In order to face the challenges derived from an increasingly disruptive technologicalenvironment, firms often engage in collaborative arrangements with other firms. While it isargued that inter-firm networks can serve as a way to catalyze innovation, to manage risksinvolved in R&D and to enable the creation of new value through co-creation, the causes andreasons for inter-firm collaboration are well-known. However, little effort has been focused atcritically examining the challenges that co-creation brings on a network and firm-level. Thisresearch addresses this issue by taking a process perspective on the formation and developmentof an inter-firm network in relation to its technologically disruptive environment. Building on acase study involving firms from that network, this research shows that such arrangements mayalso involve challenges for participating firms. These challenges relates to a paradoxicaltension between exploitation of relation-specific assets and success in the long- and short-term,but also a challenge in terms of positioning the firm within the network.

The manufacturing industry is turning their attention from a solely product orientation view, to the creation of new value-adding services in order to increase their after-sales business. In this thesis, a case study was conducted in order to examine a manufacturing industry in their process of developing value-adding services. By exploring their processes in service delivery and studying their introduction of remote monitoring systems in their service distribution, the aim was to visualise the dimensions of a service system and how it changes with the introduction of an specific new technology. This study has shown that the introduction of remote monitoring systems, changes the relationship between the provider and the receiver, through the decrease of physical visits at the clients’ site, with the consequence that the close relationships between the provider and its receivers can vanish. Furthermore this study shows that remote monitoring systems affects the service system, through intertwining the technology and shared information. As the characteristics of the new technology remote monitoring systems enables new ways of information sharing and thereby becoming how the information between the provider and receiver is shared. Additionally, this study shows that in order to co-create value in a service system, the provider has to bear full responsibility in coming up with an acceptable value proposition and for the clearness in presenting the value proposal to the receiver.

Context aware displays are becoming more and more common in one’s daily lifeand play an active role in order to collaborate with people and systems. In most ofthe shared student corridors, tenants often use notice boards to share all kinds of information which is less obsolete in the digital age. This paper presents adesign-oriented research to find out an effective way to fulfill the needs of thetenants who are living in shared corridors. We tried to design a context awaredisplay which will help the tenants to communicate with one another efficiently,share resources and reduce the conflicts. An extensive investigation was carriedout for data gathering to find out the problems of the tenants, behavior and effectsof conflicts on the social life of the tenants living in shared student corridors.Based on the findings we built a design prototype.

The history of technology has shown that with the advance of science almost any manual human task could also be done by a machine. This story of success gives hope for the subject area of artificial intelligence and Cognitive simulation. It is easily comprehensible that the automation of manual tasks is very successful, since it is of very obvious nature. Exactly this factor is the biggest problem in understanding cognitive processes and other products of our mind, that they are not obvious at all. AIl scientists assume that the human brain conducts tasks comparable to a digital computer and must therefore be reproducible as a computer. This view is supported by psychologists who use basic information processing models adapted from computer science to explain the human thought process (Lindsay et. al., 1977). Unfortunately, psychologists are still not completely sure of the way our mind works. We are well aware of the outcome and can predict some of them, but the working procedure behind our decisions remain a mystery. Hubert Dreyfus (Dreyfus, 1999) critically reviewed the psychological, epistemological and ontological grounded expectations of Artificial Intelligence workers. It is his conclusion that the enduring failure of AI to technologically reproduce the function of the human brain serves as empirical evidence against the Foundations of AI itself. According to the Author, it has also not been scientifically proven by the AI community that “the mind must obey a heuristic program”. In fact, psychology suggests that humans commonly make decisions without even considering the situation or their set of standards (Smith, 2003). Dreyfus proves that “arguments which are supposed to show that formalization must be possible are either incoherent or self-contradictory”. Therefore it seems to me, that the current state of the art in AI and Cognitive simulation is at the very limits of technology. For this reason it seems relevant to explore to what extend the current findings and technological solutions can be used to support the activity of the human brain, since it is not possible to replace the human brain by a computational device.

