With the advent of internet and e-commerce, the way of carrying out business and transactions has changed to a great extent. Consumers are continuously changing the way they do shopping and this has forced retail business to transform their traditional brick and mortar into adopting multi-channel business models. Retailing is one of the most dynamic and competitive areas of business organization. Effective marketing, customer relationship management is the central dimension of successful retailing and the key to successful retailing is to be aware of the emerging opportunities and threats caused by environmental changes now and in the future. This thesis paper investigates current conceptualization of ‘brick and mortar’ business models and electronic commerce business models and also tries to identify a unified conceptual model that helps retail business to effectively integrate the two channels and deliver a unique value to the consumers. This is achieved by reviewing the attributes of both the models and finally channeling the reviewed theories to adopting a multi-channel business model. The thesis paper first identifies the concepts of business model, as it is the business model of any organization, that helps to understand what kind of activities are carried out by certain organizations and how and why are those activities carried out. The business model is used to define unique value propositions for the customers of a company, and it is these business models that need transformation, in order for a company to adapt to changing competition and recognizing opportunities in certain scenarios. The Brick and Mortar model is the oldest model that retailers have been using since centuries, however with the advent of internet; there was a threat of survival as the changing retail environment required retailers to change their traditional business models to adapt to the e-commerce environment. It is however true that, no single model is extremely superior to the other, but they do have relative advantages over the other. It is these differences and pros and cons, that influences a retailer to adapt to a multi-channel or hybrid business model.

Project management is a discipline that manages projects, both domestic and international, so that they are completed successfully in time and according to project plan. In international and especially in Russian business context, project management is vital tool in order to fulfill customers’ need and solve possible cross-cultural problems and in this way foster new possibilities for new project opportunities for project providers. Russian business environment is approaching to the Western business culture and environment, but it still has its own characteristics. These characteristics must be taken account when Western project providers enter the Russian markets or operate there. The purpose of this Master’s Thesis was to study how can the international projects be successfully managed in the Russian business context from the project providers’ perspective The focus was on risk management and stakeholder management in the Russian business environment. Also the cultural aspects were taken account in this study. The research approach of the Thesis was deductive and qualitative. The empirical data was collected through seven unstructured face-to-face interviews with Finnish small and middle sized project providers which possess experience on Russian business environment as well as with Russian business experts. The result revealed that risk management of projects should be accordance to the target market, in this case the Russian Federation, and must contain also general risk management of project business. Also stakeholder management is vital when operating in Russian business environment since networking and trust are extremely important in Russian business

This batchelor’s thesis focuses on the role of the institutionalization in the internationalization. The institutionalization might provide benefits for comapnies that are planning to internationalize. Also, the institutionalization makes companies more similar, which has potential benefits and side effects. Due to the similarity, companies develop networks that have similar characteristics and the institutionalization also improves the knowledge of other markets, which lowers the barrier to internationalize and makes the process more rapid.

Customer churn is one of the key metrics defining company’s growth. While companies are increasing their investments into customer retention, churn remains remarkably high in most industries in B2B sector. This raises a question if service providers have thorough enough understanding of what causes their customers to churn, and how to effectively manage customer churn. This thesis explored executives assumptions on their customer churn, and we were able to provide suggestions on how to improve company’s resource allocation to increase customer retention. Quantitative analysis based on customer data, and qualitative analysis based on executive interviews were conducted to evaluate the executive’s understanding of their customer churn and their ability to improve customer retention. Those two analyses were then compared to each other to make conclusions on the matter. Research was conducted as a case study involving one service provider, with more than 4000 of their customer companies being included in the analysis. Customer churn has been studied widely, and predictive analytics has been found to be effective in detecting future churners. In addition, other studies are suggesting that executive’s might have wrong assumptions of what causes their customers to churn, and their capability of assessing the issue has been questioned. It is crucial for service providers to retain their customers, and even a 10% increase in customer retention can cause 30% increase in company valuation. Hence, misconceptions of what causes customer churn should not be tolerated, and companies should understand their customer churn thoroughly. By possessing the results from executive interviews and from customer data analysis, we were able to draw a conclusion whether the assumptions possessed by the executives were aligned with what the data was telling. While the executive’s assumptions were somewhat accurate and aligned with the data analysis results, there was still room for improvement in understanding what causes customers to churn and how to detect the future churners. Based on the results, it is reasonable to expect that service providers could improve their customer retention by deepening their understanding of their customer churn.

