With the rise of digital technologies, consumers can stream music content, which has made it more difficult for music companies to be profitable. Small business owners in the music recording industry in the West Indies have found this trend particularly challenging, affecting their profitability. This multiple case study explored the adoption of disruptive technologies by small business owners in the music recording industry to increase profitability. The research population included 5 small business owners in the music recording industry in the West Indies who successfully adapted to the changes in the industry's business model and whose businesses are profitable. Christensen's theory of disruptive innovation served as the conceptual framework for this study. Data from face-to-face, semistructured, in-depth interviews, observations, and analysis of internal company documents were collected and triangulated. Within-case analysis was used to understand the general meaning of the participants' responses. Each case was described and themes were identified. Cross-case analysis was used to compare the 5 case descriptions and identify 5 cross-cutting themes. These 5 themes included focus on live performances, focus on marketing and building a brand, adopt innovations in all functions of the business, diversify income streams, and adopt vertical integration strategies. The implications for positive social change include the potential to increase the profitability of small businesses in the recording industry in the West Indies by sharing the strategies emerging from the study. Profitable businesses can lead to improved livelihoods of the small business owners and their families.

Employees can be resistant to work-based change, specifically when the change is due to disruptive or new technology. The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of 20 Swiss-based educational employees adapting to online technologies introduced in their workplaces. Disruptive innovation theory provided the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected using semistructured interviews with 20 purposely selected participants from 3 Swiss-based higher education campuses. The modified Van Kaam method was used to organize and analyze the data. Four themes from participants' responses were identified: educational employees are not resistant to technology-based change, educational employees can move forward and become excited even when frustrated, educational managers should develop commitment and a project-based focus to reduce additional expenditure of time and effort, and continued experience and personal development can enable technology use and reduce resistance. Findings from the study may be used to reduce employees' resistance to technological-based change in higher education. The successful development and use of online education tools by educators provides society with choices, mobility, flexibility, and a personalized approach to learning.

With a purpose to provide insights on how to reduce the impact of future disruptive events on the supply chain and to raise awareness of the potential applications of disruptive technologies (DTs), this thesis will analyze the use of 3-Dimensional Printing (3DP), Big Data (BD), and Internet of Things (IoT) in Supply Chain Management (SCM). The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for greater Supply Chain Resilience (SCR), as disruptions can have a domino effect and damage co-dependent supply chain actors. Just-In-Time (JIT) and standardized supply chain practices have been blamed for operational failings, leading to calls for better strategies and solutions to prepare against future disruptions. The thesis bridges the gap in knowledge between supply chain strengthening and the potential of disruptive technologies, and what solutions are viable for supply chain managers to create more resilient SCM. The study contributes to industrial manufacturing firms managing consequences of COVID-19, and how they are implementing precautionary measures to keep their supply chain resilient for future threats. This research aims to contribute to both scholars, practitioners, and the supply chain management field.

The problem that most, if not all, large companies deal with in one way or another, is to stay relevant and competitive as their industry evolves. They need to keep improving their current services or products but still need to keep their eyes open for disruption. This requires them to make long-term investments in research and development, which does not always result in a quick return. To stay relevant, corporations need to increase corporate innovation. Research on collaboration between startups and corporations has grown substantially in recent years, but there is a gap in academic literature focusing on the barriers of these collaborations. This qualitative study focuses on what perspective Icelandic corporate managers have towards collaborating with startups as part of their corporate innovation. To accomplish that, eight semi- structured interviews with top-level managers from large corporations were conducted. It was clear that all interviewees were very positive about collaborating with startups even though most of them had little or no experience from doing so themselves. Icelandic companies seem to be reluctant to invest the required time and resources it takes for these collaborations to be successful because of the lack of successful examples in Iceland so far. This research only looked at the barriers and benefits from the perspective of top-level managers in large corporations but future research could include the perspective of startups as well.

