本研究透過瞭解理論發展的過程, 辨識學術文獻在創新開端發展的樣式與軌跡, 並以之為基礎, 分析該學術領域之研究概況與趨勢. 分析之單元為理論建立之過程以及學術文獻; 本研究之文獻資料主要來自於Journal of Product Innovation Management, Management Science, Journal of Marketing, R&D Management, Technovation, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, Research Policy…等24份國際期刊, 共167篇文獻. 透過對於這些文獻的分析, 本研究辨識出三種類別, 14種研究的樣式與其相對應於理論建立過程的軌跡, 為理論建立過程提供了分類的依據, 同時也為”理論建立的理論(theory of theory-building)”提供了實徵研究的確認結果; 並以此樣式和軌跡為基礎, 分析創新開端目前研究的趨勢與概況, 提供創新開端領域目前學術研究概況的實徵數據; 本文最後將對本研究的限制提出說明, 以及對於未來可能的發展提出建議. / This study identifies trajectories and patterns of research towards theory-building in the early stage of front-end innovation. The trajectories and patterns serve as a tool to explore and analyze the trends and the landscape of current research situation in the domain of interest. The units of analysis are individual research project and the process of theory-building. The source of data come from 24 peer-review academic journals, including Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Marketing, R&D Management, Technovation, Management Science, Research Policy…and so on. In total, 167 academic articles are collected for further analysis. The result demonstrates that 14 patterns and corresponding trajectories along the theory-building process are identified. This study also discusses the possibilities of a research pattern that could be followed by these patterns and trajectories. In the end of the study, specific contributions to the knowledge of the early stage of front-end innovation are listed and future research opportunities are also suggested.

This thesis has been carried out within the framework of the Master of ScienceProgramme in Sociotechnical Systems Engineering and performed for the SwedishTrade Council in London. The author investigates how the Swedish Trade Councilcan facilitate and bridge the contacts between venture capitalists in the UK andhigh-tech start-ups in Sweden. High-tech ventures in the start-up phases often face a challenge in accumulatingsufficient financial resources and skills to successfully move from concept stage tobusiness, particularly within the life sciences’. High costs associated to time consumingand demanding product development cycles may require external investors whichprovide venture capital and expertise. However, many face difficulties in attractingventure capital partly due to the so-called equity gap, which relates to financiersunwillingness for taking on risk and investing in the early-stages. The study shows that venture capital largely rely on local networks and are limited intheir investments’ geographical distribution. The interviewed market players alsoemphasise the importance of local networks in the investment processes. Given thesecharacteristics, it may be difficult for a Swedish company seeking venture capitalabroad without help from intermediaries. Although there is a role to fill forintermediaries in assisting in the investment discovery process, it is likely to provedifficult over time as tasks become increasingly cumbersome.

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In the first part of this thesis, CaCO3 (calcite) powder ball-milled to micro/nano scale were subjected to isothermal firing in the temperature range of 450-600 ¢XC in an open air furnace in order to study specific-surface area reduction as a result of early-stage sintering/coarsening/coalescence/repacking (denoted as SCCR process) of the fine particles. The surface area and pore size distributions were obtained from the BET and BJH methods, respectively. The H1 type adsorption/desorption hysteresis loop of the type IV isotherm was used as an indicator of cylindrical pore formation upon dry pressing and firing of the powder. The apparent activation energy for the onset SCCR of the dry-pressed calcite powder turned out to be 57.5¡Ó1.0 kJ/mol based on t0.5, i.e. time for 50 % specific surface area reduction. The minimum temperature for such an incipient SCCR process was estimated to be 590K (317¢J) by extrapolating the specific-surface-area reduction rate to null. The mechanism of specific surface area change includes the Brownian motion, coarsening and coalescence/repacking of calcite particles besides sintering via synchronizing diffusion of calcium ion and carbonic acid ion along grain surface and boundary. In the second part of this thesis, pulsed laser ablation on micrometer-sized calcite (type I) powder in liquid H2O (PLAL) was conducted to study the structure and optical property change of calcium carbonate under a dynamic high-temperature. high-pressure aqueous condition. X-ray diffraction (XRD) indicated the fragmented calcite I powder via such a PLAL process change predominantly into a metastable CaCO3 II phase presumably by a displacive type transformation from calcite I and/or nucleated from atom clusters. The refined XRD lattice parameters indicate a significant internal compressive stress (up to 1.5 GPa) was retained for the predominant CaCO3 II nanoparticles having well-developed (013), (010) and (013) faces as revealed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Minor calcium carbonate nanoparticles were also identified by TEM to be other high-pressure polymorphs (type III and aragonite), hydrated (monohydrocalcite, ikaite), amorphized (amorphous calcium carbonate), and even decomposed as cubic lime (CaO). Monohydrocalcite occasionally occurred as epitaxial intergrowths within the predominant CaCO3 II matrix. Vibrational spectroscopy (Raman and FTIR) indicated the structure units of the overall nanoparticles by the PLAL process were considerably modified as a combined results of size miniature, protonation and internal compressive stress. The UV-visible absorption results further indicate that the minimum band gap of the colloidal solution was narrowed down to ca. 5 eV and 3 eV for the predominant CaCO3 II and minor accessory phases, respectively, thus shedding light on their potential opto-catalytic applications.

