This thesis addresses the opportunities and difficulties that can occur in the creation of an innovation arena concerning sustainable city solutions. A case study was conducted of the Stockholm Royal Seaport project and a model for the management of an innovation arena was created. Three critical factors were discovered which were commitment, collective risk taking and trust and their connection to the overall common vision for an innovation arena. Conclusions after analyzing the critical factors was that clear contracts needs to be established and that third party involvement in the process of searching, qualifying and coaching of involved actors can be helpful in the process of developing an innovation arena.

Background: Due to the dynamic business environment and acceleration of technological renewal the need to pursue newest knowledge becomes crucial and more and more challenging for companies. Traditionally firms tended to keep R&D in-house but now they have to search for alternative approach to innovation, namely open innovation. Science parks are claimed to facilitate the process of inter-organizational collaboration and open innovation, in particular due to geographic proximity of on-park actors. Aim: This research is aimed to investigate the influence of geographic proximity of companies situated within a science park on collaboration and open innovation initiatives. Apart from this, other factors in a science park environment that can have an effect on open innovation are studied as well. In particular, these issues are analyzed from the perspective of on-park small and medium enterprises. Completion and results: This study revealed that geographic proximity of firms within one science park can influence open innovation to some extent. In particular, effects of certain mechanisms of geographic proximity were observed. However, all in all, geographic proximity does not have a decisive influence on inter-firm collaboration in Swedish science parks. Besides geographic proximity, other factors that may stimulate open innovation process for SMEs were analyzed.

Information Technology (IT) evolution in the recent decades has been able to grow the mobility of the end-user. A contributing factor has impacted and improved the smartphone area. This, in turn, has changed end-users’ expectations and experiences in the recent years in terms of available services, which have made mobile applications (apps) to find their place in daily life. In line with the significant growth of smartphones, as the iPhone and Android phones, is also the development of mobile applications exploded. Mobile use has - with this - fundamentally changed and much of what customers used to do on the computer, they do now on their mobile. It makes of course requires that third-parties have a mobile presence and correct utilization, this new arena enormous business opportunities. Hence, as mobile devices become a more visible business tool, it becomes important for organizations to develop applications to meet customer needs and stay competitive. Third-party development is relevantly in the core of software development nowadays. The introduction of smartphones and tablet devices, the associated products, and services in the form of apps has significantly changed software developments practices for developers. The aim of this research formulated to study the development process and practices associated with third-parties and their effects on dealing with various mobile platforms and boundary resources (SKDs and APIs). Qualitative study and exploratory design are extensively conducted for data collection and analysis. Primary data is gathered based on experiences, opinions, and insights from the experts in the subject, and secondary data is gathered from literature, which constantly supports the primary data and ensures the research credibility. The main contribution and results of this study are the factors and development process that third-party developers take into consideration when developing apps for iOS and Android such as ecosystem, programing language, platform, programing model, tools, development process model, supply chain, and submission apps. The success of the digital ecosystems and platform knowledge adopted by Apple and Google has gained a lot of attention from developers in the last years concerning mobile application development. This, in turn, was the key factor of their success at the smartphones market and the portal for developers from all the world.

Over the last few decades, the industrialized world in general and the automobile industry in particular was hit by immense changes which strongly influence the management of R&D. Trends such as globalization and sharp competition on worldwide open markets, increasing product complexity in order to meet the customers’ desires for more variety and individualization, technology fusion and cross industry innovations, high level of technological and competitive uncertainty, increasing pressure to reduce R&D budgets, and shorter time to market and reduced innovation cycles in consequence of rising competition, force companies to source external knowledge and to bring in and exploit outside-in innovations instead of reinventing them their selves. In the same way, the Open Innovation concept highlights the need for organizations to open up their innovation processes. As a consequence, many R&D organizations are being transformed in order to meet the upcoming challenges and established technological listening posts to source external knowledge in centers of technological excellence and innovation. This study focus on the knowledge acquisition, transformation and transfer from innovation cluster to central R&D, and examines the roles and typologies of technological gatekeepers. Based on a sound literature review and in-depth qualitative study of the case company BMW, this thesis explores how technological listening posts can take the mediating role of technology gatekeepers and how different mechanisms and typologies for gatekeeping can be deployed for optimal transformation and transfer of external knowledge into internal innovation.

After the 2008 global financial tsunami, the global economy has been undergoing a ¡§great recession¡¨, and it has a tremendous impact on Taiwan's venture capital industry. Not only overall investment, but also financing is descending rapidly. Although Taiwan has always performed well in the field of venture capital, it encounters many setbacks nowadays, such as ¡§Hard to find the target.¡¨,¡¨ Recession of capital market.¡¨, ¡§Narrowest Cash-out. ¡¨ and "Major innovations take longer and more resources." etc. These problems are difficult to overcome. Therefore, to spend money on the cutting edge, investing in professional fields is the best policy of venture capital, and it requires of venture capital institutions substantial accumulation of professional knowledge in the specific fields as well as industrial integration capabilities. Scholars have put forth the view that corporate venture capital and independent venture capital must learn from each other. How to dominate the standards of investment industry , how to make the global positioning strategy, whether corporate venture capital needs to meet the overall strategy, and venture capital strategy , organizing, management methods. These are key issues for corporate venture capital. Intel capital is the world's largest science and technology intensive venture capital. This study will draw on its experience of successful and unique investment, combined with the concept of open innovation¡Asuggesting that corporate venture capital in Taiwan take "innovation intermediary" mode which will not only reduce investment risk and but also investment cost.

