In the lead up to the Year 2000 dot.com crash of publicly traded high-technology equities, Information Communication Technology (ICT) Companies proudly displayed inter-firm allegiances on their newly created websites. These collaborative relationships were in reality licensing agreements to develop or market new products internationally. Phenomena associated with ICT product development - collaboration, innovation, and internationalisation - are the core tenets of the accompanying dissertation. Leading scholars have suggested these phenomena challenge conventional economic theories of the firm. This study commences with tracing the evolution of trade and production theories from absolute advantage through to competitive advantage and introduces the concepts of non-adversarial collaborative advantage. Within the framework of the technology cycle, this dissertation then seeks to answer why firms engage in international collaborative innovation. The cycle of technological innovation is investigated and this leads to postulating a period of technological overlap and its implications for collaboration. One of the shortcomings acknowledged in the literature is the generic application of the term collaboration to cover a wide scope of inter-firm agreements. Within the literature this is referred to as a problem of multidimensionality. A model is developed in this dissertation that identifies the choices available to the firm and addresses the problem of defining collaboration. The choices provided in the developed model are more complex than simply choosing between external and internal intermediate markets. As a separable form of industry organisation, the success rates of alliance collaboration are compared to Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) to validate issues of sustainability before examining the impact of location on innovation and collaboration. Again, theory is tested by recent events that require explanation. These events include the relocation of early stage foreign R&D to both developed and lesser-developed nations. The final chapter assesses the findings throughout this study and identifies separate and distinct roles for large and small firms in the international and collaborative commercialisation of new innovations. This central conclusion requires empirical validation and suggests the need investigate how firms shape the cycle of innovation from a reflected vantage point to the evolutionary perspective taken in this study. Further research is warranted because the literature on international innovation and collaboration is at an early stage and gaps in understanding remain.

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Rapid digitalisation development has been stampeding widely across today’s societies, and not least in the payment industry. Though, the digitalisation in the payment industry has been very deviating, even between similar well-developed countries, and while there are positive and negative effects with both digital- and physical payment means, there is little knowledge that highlights the influencing factors and accompanied problems. This study therefore explore swhich, and how, different factors influence a country’s degree of digital payments, and creates further understanding of where the payment markets are heading in the future. It is done through a case study of four different industrialised countries, Sweden, Italy, Canada, and Switzerland which involves mapping the countries’ payment markets, as well as potential factors influencing a population’s payment habits, through a perspective of innovation theory in terms of dominant designs and technological discontinuities. Theory of network externalities and two-sided platforms are further used to explain and discuss how a two-sided market, likethe payment market, is affected by changes and other circumstances in different ways.Conclusions are then drawn from the used theories together with a comparison of the findings,and identifies certain influencers to a country’s distribution of payments, as well as provides indications of where the different payments markets are heading in the future. Data is mainly gathered through written material and credible databases, but also from semi-structured interviews. / Den snabba digitaliseringen har slagit sig fram i dagens samhällen, och inte minst i betalningsindustrin. Dock har digitaliseringen i betalningsindustrin varit mycket avvikande mellan liknande välutvecklade länder, och medan det finns positiva och negativa effekter med både digitala och fysiska betalningsmedel, finns det inte mycket kunskap om påverkandefaktorer och medföljande problem. Denna studie undersöker därför vilka, och hur, olika faktorer påverkar ett lands grad av digitala betalningar, och vidare skapar ytterligare förståelse för var betalningsmarknaderna är på väg framöver. Detta görs genom en fallstudie av fyra olika industrialiserade länder, Sverige, Italien, Kanada och Schweiz, som innebär en kartläggning av ländernas betalningsmarknader, och av potentiella faktorer som påverkar befolkningens betalningsvanor, genom ett perspektiv från innovationsteori i form av dominerande design och tekniska diskontinuiteter. Teori om nätverksexternaliteter och tvåsidiga plattformar används vidare för att förklara och diskutera hur en tvåsidig marknad som betalningsmarknadenpåverkas av förändringar och andra omständigheter. Slutsatser dras sedan från de användateorierna tillsammans med en jämförelse av resultaten och identifierar påverkande faktorer tillett lands betalningsdistribution, samt ger indikationer på var de olika betalningsmarknaderna är på väg framöver. Data samlades huvudsakligen in genom skriftligt material och från tillförlitliga databaser, men även från semistrukturerade intervjuer.