Le pilotage des projets d'innovation en rupture est une problématique qui traverse les organisations. Les outils d'évaluation devraient être considérablement différents des outils traditionnels de gestion de projet en raison de l'incertitude multidimensionnelle des activités. Toutefois, la littérature montre que les entreprises utilisent des méthodes classiques de suivi, même pour l'innovation de rupture. Basée sur une recherche intervention de trente mois à l'Amont de Renault, cette thèse analyse les insuffisances des outils traditionnels, et propose une approche nouvelle et des instruments adaptés. En partenariat avec les équipes R&D, la recherche fournit un diagnostic des pratiques traditionnelles d'évaluation des projets. Nous montrons deux limites majeures : a) les approches se concentrent sur l'évaluation économique et stratégique des projets, à l'exclusion des mécanismes d'engagement des acteurs internes, b) la plupart des méthodes d'évaluation traite les incertitudes de façon exogène. Ces regards conduisent à un modèle de pilotage combinant trois axes de valeur du projet : 1. l'usage conditionnel de l'analyse économique suivant les risques, les opportunités et la maturité de l'innovation ; 2. la qualification des enjeux stratégiques de l'innovation et du pilotage associé ; 3. le suivi de l'impact organisationnel et des mécanismes d'adhésion des partenaires internes. Si les points 1 et 2 s'appuient sur l'existant, le modèle d'adhésion évolutif a peu d'équivalent dans la littérature et les pratiques. Il explicite pourtant les évolutions différenciées des projets dans l'organisation. Le modèle a été mobilisé pour le processus de pilotage déployé en 2009 dans l'entreprise.

<p>During the last decades, legislators have tried to meet the goal of increased R&D in the pharmaceutical industry through an extension of the patent length. In parallel, an attempt to minimise ex post social costs has been made through the introduction of a shortened drug approval process for generic drugs as well as a so-called Bolar provision, giving generic producers earlier access to patented information. However, one can ask how efficient a patent extension possibility has been to meet the goal of increased R&D. Correspondingly, what effects on social costs can we expect from the introduction of an abbreviated approval process and the Bolar provision? These are questions that are dealt with in this thesis. I argue that the impact of the legislative changes have led to a decrease of ex post social cost. However, I will also show that this has lead to a detriment of ex ante R&D incentives and therefore a negative result on social welfare.</p>

<p>BACKGROUND: Project based structures has become more and more common in the organizations of today. As the project based structures are given a more central role in the organizations the interdependencies between the projects are getting more attention. These structures need a new type of control to meet the unique challenges that arise. The research</p><p>that has been done has been concentrated around the project form and the projects internal control, the area of multi-project management is therefore relatively unexplored. The few existing studies on the subject focus on projects in the construction industry why research in</p><p>more complex fields of business have been requested.</p><p>PURPOSE: The purpose of this thesis is to explore and analyze how knowledge intense multi-project organizations manage their project activities, and to determine how different organizational characteristics affect the need for management control systems.</p><p>METHODOLOGY: The empirical data has been collected through interviews with personnel in BT Products R&D, Gambro R&D and AstraZeneca Development. These organizations are all mature and project intense.</p><p>CONCLUSION: With an organization´s line of business follows a certain level of uncertainty and interdependencies between projects. Another important factor is the organization´s level of internal and external differentiation. These three factors together describe the characteristics of an organization, which forms the organization´s starting position. To handle the uncertainty of unpredicted events the organizations’ reflexes has to be quick enough; this is made possible through a project oriented organizational structure where the project managers have more authority than the function manager. Interdependencies between projects is handled through coordination, the level of coordination needed is dependent on the degree of interdependencies. Last but not least the organization has to handle the complexity that comes with the degree of internal and external differentiation. This is managed through the integration and extent of the management control systems. In the analysis chapter a model is presented that describes the relationship between the organization characteristics and management control systems.</p> / <p>BAKGRUND: I dagens organisationer är det allt vanligare att verksamheten bedrivs i projektform. När företag allt mer började ta till sig projektbaserade strukturer kom relationen mellan projekt i fokus. Denna arbetsform kräver en ny typ av styrning, detta för att hantera de beroenden som finns mellan projekten samt för att möta de samordningsproblem som kan uppstå. De senaste åren har projektstyrning blivit ett allt vanligare forskningsområde, multiprojektstyrning finns det dock inte mycket information om. Den forskning som väl genomförts har inriktats mot byggsektorn varför forskning på komplexare områden eftertysts.</p><p>SYFTE: Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka och analysera hur kunskapsintensiva multiprojektorganisationer hanterar sin projektverksamhet, samt att utröna hur olika organisationers egenskaper påverkar behovet av styrsystem.</p><p>GENOMFÖRANDE: Det empiriska materialet har samlats in genom intervjuer på BT Products R&D, Gambro R&D och AstraZeneca Development R&D. Samtliga organisationer är mogna och har en arbetsgång som baseras på projekt.</p><p>RESULTAT: Ett företags verksamhetsområde medför en viss grad av osäkerhet i den praktiska verksamheten, ytterligare en annan verksamhetsspecifik faktor är beroendegrad mellan projekt. Vidare är ett viktigt karaktärsdrag hos organisationer graden av differentiering. Dessa tre faktorer beskriver organisationens karaktäristika, med andra ord vilket utgångsläge organisationen har i sitt arbete. För att kunna hantera osäkerhet krävs att organisationen har tillräckligt bra reflexer för att möta oförutsedda händelser, detta löses genom att ge projekten mer auktoritet jämfört med funktionen. För att hantera beroenden krävs att verksamheten koordineras, vilken grad av koordinering som krävs beror på vilken grad av beroenden som finns representerat. Slutligen måste den komplexitet som differentiering ger hanteras, detta sker genom integrationen och omfattningen av styrsystemen. I uppsatsen presenteras avslutningsvis en modell som beskriver relationen mellan organisationen och dess styrning.</p>

