A review of the innovation literature reveals theoretical models and success factors that pertain to the front end of innovation. However these models and factors fail to offer insight into factors large organizations consider when specifically performing the activity of idea selection. To bridge this gap, a grounded theory method was used to extract knowledge on innovation idea selection from 28 senior executives and innovation directors from 10 different, large organizations (defined as annual revenues greater than $1 billion). Analysis of the interview data resulted in the identification of 5 systemic and 4 implementation factors that large organizations consider when selecting innovation ideas. The 5 systemic factors are the critical selection factors that can be utilized by managers in practice. They include organization, customer, financial, strategic, and market/industry factors. The 4 implementation factors reflect novel findings related to the underlying issues with applying the systemic factors in idea selection. The implementation factors include innovation classification, innovation need, innovation support, and innovation alignment. Identifying critical decision making factors contributes to the innovation literature and provides large organizations with a better understanding of the selection phenomenon and enables them to apply selected factors to improve their current approach.

In this study I investigated the process drama convention of tableau to mediate for the representation of main ideas in science information texts. My pedagogical goal was to focus on the body as a tool for engaging with information texts and my rationale for this goal was the belief that the body is neglected in classroom learning. The task of creating caused the students to be active and to think of their own and other bodies as signifiers of meaning. The methodology was based on a formative experiment that allowed for changes and modifications to be made in response to the intervention of tableau. Formative and design experiments recognize that classrooms are ecologically complex research sites that are situated in particular cultural and historical contexts. Theories related to cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), expansive and embodied learning frame this research as paradigms that recognize the dialectics between activity and culture and the body in and of the world. In the study tableau is framed as an innovative learning method that disrupts the traditional and historical methods for identifying main idea, such as the annotation of text. Through the disruption of tableau came opportunities to expand notions of literacy and comprehension as well as the traditional associations of drama with fiction texts. The study shows that tableau is a flexible mediating tool that can be applied to the current focus on informational texts and close reading.

This study set out primarily to investigate the nature of reading comprehension instruction in Saint Lucia, and to examine the explanations of teachers with regard to the factors that they perceive contribute to Grade 6 students' failure in the main idea comprehension test in the national Common Entrance Examination in Saint Lucia. Four effective Grades 5 and 6 teachers (two per grade) from two Saint Lucian primary schools participated in a total of four individual semi-structured interviews and were observed in their regularly scheduled reading comprehension lessons. A total of 27 lessons were observed and audio tape-recorded to examine the nature of reading comprehension instruction in the classrooms. From this cohort of lessons, a sample of 16 lessons was randomly selected and transcribed to determine the presence of direct instruction in comprehension strategies, and the quality of instruction that took place. This quality was measured and described in terms of the elements of the Direct Instruction Model (Pearson Dole, 1987), the nature of questioning, and time allotted to instruction. This data was also used to make comparisons between Grades 5 and 6 classes. The results show that the four teachers perceived that there are four areas of blame for students' poor performance in reading comprehension: the teacher's inability to instruct, the students' poor decoding and comprehension abilities, the inadequacy of the main idea test, and the teaching materials available for teaching comprehension. However, the main factor perceived by teachers as contributing to the students' poor performance is teachers' inability to instruct. Nonetheless, the observation of the Grades 5 and 6 effective teachers' reading comprehension lessons showed that these teachers were indeed teaching a number of comprehension strategies. They relied predominantly on the question answering strategy in all their lessons which was mainly taught in combination with other strategies. However, it was the teaching of summarization through the main idea that was the dominant strategy more explicitly taught in 7 of the 16 lessons observed, appearing more frequently in the Grade 6 classes. An assessment of the quality of the reading comprehension instruction revealed that 11 of1 6 lessons, included all the four elements of direct instruction, and were rated as 'excellent' in quality. None of the lessons had fewer than two elements identified on the model. An assessment of the types of questions asked also showed that questioning was used both for the purpose of assessment and as an instructional strategy. The timing of the lessons support the quality of instruction, as 90% of the total time observed was allotted to instruction. The greater portion of that time went to guided practice (38%) and independent practice (33%) of reading comprehension strategies. This study shows that explicit comprehension instruction of strategies is evident in the reading comprehension classes of the 4 effective Saint Lucian Grades 5 and 6 teachers. It is therefore recommended that educational officials ensure that similar practices are maintained in other Saint Lucian classes, that the reading comprehension instruction practices of a wider cross section of Saint Lucian teachers be examined, and that future research looks into other probable causes of students' failure on the main idea comprehension test.

