qualitative study based on three central points: the consumer perspective, the technical perspective and the service perspective. Based on this, interviews were conducted which were then transcribed and analyzed to answer the study's questions. Analysis of the result was done with the theoretical framework (SDL) and the rewritten literature to arrive at a conclusion. The results of the analysis show that the study's informants perceive the exchange of information as insufficient and do not meet their demands regarding the service. The lack of information therefore also affects the handling of fresh produce, it’s not clear how the consumer should go about resolving the situation.

The fixed maturity, cash flow and risk characteristics of high-yield corporate bonds distinguish them from equities and complicate a direct application of well established optimization techniques such as Markowitz's mean-variance model and Sharpe ratio maximization. This can partly explain why qualitative methods constitute the dominant design in the portfolio selection process of high-yield corporate bonds. This thesis attempts to employ elements from Markowitz's theories and combine them with optimization- as well as financial theory in order to develop a quantitative optimization model. In addition, we examine the possibilities for a shift in the existing dominant design. A risk-neutral pricing model were used to estimate default probabilities of high yield corporate bonds. To approximate the covariance matrix, a new application of the single-index method were proposed. The derived optimization models produced results that coincide with financial theory regarding risk, return and diversification. Furthermore, an examination of a potential shift in the current dominant design suggests that a shift is not likely to occur in the near future. A reoccurring remark in this thesis is the importance to understand the underlying assumptions behind any quantitative model, suggesting that quantitative models can merely be used as a tool in combination with a human judgement. / Högavkastande företagsobligationer innehar egenskaper som särskiljer de från aktier. Detta medför komplikationer vid en direkt tillämpning av väletablerade optimeringsmodeller som 'Markowitz's mean-variance model' och 'Sharpe ratio maximisation'. Detta förklarar delvis varför kvalitativa metoder dominerar portföljallokeringsprocessen för högavkastande företagsobligationer. Examensarbetet kombinerar Markowitzs modell med teorier från optimeringslära och finansiell matematik i syfte att utveckla en kvantitativ optimeringsmodell för portföljallokering. Arbetet ämnar även till att undersöka möjligheterna för ett skift i den nuvarande dominanta processen för allokering av högavkastande företagsobligationer. En riskneutral prissättningsmodell tillämpades för att estimera sannolikheter att företagen går i konkurs. För att approximera kovariansmatrisen introduceras en ny tillämpning av 'single-index method'. De härledda optimeringsmodellerna visade på resultat som sammanfaller med finansiell teori angående risk, avkastning och diversifiering. En analys av möjligheterna för ett potentiellt skift i den dominerande processen påvisade att detta förmodligen ej kommer att ske inom en snar framtid. En återkommande anmärkning i detta examensarbete ar vikten av modellmedvetenhet och att således ha kunskap om de underliggande antaganden som modellen bygger på, vilket framgår av slutsatsen att kvantitativa metoderna enbart kan användas som ett verktyg och därav agera som ett underlag för beslutsfattande.

For the last decades there has been a steady shift from cash to card payments and with increased smart phone penetration, payments have started to move into our mobile devices. This thesis studies how mobile payments can change the traditional payment landscape. The purpose is to assess the disruptiveness of the Swedish mobile payment market and describe key stakeholder strategies for managing a potentially disruptive change. The study has been designed as a combination of a theoretical and an empirical study where the theoretical part consisted of a literature review that hinted on a gap in terms of available literature on the disruptiveness of different mobile payment business models. Main theoretical concepts used are; disruptive innovation, business model innovation, and theories on competing solutions and dominant design. The subsequent empirical study consisted of a number of qualitative, indepth interviews with key stakeholder from the Swedish mobile payment industry: five mobile payment providers, one major merchant, and the Swedish Trade Federation. This thesis shows that two fundamentally different types of mobile C2B payments are emerging; mobile payment solutions based on existing card payment schemes and mobile payment solutions that build on new and independent payment schemes. The independent model has been defined as the most powerful disruptive force in relation to the existing market for card payments, mainly because it offers opportunities for innovative players to build simple new payment schemes that bypass traditional card payment players and therefore can be made far more cost efficient. However, many established card payment players are inhibiting this development since they are afraid it could seriously harm their existing card business.