BenQ was founded in1984,the business income was NTD 300 million during the initial period of years and her core business was merely to produce computer components. Her sales income has achieved to NTD 174.7 billion till 2004 after merging her subsidiary companies. Over the past 20 years, the employees increased to more than 13,000 as a global enterprise distributing more than 30 countries. In addition, the sales income has increased 582 times than she was founded. Therefore, the way of BenQ success was a model for the enterprise growth. In order to research the model and the experiences that the enterprise grows, this research uses BenQ as case study thoroughly studies in her nearly more than 20 years growth processes and how she used each strategy activity to achieve the enterprise growth goal. According to BenQ¡¦s success of new business development, this research constructs set of universalized new business development model, the flow, the process, and product life cycle backward vertical integration model. It was discovered that the corporate venture capital played an important role and function to provide the enterprises growth strategy when enterprise is growing.

The organization the authors have collaborated with is one of the largest information technology services company in the Nordics, Tieto. This study intends to examine Tieto’s social idea management software solution called Eureka to determine if it helps organizations to increase their innovative capabilities. Eureka helps organizations collect, manage, share, and evaluate their employee’s proposed ideas. Eureka also enables an organization’s resources to better interact with each other in association with idea development. Eureka works like an intranet where by company employees internally get the opportunity to suggest ideas that could improve, e.g., processes, products or services. This study examines whether Tieto’s software solution can help an organization increase its capacity for innovation. An additional aim is to describe the actual value an organization receives by working with Eureka. Empirical findings demonstrate that Eureka is a great tool for organizations to get their employees to interact with one another when it comes to innovation and idea development.

Purpose: Currently little research exists regarding the attitudes of managers towards using social media for innovation processes. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that influence managerial attitudes and their willingness to use social media as a tool for generating innovations. Design/methodology/approach: Based on existing literature within the technology acceptance field, a research model has been created. A deductive and quantitative research approach has been employed in order to test the hypotheses on 137 managers from international companies who use social media within their innovation processes. Findings: The results of the linear regression show that three out of six hypotheses could be accepted. Perceived usefulness and subjective norms have an impact on the managers' attitude towards social media in innovation processes. Moreover, the findings reveal that the attitude towards using social media in innovation processes influences the managerial behavior intention. Research limitations/theoretical implications: The research model of this study contributes to the already existing literature. It aims at explaining the managerial attitude towards social media integration into innovation processes, being based on the extended technology acceptance model (TAM2). Research limitations concern the model's application in different contexts for other technologies, the lack of balance of female and male respondents and the concentration on specific industries in which user-driven innovation is highly important. Future research is encouraged to take these factors into consideration. Practical implications: Companies should support their employees’ and managers’ confidence in using social media for innovation processes by reinforcing the managerial perception of social media's usefulness. Managers and employees should be encouraged by external parties to use social media for example by attending workshops and advanced training courses or visiting conferences in order to appreciate its acceptability. Originality/value: The study presents a new research model that investigates managerial attitudes towards social media integration into innovation processes based on the extended Technology Acceptance Model. The association of managerial attitudes, social media, innovation and TAM2 is novel within this field of research.

In economy nowadays, the act of innovation is in general social; it requires the management of knowledge, and the techniques and methodologies to drive it. Innovation is not the product of one isolated intelligence, instead, it is the result of a multi-disciplinary workgroup lead by a process or a methodology. The conceptual design, which is found in the first stages of the innovation process, represents one of the most important challenges in industry nowadays. One of the main challenges faced by chemical industries related to the conceptual design phase is to provide the means in the form of methods and computational tools, for solving problems systematically, at the same time that benefiting from the collective efforts of individual intelligences involved. Hence, the main objective of this work is to provide a solution to improve the creative capacity of a team involved in the innovation process, in particular the preliminary (critical) phase of conceptual design. Consequently, it is important to understand the techniques, methods and tools that best support the generation of novel ideas and creative solutions. In addition, it is necessary to study the contribution of information and communication technologies as the mean to support collaboration. Web technologies are considered as complementary tools to implement methods and techniques in collaborative design, and particularly in the conceptual design stage. These technologies allow setting up distributed collaborative environments to bring together the resources and the experts who can relate the existing pieces of knowledge to new contexts. It is the synergy created in this kind of environment, which allow producing valuable concepts and ideas in the form of Collective Intelligence. Nevertheless in most existing solutions for collective intelligence or crowdsourcing environments, they do not report the use of a particular methodology to improve the participants' creativity. The solution in this work describes a social network service that enables users to cooperatively solve problems oriented (but not limited) to the phase of conceptual design. In this work we propose that the use of Collective Intelligence in combination with the model TRIZ-CBR could lead the creative efforts in a team to develop innovative solutions. With this work we are looking for connecting experts from one particular field, TRIZ practitioners and stakeholders with the objective to solve problems in collaboration unlashing the collective intelligence to improve creativity. This work uses the basis of the concept named "Open CAI 2.0" to propose a solution in the form of a theoretical framework. The contributions seek to move the development of the field in Computer Aided Innovation a step forward.