<p>This master thesis explores the transfer of R&D activities from Western MNC’s to their Chinese subsidiaries and how companies can leverage key enablers to address main barriers in this process. The research project is conducted as a multiple-case study consisting of three case companies: the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, the Swiss/Swedish power and automation company ABB and the global food and beverage company Nestlé. The main rationale for conducting this study is that a significantly increasing level of foreign invested R&D is conducted in the Chinese environment with its increasingly important market. In order to preserve competitive advantages and secure global market penetration it could be necessary for other companies as well to undertake a similar process of transferring R&D.</p><p>The main barriers identified are the difficulty to find qualified employees in China, to train and retain the recruited employees and the language gaps that are present between the Western and the Chinese units. One key enabler applied to address these barriers is to organize activities at selected Chinese universities in order to attract skilled graduates. Utilizing expatriates and short-term traveling increases personal interaction between otherwise geographically distant employees together with providing training of increasing complexity are key enablers addressed to develop the Chinese employee’s knowledge. Language courses is the key enabler applied in order to decrease the language gaps, both Chinese courses for Westerners and English courses for Chinese.</p><p>In addition to identifying barriers and enablers and investigating their interrelatedness we propose a conceptual model for R&D transfer consisting of four elements to transfer together with implementation of the transferred knowledge at the receiving unit. In our view, the elements to transfer are physical objects, individual explicit knowledge, individual tacit knowledge and collective knowledge.</p> / This thesis won Sparbanksstiftelsen Kronan's award of 50000 SEK.

During the last decades, legislators have tried to meet the goal of increased R&amp;D in the pharmaceutical industry through an extension of the patent length. In parallel, an attempt to minimise ex post social costs has been made through the introduction of a shortened drug approval process for generic drugs as well as a so-called Bolar provision, giving generic producers earlier access to patented information. However, one can ask how efficient a patent extension possibility has been to meet the goal of increased R&amp;D. Correspondingly, what effects on social costs can we expect from the introduction of an abbreviated approval process and the Bolar provision? These are questions that are dealt with in this thesis. I argue that the impact of the legislative changes have led to a decrease of ex post social cost. However, I will also show that this has lead to a detriment of ex ante R&amp;D incentives and therefore a negative result on social welfare.

Since the dawn of the capitalist epoch, most advanced countries have seen more than a hundred fold change in their total products. This combined with a near five fold change in population size had brought a huge windfall of wealth in these countries. The main engine for this capitalist machine has been the accelaration of technical progress (Maddison, 1982). In this paper we investigate for the positive relationship between the existing stock of technology and accelaration of technical progress. We use the time series data from 1982-2002 to test our regression model. The model encapsulates annual patents turnover (proxy for acceleration of technical progress), patent stock (proxy for technological stock) and R&amp;D expenditures of four advanced countries as the primary variables, where the former acts as the dependent variable and the later two act as the determinant variables. The model projects a highly significant positive relationship between technology stock and the pace of technological progress, endorsing our hypothesis.