The specific surface area reduction and pore size distribution coupled with N2 adsorption-desorption hysteresis isotherm were studied in the temperature range of 1400-1550¢J for periclase MgO powder having 0.1£gm in size and with face-centered cubic structure. The apparent activation energy of such a rapid coarsening-coalescence process for MgO powder was estimated as 181¡Ó3kJ/mol. The minimum temperature for sintering/coarsening/coalescence of submicron MgO particles was estimated to be near 1300¢J based on the extrapolation of steady specific surface area reduction rates to zero. Pulsed laser ablation (PLA) of periclase MgO powders in water was conducted under Q-switch mode and specified water height and water depth (10 mm) for an accumulation time of 5 and 20 minutes at 10 Hz. Such a PLA process has successfully synthesized nanosized and protonated MgO particles from Mg(OH)2 and lamellar precusors, implying the three phases may co-exist at high pressure and temperature conditions upon dynamic shock loading. A significant internal compressive stress up to 10 GPa was built up for the MgO but not the readily relaxed Mg(OH)2 nanocondensates. The lamellae-derived Mg(OH)2 tended to undergo a dehydroxylation process to become MgO following a specific crystallographic relationship, i.e. lamellar basal layer parallel to Mg(OH)2(0001) and MgO(111). The minimum band gap of the colloidal solution of MgO/Mg(OH)2/lamellae was lowered to ca. 5.2eV after the PLA process.

The widespread use of microprocessor chips in high performance applications like graphics simulators and low power applications like mobile phones, laptops, medical applications etc. has made power estimation an important step in the manufacture of VLSI chips. It has become necessary to estimate the power consumption not only after the circuits have been laid out, but also during the design of the modules of the microprocessor at higher levels of design abstraction. The design of a microprocessor is complex and is performed at multiple layers of abstraction before it finally gets manufactured. The processor is first conceptually designed using blocks at the system level, and then modeled using a high-level language (C, C++, SystemC). This enables the early development of software applications using these high-level models. The C/C++ model is then translated to a hardware description language (HDL), that typically corresponds to the register transfer level (RT-Level). Once the processor is defined at the RT-Level, it is synthesized into gates and state elements based on user-defined constraints. In this thesis, novel techniques to estimate the power consumed by the microprocessor circuits at the gate level and RT-level of abstraction are presented. At the gate level, the average power consumed by microprocessor circuits is straight-forward to estimate, as the implementation is known. However, estimating the maximum or peak instantaneous power consumed by the microprocessor as a whole, when it is executing instructions, is a hard problem due to the high complexity of the state space involved. An hierarchical approach to estimate the peak power using powerful search techniques and formal tools is presented in this thesis. This approach has been extended and applied to solve the problem of estimating the maximum supply drop. Details on this extension and a discussion of promising results are also presented. In addition, this approach has been applied to explore the possibility of minimizing the leakage component of power dissipation, when the processor is idle. At the register transfer level, estimating the average power consumed by the circuits of the microprocessor is by itself a challenging problem. This is due to the fact that their implementation is unknown at this level of abstraction. The average power consumption directly depends on the implementation. The implementation, in turn, depends on the performance constraint imposed on the microprocessor. One of the factors affecting the performance of the microprocessor, is the speed of operation of its circuits. Considering these factors and dependencies (for making early design decisions at the RT-Level), a methodology that estimates the power vs. delay curves of microprocessor circuits has been developed. This will enable designers to make design decisions for even rudimentary designs without going through the time consuming process of synthesis. / text