In recent years, there has been a strong interest in developing Creativity Support Tools for many exciting areas of research such as art and music. Yet few such tools have been developed to support creativity in advertising. This is unusual since advertising, like art and music, is a highly creative endeavour of the human mind. The goal of advertising is to transform a communicational objective of a product or a service into a creative idea. A tool that would enhance the development of creative ideas in advertising would be highly beneficial for the advertising industry and possibly shed light on the mystery behind creativity. In this thesis, I developed Creative Pad, a new Creativity Support Tool to assist advertising creative in generating creative ideas for advertising. In developing Creative Pad, I studied advertising creativity and human creative thinking. I developed a framework for analysing the advertising process, in which the process is viewed as having three distinct phases: a message, an idea, and an execution. A significant implication of this view is that the process for developing ideas for new advertisements and the process of executing those ideas and turning them into creative products are independent. Each step is the result of a significant creative process. Creative Pad is developed to assist in the development of creative ideas for new advertisements. To assist this creativity, relevant triggers are needed. Research has shown that individuals with high associative skills produce more creative advertising. Creative Pad supports the associative skills of the advertising creative and exploits the use of the Internet as a dynamic database. It finds words and sentences related to the original communicational objective, providing relevant triggers for the associative creative process in the minds of the advertising creative. Several experiments using Creative Pad were conducted with advertising creative and students with no advertising background. The results show that Creative Pad supports the generation of new ideas in two ways. First, and most important, all the subjects were able to develop interesting new ideas. In particular, the advertising creative were able to design a sketch of the advertisement from ideas generated using Creative Pad. Second, I was able to find a connection between the triggers, the words and sentences selected by the user during the creative process, and the ideas generated. Although the connection might be considered a weak one, it nonetheless demonstrates that a connection exists between the ideas developed by the advertising creative and those suggested by Creative Pad.

在現今社會，科技的發達帶給人類富裕的物質生活，但隨著科技發展的腳步愈來愈快，自然資源也被大量而快速地掠奪，地球生態環境已遭致嚴重的破壞，人類的未來著實令人擔憂。同樣地，在人際關係的層面上，理性與效率的計算也日益加深人與人之間的鴻溝，競爭、傾軋腐蝕了人性良善的本心，最後的結果是人人慨嘆世風日下、個個感覺心靈空虛。 　　在十七世紀的西方，尼采(F. W. Nietzsche)宣判「上帝已死」，但在二十一世紀的今天，宗教卻每每撫慰了無數人的心靈，成為他們生存的重要依歸，這清楚顯示了「上帝未死，佛陀仍在」。而在台灣，若干大型佛教團體因其理念吸引了近百萬善男信女的衷心護持，志願奉獻金錢與心力投入關懷社會的行列，這樣的宗教感召力量由衷令人驚嘆，也不禁讓人肅然起敬。 　　法鼓山的精神導師──聖嚴法師，以終生還報三寶恩的願心，海內外奔波弘法，實踐其「建設人間淨土」的理念，並以「禪修」接引大眾「提昇人的品質」。法鼓山以「心靈環保」的推手自我期許，十數年來持續不斷地透過各種各樣的方式推動「心靈環保」的觀念；並以聖嚴法師所揭示的「三大教育」──「大學院教育」、「大普化教育」、「大關懷教育」來落實「心靈環保」。而在迎接千禧年的前夕，法鼓山提出了「心」五四運動，以「四安」、「四它」、「四要」、「四感」、「四福」所涵攝的觀念與方法，做為因應二十一世紀的新生活主張，目的在將深奧艱澀的佛法用淺顯易懂的語言讓大眾受益。因此，法鼓山所傳揚的佛法是生活化、人性化、人間化的，這的確印證了一句話：「佛法不離世間覺」。 　　本研究植基於對法鼓山理念向外推展運作的關注，憑藉社會改革的重要策變工具──社會行銷做為切入點，系統性地剖析了法鼓山理念的社會行銷過程。而本文在研究的路徑上，乃先針對社會行銷的重要理論做一檢視；而後蒐羅相關資料以瞭解法鼓山的背景，並探研聖嚴法師的思想脈絡，從而釐清法鼓山理念的內在意涵與外延意向；之後，更深入訪談了法鼓山體系中與本研究旨趣相涉之重要單位的內外部人員，復藉由社會行銷的分析架構，以總體、個體兩個層次，分別就法鼓山整體的理念行銷運作，與具體的活動個案，深入分析其實際運作過程。誠然，在研究分析之後發現，法鼓山的理念正如前述所說的，雖是源自於佛法，卻相當生活化、平易近人，因此很容易被大眾所理解及接受；至於其理念的行銷運作方面，也確有諸多可資其他組織借鏡之處，例如聖嚴法師一再期勉法鼓山弟子們要學習菩薩的慈悲與智慧，要從己身做起，進而影響他人。此外，在筆者實地參與觀察之際，深深感受到法鼓山信眾們的奉獻精神，也發現聖嚴法師本人具有強烈的「葛理斯瑪」（charisma），他從容自在卻悲天憫人的氣質，以及對青年學子開示時的幽默風趣、妙語如珠，不僅擄獲了法鼓山全體弟子們的尊崇，也征服了年輕學子們的心。 　　至於後續研究的方向，建議深入探究宗教領袖的「葛理斯瑪」是否能在組織領導走向「制度化」(institutionalization)的過程中完整被承接，而不致「政隨人亡」，這應該是一個頗值得深究的主題。