Rättsläget vad gäller beskattningen av FoU-samarbeten i enkla bolag synes i vissa avseenden vara oklart. Trots detta har inkomstskatterättsliga implikationer av FoU-samarbeten mellan företag inte behandlats i någon större utsträckning i doktrinen. Tyngdpunkten i denna uppsats ligger på den resultatfördelning och de förmögenhetsöverföringar som kan uppstå i samband med FoU-samarbeten och de tänkbara inkomstskatterättsliga effekter som de för med sig. Vid en belysning av dessa transaktioner har vi funnit att det finns ett behov av klargöranden för hur dessa skall behandlas inkomstskatterättsligt. Utifrån vår studie framgår det att samarbetsavtalet får en avgörande betydelse för beskattningen i enkla bolag. Den rådande uppfattningen synes alltså vara att ett bolagsavtal kan ha skatterättslig verkan avseende inkomstfördelningen utan att en äganderättsförändring behöver ske. Det torde dock krävas, som lyfts fram i doktrinen, att fördelningen kan anses vara företagsekonomiskt motiverad och inte endast betingad av skatteskäl. Exakt var denna gräns går är dock inte helt klart. Vad gäller förmögenhetsöverföringar inom ramen för ett samarbete torde det i vissa fall kunna bli aktuellt med uttagsbeskattning. I vår jämförelse med andra former av samverkan har vi funnit att det föreligger skillnader avseende periodiseringen av inkomster och utgifter, vilket innebär att det kan finnas inkomstskatträttsliga incitament till att bedriva FoU-verksamhet i ett enkelt bolag framför andra former av samverkan. / The legal position concerning income taxation of R&amp;D-cooperations in “simple companies” (enkla bolag) seems to be somewhat uncertain. Despite this, income tax effects of R&amp;D-cooperations have been sparsely discussed in the doctrine. The emphasis of this thesis is on the possible income tax effects of the division of income and the possible income tax effects of those transfers of property that may arise in connection with R&amp;Dcooperations. When studying these transactions we have found that there is a need for clarifications on how they shall be treated in the income tax law. On the basis of our thesis it is clear that the cooperation contract is of decisive importance for the taxation of “simple companies”. The current opinion seems to be that a cooperation contract can be of importance for the division of income at the income taxation without the need of a previous transfer of property. Nevertheless it should be required, as put forward in the doctrine, that the division is considered to be economically motivated and not only based on tax evasion purposes. Transfers of property within a cooperation could in some cases conduct withdrawal taxation. In our comparison with other forms of cooperation we have found that there are some differences concerning the point of time of taxation for income and the time for deducting expenses. This means that there could be income tax incentives to run R&amp;D-cooperations in a “simple company” rather than in other forms of cooperation.

This thesis tries to determine some of the driving force behind Swedish foreign direct in-vestments into the Baltic counties. The analysis is performed in three steps, first we analyze global FDI into transitional economies, and afterwards we look at Swedish FDI and com-pare it with German FDI. The determinants examined are index of economic freedom, R&amp;D intensity, trade balance, wage level and proximity. The analyzed period is form 1995 to 2005. The analysis use data on the following transition countries Latvia, Lithuania, Esto-nia, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. The results show that the determinants vary across the countries. The motives of Swedish and German investors differ. Thus, for Swedish investors R&amp;D, economical free-dom and trade balance are the influencing factors, but for Germany only trade balance and wage level are important. The conclusion is that different determinants triggers foreign di-rect investment in transitional economies in different ways.