The technological development has enabled structural changes in the real estate market and created a growing concept of space-as-a-service. Space-as-a-service has emerged from the concepts of sharing economy, digitalization and servitization to meet the demand for flexible solutions on the commercial real estate market. The idea of space-as-a-service is to offer simple and flexible access to spaces as well as providing extra services for tenants to create added value. From a sustainable perspective the intention is to decrease the need for new construction and take advantage of the existing building stock to meet demand for space. Most of the previous research on the space-as-a-service concept focus on coworking and sharing spaces but not as much on the broader concept and its rampaging on the real estate market. This study aims to investigate if the concept of space-as-a-service is disruptive for the real estate industry and how real estate owners approach this development. A qualitative research method was applied, using both structured and semi-structured interviews with real estate owners with property holdings in Sweden to get more in-depth information and understanding of the growing concept of space-as-a-service. The Theory of Disruptive Innovations was used as a framework for investigating disruptive signs of space-as-a-service. The driving motives behind space-as-a-service are concluded to mainly derive from an observed demand for freedom of effort and flexibility in the real estate owners´ offerings. We can see a new complex competitive environment, where the real estate industry's service goes from selling “space” to offer a concept. This puts new requirements on real estate owners to justify for more than the location of their premises, in order to keep their competitive position. What positions the real estate owners take in this new landscape differentiates. The attitudes towards space-as-a-service are generally positive, but the perceived risks are explicitly present. External actors and regulations also counteract the development. Thresholds and attitudes collide, making it clear that a change in mindset is needed. However, from the results of our study we can conclude that the concept of space-as-a-service fulfills the characteristics of a disruptive innovation, indicating that this evolution will be disruptive for the real estate industry. / Den tekniska utvecklingen av teknik har möjliggjort strukturella förändringar på fastighetsmarknaden, där man går från att sälja yta till att erbjuda ett koncept. Yta-som-tjänst har växt fram från begreppen delningsekonomi, digitalisering och tjänstefiering för att möta efterfrågan på flexibla lösningar på den kommersiella fastighetsmarknaden. Idén med yta-som-tjänst är att erbjuda enkel och flexibel tillgång till ytor samt att tillhandahålla tjänster till hyresgäster för att skapa mervärde. Ur ett hållbarhetsperspektiv är avsikten att minska behovet av nyproduktion och dra nytta av det befintliga fastighetsbeståndet för att möta efterfrågan på lokaler. Tidigare forskning relaterat till yta-som-tjänst fokuserar främst på coworking och delade ytor, men det saknas studier på konceptet ur ett bredare perspektiv och dess framfart på fastighetsmarknaden. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om konceptet yta-som-tjänst är disruptivt för fastighetsbranschen samt fastighetsägares inställning till denna utveckling. Resultatinsamlingen genomfördes med en kvalitativ forskningsmetod, där både strukturerade och semistrukturerade intervjuer med kommersiella fastighetsägare i Sverige användes för att få en djupare förståelse för konceptet yta-som-tjänst. Studiens akademiska förankring grundar sig i teorin om Disruptiva Innovationer som används för att granska disruptiva tecken av konceptet yta-som-tjänst. Vi kan dra slutsatsen att drivkrafterna bakom konceptet yta-som-tjänst främst är ökad efterfrågan på besvärsfrihet och flexibilitet i tjänsterna som idag erbjuds av fastighetsägare. Detta skapar en ny och komplex konkurrensmiljö som sätter nya krav på fastighetsägare, de blir tvungna att rättfärdiga för mer än bara läget på en lokal för att behålla sin konkurrenskraft. Vilka roller som fastighetsägare väljer att ta i detta nya landskap varierar sig. Attityderna mot yta-som-tjänst är generellt positiva, men det upplevs finnas flera risker som tillsammans med externa aktörer och regelverk motverkar utvecklingen. Resultatet visar att attityder och trösklar i utvecklingen motsäger varandra och att ett tankeskifte är nödvändigt i flera olika led. Resultatet av vår studie visar att konceptet yta-som-tjänst uppfyller karaktärsdragen för en disruptiv innovation och förväntas expandera till en bredare marknad framöver.

<p>Over the course of history, innovation has been the forefront of industrial change. New innovations have continuously surpassed old solutions, which have contributed to the trajectory of mankind. In today’s market IT has an increasingly important role. Innovation within IT is characterised by high degrees of visionary thinking and optimism towards the success of the venture. This has contributed to bubble effects emerging in the economy of a highly speculative nature.</p><p>A central issue lies in the complexity of evaluating innovation and especially more radical and visionary ones. In general terms of evaluation, innovations are evaluated in two main phases: internally and externally. For visionary innovations it is not evident how and on what grounds the innovation should be evaluated both internally in terms of feasibility and externally in terms of market response. In that aspect there is a gap in evaluation and especially <em>how </em>visionary innovation can be evaluated. The aim of the research is to investigate the phenomenon of visionary innovation and contribute with knowledge about the characteristics that influence growth and adoption.</p><p>The research is based upon a two-step qualitative investigation. Firstly the research is imed at constructing a framework for evaluating the innovation and thereafter objectifying the characteristics on case studies within the IT sector.</p><p>The research has found three major areas for evaluation: (1) <em>the eco-system, </em>(2) <em>the  ustomer </em><em>behaviour </em>and (3) <em>the target market</em>. The eco-system is focused towards the ompetitive environment, the technology and the infrastructure. The customer behaviour  ddresses customers’ existing behaviours, their needs and demands and the surplus value  he new offering brings. In terms of the customer behaviour the switching costs and benefits  of other alternatives is also important to consider. Finally, the target market  onsists of the market characteristics, the customer segmentation and the overall  ttractiveness of the market. Based on the characteristics of these factors and the market  nd industry, constraints and drivers can be identified to either support or contradicts the  peed of adoption of new solutions.</p><p>The main findings of the report are that growth is dependent on and influenced by positive and negative drivers. The three elements the drivers are thus connected and correlating, in the sense that the drivers can have different levels of severity. For instance, a negative driver that is negatively correlated with another element has a high level of severity related to growth.</p>