<p>Att studera hur företagsledningen i skandinaviska upplevelseorganisationer drar nytta av anställdas kreativa förmåga, genom att stimulera till ett kreativt arbetsklimat och tillvarata de anställdas idéer.</p> / <p>To study how the management in Scandinavian theme parks takes benefit from the creativity of employees, by stimulating to a creative working climate and making use of employee ideas.</p>

<p>Feminist initiative – an idea analysis.</p><p>On the fourth of April in the year 2005 Feministic initiative (Fi) was created, it was an main response to the slow changes in the Swedish society, which claimed to establish an equal society. Equality has become one of the major indicators of a contemporary democratic society. The Swedish government has long proclaimed to reach this goal, but even though Sweden currently lies in the front among the democratic societies, while you consider equality issues, especially between the sexes, there is still a lot that need to be done in the Swedish society. Feministic initiative began as an organization and established a political party and participated in the election during the year 2006, but failed to reach a place in the parliament. Recently Feministic initiative said that they will participate in the upcoming election in the year 2010.</p><p>It made me wonder which feministic ideals that Feministic initiative actually practices. Feminism is a broad ideology, and a reaction against the society that claims to be democratic but systematically oppresses women. This oppression created feminism; but there is different views of feminism, my main objective in this paper is to present a few different feministic directions. These are, radicalfeminism, marxistic feminism, liberalfeminism, socialistic feminism, post-modernfeminism and black (women’s) feminism. From these theories will I create a analyze frame and try to locate different kinds of feministic ideas within Feministic initiatives policy documents called <em>F! for a feministic policy, election manifest</em> and <em>platform for Feministic initiative </em></p><p>Thus, the main focus in this paper to do an idea analyze and focus on Feministic initiative, do they really use the different ideas expressed within the different types of feminism that I consider in this paper in a equal manner? The conclusion is that Feministic initiative is tendentious, Feministic initiative uses ideas, perspectives and expressions that are typical for radicalfeminism more than they use ideas, perspectives and expressions from other types of feminism.</p>

The notion of sustainability has become an extensive area of research ever since the term emerged in the late 1980s, due to the negative effects of unsustainable production and consumption patterns on environmental stewardship, social equity and economic development. There have been various approaches developed for product design and education within the context sustainability. Biomimicry is one of those approaches, and its implications for product design education have recently started to be explored. In this study, an educational tool - Biomimicry Sketch Analysis (BSA) - was developed and integrated into the idea-generation phase of an educational design project at the undergraduate level in the Department of Industrial Design at the Middle East Technical University (METU). This integration is analyzed throughout the graduate thesis study, to understand and explore the implications of the biomimicry approach for sustainability in product design education. The educational tool within this approach was found as influential among the third year industrial design students for the idea-generation phase, yet the results of this study included both pros and cons for the incorporation of the BSA exercise.