The aim of this thesis is to empirically study challenges and opportunities in the operational work in contract-based R&amp;D alliances in order to increase the understanding of this type of work system and explore how these work systems could be sustainable. Based on the concept of sustainable work systems, this thesis addresses issues of how work in R&amp;D alliance should support both the competitiveness of the firm as well as regeneration of human resources. In the area of product development, the main drivers for creating alliances are often strategic and concern the globalization of today’s business environment. Issues such as increased cost-based competition, shorter product life cycles, and a greater need for flexibility to tackle technological or strategic shifts have all been argued to motivate companies to form R&amp;D alliances. No doubt adopting the firm’s development of new products to an R&amp;D alliance strategy has a substantial impact on the operational work. However, despite the vast research on why companies engage in R&amp;D alliances, the knowledge of operational work and how they are operationally managed is still limited. Several scholars have recently reported that failed operations may be one of the most important reasons for situations where R&amp;D alliances do not reach their goals. An empirical investigation covering 14 R&amp;D alliances has been conducted based on the Critical Incident Technique. The findings – supported by 158 critical incidents, which have been identified by operational leaders – reveal new knowledge about the R&amp;D alliance operational work with implications for both competitiveness and regeneration of human resources. A central contribution stems from the specific insights given to challenges and opportunities that operational leaders face in the R&amp;D alliance work, in five perspectives on the R&amp;D alliance process: Formation, Formal R&amp;D process, Informal relationships, Embeddedness, and Exit. Further examination of the critical incident data showed several implications for operational leaders with direct contributions to both product development and alliance theory. First, four critical roles for operational leaders in R&amp;D alliances have been suggested: Facilitating, Finishing, Ambassadoring, and Trustkeeping. Secondly, a framework of trust formation mechanisms has been applied and tested. This concluded that process-based, characteristic-based, and institutional-based mechanisms represent important aspects in alliance operation; the relevance of these trust formation mechanisms contributes both to the knowledge of micro-processes of trust formation and specific managerial abilities in R&amp;D alliances. Third, we examine the influence of two types of contextual risks that have been addressed in previous alliance research: relational and performance risks. The comparative analysis of a sub-sample of alliances shows that these risks influence the operational work in R&amp;D alliances for which operational leaders could be specifically trained and prepared. Lastly, a framework that addresses support from HRM in inter-organizational context has been developed and analyzed. This has indicated that HRM represents an important, although unexploited, resource when engaging in R&amp;D alliances. Furthermore, we have suggested a tentative framework for the R&amp;D alliance as a sustainable work system. The overall findings from this study have been synthesized from a sustainable work systems perspective, based on three organizational principles that have been drawn from practice-centered product innovation: broadened roles and responsibilities, work as a collaborative process, and decentralization of strategic information. A fourth principle has been incorporated as well: support systems for sustainable work. This concluded that, in order to be sustainable, companies that engage in R&amp;D alliances should carefully manage and reassess the consequences of these organizational principles in order to simultaneously support the goals that are involved in this type of work system: to simultaneously support innovation, inter-organizational relationships, and the regeneration of human resources. / <p>QC 20100813</p>

Over the last few decades trends such as globalization have sharpened up competition on the worldwide open market and in order to meet customers demand high level of technological and competitive uncertainties have increased the pressure of reducing R&amp;D budgets, reduce innovation cycles and shorter time to market as a consequence of the rising competition and as a result, forced companies to source external knowledge. One way of doing this is by tapping external information and knowledge from universities.China is a country with a steady rapid growth on science and technology, but also with a progressively increasing R&amp;D. Today they have the highest input level in the history and this is an opportunity for Western MNCs to establish collaborations in order to gain competitive advantages and create new technology. This study focuses on Industry-University collaborations in China for high technological companies and the process of finding knowledge and establishes networks at Chinese universities with the aim of establish Industry-University collaboration. Based on literature review and a qualitative study of Chinese universities, this thesis explores how a MNC can build a network of local universities connection in a fast growing market and use this network as a source of technology scouting.Over the last few decades trends such as globalization have sharpened up competition on the worldwide open market and in order to meet customers demand high level of technological and competitive uncertainties have increased the pressure of reducing R&amp;D budgets, reduce innovation cycles and shorter time to market as a consequence of the rising competition and as a result, forced companies to source external knowledge. One way of doing this is by tapping external information and knowledge from universities.China is a country with a steady rapid growth on science and technology, but also with a progressively increasing R&amp;D. Today they have the highest input level in the history and this is an opportunity for Western MNCs to establish collaborations in order to gain competitive advantages and create new technology. This study focuses on Industry-University collaborations in China for high technological companies and the process of finding knowledge and establishes networks at Chinese universities with the aim of establish Industry-University collaboration. Based on literature review and a qualitative study of Chinese universities, this thesis explores how a MNC can build a network of local universities connection in a fast growing market and use this network as a source of technology scouting.