Front-end activities prior to the product and process development have been pointed out by studies to be an essential part in development of new products and processes. Here selecting ideas is found to be route cause of success and failures of the new product and process development outcomes. The existing studies concentrate on larger companies, where tools and processes often are not fitting into the SME which have different needs and settings and lack attention regarding effective and sustainable processes in the front-end. This thesis addresses the need for a more detailed view of the most important factors that influence selecting innovative ideas in SME, with a purpose to address these factors and improve them in the front end process of these companies.  For this, by means of extensive literature study on SME, front-End and idea selection theories, a theoretical model for critical success factors for idea selection is developed, containing 21 factors. These factors are divided in main aspects of Shared vision, Innovation strategy, Leadership and management, Appropriate, structure and organization, Key individuals. Subsequently this model is tested in a case study of Bioteria Technologies AB in which the company’s idea selection process is analysed with the model.  The empirical analysis and discussions resulted in learning about the status of the company against the factors from which propositions follow.  The outcome of the study is a model that can be used for addressing what the challenges and opportunities are for the SME related to improving or adopting an idea selection phase.

Managing innovations is a well studied success factor for companies and organizations. This research focuses on the recently established Lean Startup Methodology (LSM) and the obstacles of implementing it in early- and later-stage business-to-business (B2B) Software as as Service (SaaS) startups. The scarcity of academic research around this framework, in contrast to its popularity, motivated the researchers’ aim to provide a better understanding on how it could be adapted to better fit the needs of these companies.Following an interpretivist paradigm, this qualitative research uses a literature review and semi-structured interviews for its purposes. Interviews were conducted with six individuals at four different early- and late-stage startups. The focus was on understanding the realities of working with innovation management and the different approaches at early and later stage startups. Startups face an abundance of ideas regarding what to do next, a hypothesis confirmed with this study. It is the researchers’ belief that the LSM does not provide sufficient tools for organizations to make an idea selection decision without committing too many resources initially. Lastly, the importance of product ownership for an effective innovation management process was validated.In conclusion, we present the need for an updated Lean Startup Methodology with a dedicated selection step to validate an idea early in the process. This contributes to the theory of innovation management and its practical implementation. The identified gap in academic research around frameworks tailored towards these types of organizations provides a good starting point for future research.

An organization constitutes an environment of social relationships. The interdependence of the organization’s members and their nature as human beings create particular effects, which influence social interaction. One of these effects is the focus area of this master thesis – authority. Understanding the dynamics of authority is crucial for designing effective organizations. This thesis contributes to its analysis by performing a qualitative-heuristic literature analysis, which integrates central components of authority into a holistic, cognitive model. These components comprise the origins of authority in organizations, the channels that induce authority, individual characteristics that promote authority, and different categorizations of authority. The cognitive model facilitates the understanding of the process of authority in organizations and allows to deduce its effects on the behavior of organization members. In a second step, the findings on authority are related with two sub-processes of organizational innovation – idea generation and idea validation. Finally, this master thesis concludes six research propositions on the effect of authority on these processes. It argues that authority is likely to constrain idea generation performance, but might facilitate idea selection performance. / En organisation utgörs av en miljö med sociala relationer. Medlemmarnas självständighet inom organisationen och deras sätt att vara människor skapar särskilda effekter som påverkar social interaktion. En av dessa effekter är auktoritet vilket kommer vara huvudämnet för examensarbetet. Att förstå auktoriteters dynamik är avgörande för att kunna utforma effektiva organisationer. Denna uppsats bidrar till ämnet genom en kvalitativ-heuristisk litteratur analys som integrerar centrala delar av auktoritet i en holistisk, kognitiv modell. Dessa komponenter innehåller auktoritetens ursprung inom organisationer, kanaler som inducerar auktoritet, individuella egenskaper som främjar auktoritet och olika kategorier av auktoritet. Den kognitiva modellen underlättar förståelsen och processen av auktoritet inom organisationer. Detta gör det möjligt att härleda effekterna till organisationens medlemmar. Resultaten av att undersöka auktoriteten utmynnar i två delprocesser av innovation i organisationen – idégenerering och idévalidering. Avslutningsvis presenterar uppsatsen sex forskningsförslag angående dess effekt av auktoritet på dessa processer. Resultaten påvisar att auktoriteten kommer begränsa idégenerationens prestanda men kan underlätta idévalets resultat.