Alzheimers sjukdom är mycket vanligt förekommande sett ur både ett internationellt och nationellt perspektiv. Ungefär 90 000 personer har diagnosen Alzheimers i Sverige. För att sjuksköterskan ska kunna ge god och adekvat vård behöver patientens upplevelse av sjukdomen uppmärksammas. Syftet med denna studie var att belysa patientens upplevelse av första fasen vid Alzheimers sjukdom. Studien genomfördes som en litteraturöversikt där tolv vetenskapliga artiklar bearbetades och analyserades för att sedan utgöra resultatet. I resultatet framkom fem teman, bli en främling för sig själv, acceptera och förneka, hantera livet med minnessvårigheter, leva med föreställningen om Alzheimers sjukdom och rädsla för framtiden. Flera personer med Alzheimers upplevde att sjukdomen innebar en stor förändring och en negativ påverkan på deras liv. Personerna utvecklade olika strategier för att hantera livet med sjukdomen. Personer med Alzheimers upplevde brister i mötet med hälso- och sjukvårdspersonal. Framtida forskning bör fokusera på mötet mellan patienten och sjuksköterskan samt patientens upplevelser av erhållen vård för att kunna förbättra vårdinsatserna och sjuksköterskors bemötande. / Alzheimer’s disease has, seen from an international and national perspective, high occurrence. Up to 90 000 people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in Sweden. It is important to pay attention to the patient’s experience for the nurse to be able to give good and adequate care. The purpose of this study was to highlight patient’s experience in the early stage of Alzheimer’s disease. A literature review was conducted and twelve research articles were processed and analyzed to conclude the result. The result revealed five main themes, to become a stranger in one’s life, acceptance and denial, coping with memory loss in everyday life, living with the idea of Alzheimer’s disease and fear of the future. Several persons with Alzheimer’s felt that the disease meant a big change and had a negative impact on their lives. People with Alzheimer’s developed different strategies to help them cope with the disease. People with Alzheimer’s experienced inadequacies in encounters with health care personnel. Further research should focus on health care encounters in patient perspective and their experience of received care in order to improve health care interventions and nurses’ attitudes.

Entrepreneurs develop new technology ventures in uncertain conditions with unproven technologies and limited resources. The majority of such ventures fail, yet entrepreneurship is regarded as a national (and regional) engine for economic growth. This thesis aims to examine entrepreneurs’ attitudes to failure in order to reveal insight on how entrepreneurs learn and how they identify subsequent opportunities, and investigate possible regional differences in such attitudes and entrepreneurial responses. There is much literature on entrepreneurial failure but relatively little that is focused on attitudes to failure, the high-technology industry, or international comparisons. This thesis examines how entrepreneurs’ attitudes to failure in early-stage technology companies differ in the USA (Silicon Valley), UK (Cambridge) and Germany (Munich), and implications for entrepreneurial learning and opportunity identification in these regions. Interviews with habitual entrepreneurs explore their experiences of failed ventures, using a methodology from qualitative psychology - Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) - for the gathering and analysis of data to reveal emergent trends. This analysis is then used to compare attitudes to failure within and between each region, and a preliminary conceptual framework is proposed for analyzing future experiences of entrepreneurial failure. Findings from this idiographic study suggest that although each entrepreneur’s experience of and attitudes to failure is unique, there are more commonalities than differences between regions. Furthermore, these findings reveal the importance of the use of language and narrative in the analysis of such accounts. In addition, the results allow reflection on the appropriateness and limitations of methodologies such as IPA for this subject. This thesis contributes to theory by examining ‘effectuation’ as a way to understand these experiences, and discussing the impact of findings in relation to attribution theory, prospect theory and real-options theory. This thesis contributes to practice by augmenting existing knowledge of entrepreneurial failure through the comparative (regional) approach and the industry-specific (high-technology) focus. It may also improve the preparedness of new practitioners and entrepreneurs, with positive implications for future entrepreneurial success.

The challenges faced by early-stage entrepreneurs are well researched, however, the role played by an entrepreneur’s social capital, social network and incubation in moving the business along the entrepreneurial process, still needs to be better understood. The objective of this study was to show that with successful networking and the use of social capital, the total early-stage entrepreneurial activity rate of South Africa could be increased.A qualitative research design was employed whereby 12 in-depth interviews were conducted. Three themes emerged from the data analyses that are the utilisation of social capital, social networks and incubators in firstly launching and growing ventures.The key findings were, firstly, that incubation should form part of an early stage entrepreneur’s social capital. Secondly, those entrepreneurs benefited from their social capital and incubator in terms of tangible and intangible resources. Finally, the entrepreneurs persevered as a result of the advice, encouragement and validation that they got from their networks. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

In the current digital era, social media has become an important element in the business world. Several theoretical studies have addressed the use of social media platforms in business operations. In this study, we tried to understand LinkedIn’s role in entrepreneurs’ effectuation processes by conducting 11 semi-structured interviews with (co-) founders in early stage startups across different industries in Sweden. Our research found that entrepreneurs utilized LinkedIn as one of their available means and used it extensively in their day-to-day business activities. LinkedIn helps entrepreneurs expand their networks and start partnership with people across border. LinkedIn also acts as an important source of information for early stage startups’ founders to be aware of what is happening in the industry and to be in control towards the shifting market. This thesis opens the door for future research to address the connection between social media platforms and entrepreneurs’ effectuation processes. This study can also trigger more entrepreneurs to adopt LinkedIn in their business operations.