The concept of customer experience has an increasing interest among organizations today since customers have become picky and demands for an experience are an existing fact. In the early 2000s, a paradigm shift was found, where focus from a goods-dominant logic was moved to a service-dominant logic which came to have a great impact on how to manage customer experiences today. Digitalization in society has increased which has created both opportunities and difficulties for organizations. A new norm has emerged where organizations implement an omnichannel strategy. In turn, omnichannel marketing can improve the customer experience. However, omnichannel marketing makes the customer journey highly individual and more complex to understand. Therefore the purpose of this thesis is to explore how Swedish retailers on a strategic level manage the customer experience and if there are any differences in the strategies between price segments. The empirical findings were conducted using a qualitative multiple case study of five cases in the Swedish retail sector. The data was gathered from semi-structured interviews and was analyzed and compared to existing theory.  The conclusion of this thesis shows customer insights as a common theme that emerges frequently throughout the semi-structured interviews. Through customer insight, retail organizations have a chance to meet their customers’ demands and face the complexity that occurs with technology and new channels. In the conclusion, there are also found differences in how to manage customer experiences between price segments. A common factor among the cases within customer experience is quality. Although, quality has a different meaning depending on which price segment. Further, the quality can be staged into three levels connected to each price segment.

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Applied theatre projects that aim to address social justice issues almost exclusively involve those who are experiencing injustice; while members of the state, who actively maintain the status quo, are frequently overlooked, despite the fact that they are essentially gatekeepers of social justice. In projects that do involve current and/or future members of the state, the root cause of social injustice and the systems, institutions, and ideology which support capitalism are only briefly mentioned, if at all. For this arts-based, anti-oppressive research, I facilitated three applied theatre projects that involved future and/or current gatekeepers. For each project, I considered the conditions that provided participants the opportunity to identify and question dominant ideology through the dramatic process. Having analyzed each case, I found that when applied theatre is structured using a revolutionary approach, it can cultivate felt understanding and deepen critical consciousness. In order to truly address issues of social justice with the goal to ending them, I argue for dedicated spaces where future and current gatekeepers can participate in applied theatre to critically examine the ideas that support capitalism, and the tendency and temptation to draw lines in the sand between “us” and “them”. / Graduate

We examined whether blocking the MyD88 mediated pathway could protect myocardium from ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury by transfecting Ad5-dnMyD88 into the myocardium of rats (n = 8) 3 days before the hearts were subjected to ischemia (45 min) and reperfusion (4 h). Ad5-GFP served as control (n = 8). One group of rats was (n = 8) subjected to I/R without transfection. Transfection of Ad5-dnMyD88 significantly reduced infarct size by 53.6% compared with the I/R group (15.1 ± 3.02 vs 32.5 ± 2.59) while transfection of Ad5-GFP did not affect I/R induced myocardial injury (35.4 ± 2.59 vs 32.5 ± 2.59). Transfection of Ad5-dnMyD88 significantly inhibited I/R-enhanced NFκB activity by 50% and increased the levels of phospho-Akt by 35.6% and BCL-2 by 81%, respectively. Cardiac myocyte apoptosis after I/R was significantly reduced by 59% in the Ad5-dnMyD88 group. The results demonstrate that both inhibition of the NFκB activation pathway and activation of the Akt signaling pathway may be responsible for the protective effect of transfection of dominant negative MyD88.

Background: Complications related to peritoneal dialysis (PD) in patients with autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD), including intraperitoneal rupture of renal cyst, hernia, membrane failure and peritonitis, have been reported. However, long-term clinical outcomes of ADPKD patients on PD remain unclear. We performed this meta-analysis to assess the risks of death, technique failure and peritonitis in ADPKD patients on PD. Methods: A systematic review was conducted using MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane databases from inception to October 2017 to identify studies that evaluated the outcomes of ADPKD patients on PD, including the risks of death, technique failure and peritonitis. Non-ADPKD patients on PD were used as controls. Effect estimates from the individual study were extracted and combined using the random-effect, generic inverse variance method of DerSimonian and Laird. Results: Twelve cohort studies with a total of 14 673 patients on PD (931 ADPKD and 13 742 non-ADPKD patients) were enrolled. Compared with non-ADPKD status, ADPKD was associated with significantly decreased mortality risk with pooled odds ratio (OR) of 0.68 (95% confidence interval (CI), 0.53–0.86; I 2 = 0). There were no associations of ADPKD with the risks of technique failure of PD and peritonitis with pooled OR of 0.93 (95% CI, 0.79–1.10; I 2 = 0) and 0.88 (95% CI, 0.75–1.05; I 2 = 0), respectively. We found no publication bias as assessed by Egger's regression asymmetry test, with P = 0.90, 0.28 and 0.60 for the risks of mortality, technique failure and peritonitis in ADPKD patients on PD, respectively. Conclusion: Compared with non-ADPKD patients on PD, our study demonstrates that ADPKD patients on PD have 0.68-fold decreased mortality risk. There are no associations of ADPKD status with the risks of technique failure or peritonitis.