<p>The focus of this master thesis is to analyze the effectiveness of self-learning and active-learning on biological virtual screening. Virtual screening is used in the pharmaceutical industry to increase the effectiveness of biological screening. Self- learning is a technique where parts of the classified test data are reused for training the classifier again. Active learning gives the classifier the possibility to select certain parts of the test data to use them as additional training data. The experiments in the thesis show that both methods can be used to improve the precision of the virtual screening process, but active-learning is more effective due to the additional information that is provided.</p>

<p>This thesis investigates the challenges within the work of different types of professions; technical professions and human caretaking professions. These professions are faced special challenges in use and development of information systems. Professions within two different complex and critical work practices are focused; aircraft maintenance and emergency medical care. Within the work of these professions some judgements and decisions can imply risks for life and equipment. The use and development of information systems in general is emphasised, decision support systems and other systems for specific tasks have not been studied. The research question in this thesis is:</p><p><em>Which challenges can be related to use and development of information systems within complex and critical work practices, from a profession-oriented perspective?</em></p><p>Two ethnographical studies have been performed within two different work practices. The studies have been rather explorative and inductive. One study has been performed within the aircraft maintenance in the Swedish Airforce and the other study has been performed within the emergency medical care within NU Healthcare, Västra Götaland, Sweden.</p><p>From the thesis it has been derived three main challenges for professions within complex and critical work practices; <em>trust</em>, <em>knowledge integration</em> and <em>professional barriers</em>. The main contribution in the thesis is about certain aspects, which can have an impact on a profession-oriented view on use and development of information systems. These aspects concern bridging professional barriers and managing knowledge integration. Furthermore the thesis reflects that a <em>hard systems thinking</em> on use and development of information systems is prevalent within the human caretaking professions, while a <em>soft systems thinking</em> is obvious within the technical professions.</p>

<p>ERP systems link together an organization’s strategy, structure, and business processes with the IT system. The different way of handling the process of ERP implementation brings about many success and failure stories. By doing research on 1) what are the critical success factors in the implementation of ERP 2) why are these factors critical 3) what is the criticality degree of each factor 4) how important are these factors for customers, consultants, and vendors, the report aims to to identify the critical success factors in ERP implementation and understand the criticality degree of each factor from the perspectives of three parties (companies, consultants & vendors).</p><p>The research is proceeded with combined methods of qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative method for the interviews was chosen in order to get the information in depth. A semi-structured interview helps to provide some basic questions as guideline.</p><p>Furthermore, the quantitative approach contributes to manipulating the data for a more comprehensive analysis of empirical findings. This report states 11 CSFs (Critical Success Factors) from three points of view: strategic, tactical, and cultural. They are: Top management support and ERP strategy, Business Process Reengineering, Project team & change management, Retain the experienced employee, Consultant and vendor support, Monitoring and evaluation of performance, Problems anticipation (troubleshooting, bugs, etc.), Organizational culture, Effective communication, and Cultural diversity. By testing the perceived CSFs in six respondents (VSM Group, Scania, Sogeti, SYSteam, Oracle, and SAP), this report puts the 11 factors into three overall ranks (most critical, medium critical, and less critical), gains 3 other new critical factors (testing, business model, and client’s resources), and clarifies the diverse opinions about CSFs from customers/companies, consultants, and vendors. The most critical factors are Top management support, BPR, Project team & change management, and Effective communication. The medium critical factors go to ERP strategy, Consultant and vendor support, and Organizational culture. And the remaining 4 factors belong to less critical category.</p><p>For the differences, their agreement comes into the 4 most critical factors. In monitoring and evaluation of performance they agree on its less criticality. All customers, consultants and vendors have quite different opinions about the remaining 6 factors.</p><p>Reviewing the research questions, this report has fulfilled the main objectives and purpose. With better understanding of the comprehensive identification of CSFs and criticality rank of each factor, management will be able to judge and allocate essential resources that are required to bring ERP implementation into success.</p>

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<p>Då den tekniska utvecklingen ständigt går framåt kommer det nya tekniska lösningar som kan ersätta gamla och ineffektiva arbetssätt. Systemet eCopy är ett resultat av den tekniska utvecklingen som bidrar till att digitalisera pappersdokument. Med hjälp av eCopy kan arbetsprocesserna effektiviseras och företaget kan göra kostnadsbesparingar.</p><p>Syftet är att undersöka hur anställda ser på förändringar och vilka faktorer som motiverar ett företag att övergå till en ny teknik, samt ett helt nytt arbetssätt.</p><p>Med hjälp av en kvalitativ studie på ett svenskt företag har vi uppfyllt syftet med denna undersökning. Studien genomfördes med intervjuer riktade till anställda och beslutsfattare på olika avdelningar på företaget.</p><p>Resultatet från vår studie visar att en förändringsprocess ska beaktas och genomföras med noggrannhet för att få ut bästa möjliga nytta av förändringen. Att det alltid sker motstånd är oundvikligt då den mänskliga faktorn är en viktig företeelse i processen.</p>