This thesis investigates the performance of business model innovation (BMI) by incumbent power utility and clean-tech start-up firms influenced by the German Energiewende. It emphasises the factors that impact BMI from a managers’ perspective, examines success factors for managers to overcome BMI challenges, and addresses contingencies to perform BMI in a more structured way. The research is driven by the German Energiewende. It has been chosen as Germany is considered one of the world’s leading markets for renewable energies and a transformation of the power sector is currently underway. Therefore, established power utility firms face severe changes, which have the characteristics of a potential disruption to their business model (BM). At the same time, new players are challenging these incumbents with new BMs. The research is underpinned by the extant literature on BMs and BMI. The research approach is based on two case studies; the incumbent power utility and the clean-tech start-up sector. The qualitative study comprises of 24 semi-structured interviews conducted with top tier managers, from 18 firms, responsible for BMI within these firms. Key findings: This study extends our knowledge of BMI in both a start-up and an incumbent environment that is influenced by various contingent events. It portrays barriers to BMI and depicts critical success factors for BMI that point out solutions on how to overcome these barriers. It provides a structured BMI framework for established firms and illustrates future BM archetypes in this sector. It clearly documents the German Energiewende is regarded as a disruptive threat from the perspective of incumbent power utility managers. The theoretical contribution of this thesis is a process framework including all identified drivers and challenges for BMI in both established and start-up firms. Contributions to practice include critical success factors for BMI, recommendations to overcome barriers to BMI and future BM archetypes within the newly evolving Energiewende industry based on sustainable technologies.

Although the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) has been widely accepted by the HRD community, it has not been tested in a startup context for reliability. The purpose of the current study is to explore if the DLOQ is a reliable instrument for startups to help them be more successful. The current study seeks to address some of the questions, which have been posed by previous researchers. The study utilizes a mixed-method design applying Cronbach alpha values to check the reliability of the instrument in a startup learning environment, with more than 600 participants and 42 startup businesses at a university in the Mountain West. The study uses objective financial measures for startup firms to explore the correlation between the seven dimensions of the DLOQ and startup companies at the university. Cronbach alphas for the instrument measured at the .80 level or higher. Four of the dimensions were found to be statistically significant resulting in a model that accounted for 30% of the variance in predicted Operating Income (p<.004) and 29% of the variances in predicted Net Income (p<.003). The study also uses qualitative analysis to explore what activities relate to the seven dimensions of the DLOQ, and if those activities would be considered complex and disruptive. Thirteen activity clusters were identified and found to be relevant to startups and the seven dimensions of the DLOQ.

Industry 4.0 has introduced technologies such as machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud computing, which has disrupted markets across different industries. These technologies are prime examples of what has come to be known as disruptive innovations. With the advancement of disruptive innovations, organizations are constantly looking for new ways to satisfy customer needs. Therefore, organizations have begun to investigate alternative business models that differ from the conventional way of selling products/services. Within B2C-markets, the rise of subscription-based services has not gone unnoticed and has turned into a prominent business model among Fortune-500 organizations. Within B2B-practices however, subscription-based business models are mostly unheard of. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how IndustryInternet of Things (IIoT) solution providers successfully can transition to a subscription-based business model when launching IoT-based disruptive innovations in industry 4.0 B2B-markets. This purpose was investigated in a quantitative study by constructing a questionnaire based on an adjusted six-factor Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) model. The model was used to stipulate factors influencing buying intention for IoT-technologies. The study was further complemented by qualitative interviews, which aimed to shed more light on buyer's perception of subscription-based business models for IoT-technologies. The respondents consisted of purchasing function employees within the chemical-, food and beverage-, and life sciences industries in Scandinavia and the US. The quantitative results showed that performance expectancy had the most significant impact on buying intention. The qualitative results stipulated themes based on each UTAUT2 factor while also enlightening how interviewees emphasize the importance of not hiding costs and raised concerns regarding the transfer of data ownership when purchasing IoT-technologies. To conclude, the authors stipulated a conceptual framework for the implementation of subscription-based business models when introducing of IoT-technologies within B2B-markets.

Using Black feminist thought and BlackCrit/critical race theory frameworks, this qualitative study examined Black educators' practices in addressing the behavior of their students in an urban school district. It utilized counternarratives and storytelling to explore the cultural dynamics at play between Black educators and their Black students. The Black educators in this study operated under several behavior systems, including positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS), socio-emotional learning (SEL), restorative practices (RPs), and zero tolerance policies (ZTPs). Such systems have been implemented based on research that they have the capacity to train Black students to make appropriate decisions regarding their behavior. These systems are also reinforced under the notion that they create learning spaces which promote academic achievement. Due to their own experiences and understanding about how institutional practices and disciplinary interventions result disproportionately in oppression and violence against Black students, these educators disrupted these practices and utilized cultural approaches that centered Black-ness. In doing so, they were able to address behavior and affirm Black students' well-being. The cultural approaches conceptualized as disruptive pedagogies include aspects of othermothering, otherfathering, critical caring, sermonizing, womanist caring, and Black masculine caring. An analysis of the stories and counternarratives illustrated that Black principals, counselors, and teachers draw from the long tradition of Black resistance and Black radical leadership to create educational spaces that support both emotional well-being and academic excellence. Implications, recommendations and future research are discussed.