Cities are facing challenge to upgrade their enviroment and infrastructure in order to improve quality of life and satisfy citizens’ needs. The constant development demands novel approach of ‘smart’ urban design by integrating cutting edge technologies and engaging various participants into the urban development processes. European planning systems tend to shift towards more strategic spatial planning approach, and, hence, require more proactive, up-to-date, and flexible tools to complement official planning tools. Such means should enable close collaboration, multi-actors inclusion, and open dialogue. Social media and Web 2.0 platforms seem suitable instrument for that purpose. The paper aims to discover whether the integration of Web 2.0 and social media tools in urban development processes can ease the engagement of stakeholders in urban development processes for smart city and living laboratories. It is also an attempt to give an overview of what is the role of social media tools in the context of smart city ecosystem. The research approach is qualitative since social media engagement in urban development is considered as relatively new phenomenon and has not been broadly researched. The empirical research data was gathered by interviewing five urban development experts represented different perspectives on the issue. The findings of the research show that there is a high potential of engagement via social media tools but in certain type of urban development processes characterized by long duration and detailed nature. Social media tools could be used to achieve specific smart city target, and, and therefore, to some extent, contribute to the smart city development ecosystem.

Internal communication has an important role in an organization’s every action. It is affecting to the efficiency of processes as well as sense of community among the members of an organization. Even though internal communication as such is relatively much searched topic, developing internal communication and internal communication policy have been disregarded among scientific community. The objective of this research is to find out how to develop an internal communication policy when there are factors that are strongly affecting to that. The main theory is contingency theory which argues that there is no one universal way to organize an internal communication policy. There are some external and internal factors that affect to organizing such. In this research the growth is an external factor which has affected to the internal factor, the amount of tacit knowledge. The research is made for an IT company Aava Mobile Oy which needs development for three different internal communication channels: intranet, familiarization package and Common Coffee Break. The goal is to find the objectives of development for each channel. The research is a case study which is using qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and observation. The researcher was an active part of the working community which meant the observation was inclusive. The research philosophy is critical realism which means there is an objective reality but the knowledge is socially constructed. This research found out that growth has many impacts on the development of internal communication policy. The growth makes the organizational structure more complex than it was before which affects the flow of information and the amount of tacit knowledge. Internal communication can be measured in multiple ways, in this research the employee satisfaction was connected with the success of the internal communication policies. Employee satisfaction and the amount of tacit knowledge was also connected, less tacit knowledge within an organization equals more satisfaction among employees.

During recent decades, venture capital has been an important source of financing of high-growing ventures. Many studies have focused on the question that how venture capital investors select their investment targets. However, there is little attention to the issue that how entrepreneurs select investors. When entrepreneurs select the right investors, the venture’s chances of success improve and thus, this issue is also important to study. The successful relationship between entrepreneurs and venture capital investors is indeed a strong indicator of the venture’s success. The purpose of this study is to contribute the research knowledge of how Finnish entrepreneurs select business angels and venture capitalists. The literature review conducts the fundamentals of firm growth and venture capital financing. The empirical data was gathered in five semi-structured interviews from four case companies that have raised venture capital. First, the empirical analysis describes the fundraising process of entrepreneurs. Second, it is discussed that how entrepreneurs select investors in different stages of the process and what is their selection criteria. The results of this study indicate that Finnish entrepreneurs in early-stage ventures cannot afford to refuse a good offer from the investors. However, the investors should fill certain requirements in order that entrepreneurs view the offer to be good. In fact, this study finds seven issues that entrepreneurs consider important when they are seeking venture capital: valuation, terms and conditions, personal compatibility, trust, ability to invest in future, amount of money invested and value-added services. Entrepreneurs do not value these criteria equally and they are more flexible with certain criteria. This study extends of research on entrepreneurs’ selection process and criteria to a new geographical and cultural context, as this study focuses on Finnish entrepreneurs and the venture capital market in Finland. Overall, this study encourages the future researchers to study the entrepreneur’s side of the venture capital market. The understanding of it is still limited.