A Open Innovation (OI) é uma abordagem emergente que têm despertado cada vez mais o interesse de especialistas e de estudos acadêmicos na área de inovação. Entretanto, a implemen-tação dessa estratégia ainda é desafiadora, especialmente para as Pequenas e Médias Empresas (PMEs). A carência de métodos e processos documentados e estruturados para implementar a OI, também são fatores que causam resistências e desestimulam muitas vezes as empresas. Ou-tro fato é que poucas pesquisas e trabalhos empíricos têm explorado o potencial e influência dos Sistemas Regionais de Inovação (SRIs) na implementação da OI nas empresas. Frente a essa problemática de pesquisa, esta Tese tem como objetivo geral desenvolver um processo de implementação da estratégia Open Innovation voltado para empresas de SRIs. O produto final da Tese é um framework que representa o Processo para Implementação da OI (PIOI). É uma ferramenta gerencial que visa auxiliar e orientar os gestores quanto as etapas, documentos, e forma mais apropriada para conduzir a implementação. Sobretudo, permite a compreensão dos elementos e Fatores Críticos de Sucesso (FCS) que interferem na melhoria da capacidade de inovação em PMEs. Este trabalho de Tese está estruturado em sete capítulos, com cinco artigos propostos. O artigo 1 busca identificar os fatores determinantes para a implementação da OI em SRIs. O artigo 2 apresenta uma revisão sistemática da literatura para identificar os FCS para implementação da OI no âmbito das empresas. No artigo 3, desenvolve-se uma pesquisa apli-cada com 50 empresas de um SRI para diagnosticar as estratégias de inovação e os FCS para implementação da OI. No artigo 4, propõe-se um framework para implementação da OI em PMEs de SRIs. No artigo 5, o framework é testado e avaliado empiricamente através de um estudo de caso de uma empresa. A estrutura metodológica geral da Tese está fundamentada no método de pesquisa construtivista (Design Science Research – DSR). Os artigos abrangem le-vantamento bibliográfico, survey, estudo de caso e pesquisa-ação, e empregam ambos os mé-todos, quantitativo e qualitativo, conforme seus objetivos. A Tese oferece importantes contri-buições acadêmicas e práticas ao abordar os FCS que interferem na implementação da OI, e ao desenvolver um processo para implementação dessa estratégia em PMEs de SRI’s. Além disso, representa uma oportunidade para que as empresas possam transformar e melhorar o seu pro-cesso de desenvolvimento da inovação, implementando mudanças de estratégia e introduzindo estruturas mais colaborativas que suportem novos modelos de negócios. / Open Innovation (OI) is an emerging approach that has increasingly attracted the interest of experts and academic studies in the area of innovation. However, implementing this strategy is still challenging, especially for Small and Medium Companies (PMEs). The lack of documen-ted and structured methods and processes to implement OI are factors that cause resistance and often discourage companies, besides the fact that few empirical studies and research have ex-plored the potential and influence of the Regional Innovation Systems (SRIs) in the implemen-tation of OI in companies. Faced with this research problem, this thesis has as general objective to develop a process of implementation of the Open Innovation strategy directed at SRIs com-panies. The final product is a framework that represents the Process for Implementing OI (PIOI). It is a managerial tool that aims to help and guide managers on the stages, documents, and the most appropriate way to carry out the implementation. Above all, it allows the unders-tanding of the elements and Critical Factors of Success (FCS) that affect the improvement of the innovation capacity of PMEs. The thesis is structured in seven chapters, with five proposed articles. Article 1 seeks to identify the determining factors for the implementation of OI in SRIs. Article 2 presents a systematic review of the literature to identify the FCS for implementing OI in companies. In Article 3 we carry out an applied research with 50 companies in a SRI, in order to diagnose their innovation strategies and the FCS to implement OI. In Article 4, we propose a framework for the implementation of OI in PMEs of SRIs. In Article 5, the framework is empirically tested and evaluated through a company’s case study. The general methodological structure of the thesis is based on the constructivist research method (Design Science Research - DSR). The articles cover literature review, survey, case study and action research, and use both quantitative and qualitative methods, according to their goals. The thesis offers important academic and practical contributions by addressing FCS that affect the implementation of OI, and by developing a process to establish that strategy in PMEs of SRIs. In addition, it represents an opportunity for companies to change and improve their innovation development process by implementing strategy shifts and introducing more collaborative structures that support new business models.