This thesis focuses on distributed ledger technologies, commonly known as blockchain technologies. In this study, blockchain technology is seen as an innovation that will change how trade finance industry will function in the future. In general, trade finance industry is based on risk mitigation, and this thesis studies how the implementation of a trust-free blockchain technology will affect how this industry operates. The study aims at understanding the effect of blockchain technology being implemented into the trade finance industry. In general, blockchain technology affects both, trade finance operations and how trust formation between the trade partners. This study combines model of diffusion innovation by Rogers (2003) and trust categorization of Jøsang et al. (2005). These models formulate the theoretical framework for the research. The nature of this study is qualitative research, which utilizes abductive reasoning, and has both theoretical and empirical part. Theoretical part consists of three chapters, focusing on the basics of blockchain technology, trade finance industry and the concept of trust. Empirical part is based on documentary data and semi-structured interviews of blockchain and trade finance professionals. Results show that trade finance, which is based on risk mitigation of international trade is slowly progressive, manually handled and paper-based process which has not been able to grasp the potential of automation advances made in other financial sectors. Trust between trading partners has previously been based on context-dependent trust, but the there is a shift towards more context-independent trust that is based on algorithms and ratings. Blockchain technology is based on immutable ledger technology and thus possesses the capability to change how trade finance functions.

This thesis paper uncovers the valued aspects of considerations for developing the business network by transnational entrepreneurs while they establish their business in countries like Finland. For doing so, this study undergoes a qualitative research model for collecting, constructing, formulation and analyzing empirical data with comparison to the scientific literature review of different business network approaches. This thesis paper provides a comprehensive theoretical base of understanding through carefully selecting critical concepts on entrepreneurship, transnational entrepreneurship, and business network. The author has constructed the literature review by following fundamentals of qualitative research methods of (summarizing, categorizing and structuring) for data collection and analysis of theoretical and empirical data. This study has been constructed by carefully fragmented chapters that would lead through a continuous flow of research steps towards exploring the results. Portraying the actual scenario, the author provides details discussion on the transnational entrepreneurship and its formidable impact over the economy in countries like Finland. Moreover, for analyzing the empirical data, the author has fragmented the whole discussion on the interviews in three phases, so that, the different aspects of network considerations can be well presented, understood and analyzed. The first phase focuses on representing previous experiences, the second phase focuses on the current business establishment process, while the third phase represents the organization’s operational process. The author has considered the four fundamental aspects of the business networks while constructing the analysis on the outcomes. Which consist of the followings, business network as structure, relationship, position, and process. Hence, the outcomes would suggest a scientific guideline from the business network development perspective, for new transnational entrepreneurs in Finland. Off all, this study offers a scientifically structured discussion of the topic by formulating a solid theoretical base followed by high quality and detailed empirical datasets with valued ethical standards.

This Bachelor’s Thesis is literature review that focuses on studying the significance of internal barriers to SMEs’ internationalization. Firm internal barriers are a collection of barriers that arise from companies’ internal capabilities and resources as well as companies’ approach to internationalization, rather than from the external environment. The internal barriers found in this research are related to internal resource deficiencies and attributes that significantly hinder the international growth of SMEs. Barriers related to insufficient information, managerial attributes, human resources, financing and marketing were found to be the most prominent barriers as they were included, in some form, in most of the previous studies. The importance of proactive measures against internal barriers and the importance of building networks arose as relevant managerial implications for SMEs. The results of this research can help SMEs by making them aware of problems that internationalizing SMEs commonly face and giving them a possibility for preparation and proactive measures. In addition to SMEs, the results can also be utilized by policymakers and external service providers contributing to the international growth of SMEs