Problem Att generera kreativa idéer i grupp kan anses vara en omöjlig uppgift när en arbetsgrupp är homogen där divergent tänkande saknas. Då veckomöten är identiska och innehåller upprepande processer i form av att samma dagordning repeteras, anser författarna att nya metoder är nödvändiga för att nya idéer ska träda fram. Syfte Författarna vill undersöka om en stegvis förändring i arbetsgruppens veckomötes rutiner kan öka antal idéer/ förslag som arbetsgruppen genererar fram. Tanken är att ge produktionsledaren ett verktyg som denne kan använda sig av när gruppen ska generera fram lösningar till arbetsrelaterade problem.  Metod Metoden i arbetet är en systematisk observation, det vill säga att flera observatörer studerar flera individers beteende med en specifik instruktion. Instruktionen anger vilka händelser som observeras. Instruktionen i detta arbete är studiens syfte som undersöker arbetsgruppens idégenerering. Den andra instruktionen ska informera deltagarna om den kreativa övningen. Teori Författarna tar upp viktiga förutsättningar som kan stimulera gruppkreativitet. Teorier som författarna tar med i arbetet beskriver bland annat ledarskapsstilar, motivation, kreativa övningar i grupp samt divergent tänkande. Empiri Genom att manipulera möten för en arbetsgrupp har författarna observerat om idégenereringen kan öka med hjälp av en förändring av lokalen samt kreativa övningar. De fyra observationstillfällen samt intervjuer har bidragit till en förståelse kring hur arbetsgruppen tar emot sådan förändring samt vilken effekt manipulationerna har på arbetsgruppens idégenerering.  Analys Svaret på arbetets frågeställningar har analyseras fram med hjälp av det teoretiska perspektivet samt empiriska studier som genomfördes på avdelningen som ingick i undersökningen. Frågor som besvaras handlar om hur man kan träna arbetsgruppen till att generera fler idéer, kommer antal idéer att öka med hjälp av våra manipulationer samt vilka förutsättningar bör skapas för att arbetsgruppen skall behålla kreativiteten. Resultat Författarna har utifrån empirin utvecklat en egen modell som skulle kunna användas av arbetsledaren som ett verktyg för arbetsgruppen att behålla idégenereringen vid framtida möten. Slutsats Författarna markerar i punktform förutsättningar som måste skapas för att denna arbetsgrupp ska använda kreativa övningar som ett verktyg vid idégenerering. Flera faktorer måste samspela för att kreativiteten ska behållas i framtiden. / Problems To generate creative ideas in groups can be considered an impossible task when a task force is homogeneous where divergent thinking is missing. When the weekly meetings are identical and contain repetitive processes in the form of the same agenda is repeated the authors consider that the new methods are necessary for new ideas to emerge. Purpose The authors would like to investigate if a step change in the working group meeting weekly routines can increase the working groups number of ideas / suggestions. The idea is to give the production manager a tool that he can use when the group generates solutions to work-related problems. Method The method of work is a systematic observation, namely that several observers studying several individual behavior with a specific instruction. The instruction specifies which events are observed. The instruction in this work is the study aim to investigate the working group idea generation. The second instruction is to inform participants about the creative exercise. Theory The authors raise important conditions that can stimulate group creativity. Highlighted theories include important inputs of leadership styles, motivation, creative exercises in groups and divergent thinking. Empirical studies By manipulating the meetings of a working group, the authors observed if idea generation increases through a change of venue, and creative exercises. The four observation sessions and interviews contribute to an understanding of how the working group receives such change, and the impact of the manipulations on ideas generated. Analysis The answer to questions has been analyzed with the help of theoretical perspectives and empirical studies conducted in the department surveyed. Questions answered about how to train working group to generate more ideas, the number of ideas to increase with the help of our manipulations and what conditions should be created for the group to maintain creativity. Results The authors have based on empirical data developed a model that could be used by the supervisor so that the group can keep the idea generation at future meetings. Conclusion The author’s highlight in bullet form what conditions must be created for this working group to use creative exercises as a tool for generating ideas. Several factors must interact for creativity to be retained in the future.

Coworking is a new type of work model that has been developing rapidly during the 21th century. However, no academic research has been conducted on the subject yet. We have, therefore, decided to study the subject in order to evaluate if and how Coworking has an effect on creativity. The problem with this thesis is that creativity is a broad subject that includes several variables. This has led us to study theories within the field of: innovation, motivation, personal traits, and environment in respect to the Creative Process by Sawyer (2006). These theories have laid the foundation of our theoretical framework and are used to study our purpose and answer the research questions. This thesis is built upon data from individual case studies from semi-structured interviewees with coworkers from The Hub in Stockholm, Sweden. These interviews have then been transcribed and categorized by the Content Analysis in accordance with Hancock (1998).  The data has then been analyzed in-depth by using Eisenhardt’s Cross-Case Pattern Analysis (1989) in order to evaluate the relevance and reliability of the data. The results from our analysis are presented in unity with our method and theoretical framework, this part concludes with a reflection over our purpose and suggestions for future areas of research. The main finding from the results is that Coworking has a positive effect on creativity. But, this is mainly due to the mix of people participating in Coworking. The diverse group of coworkers creates at network of knowledge located in an open atmosphere that simplifies the creation of new ideas. We believe that this thesis has contributed to the academic society as it currently is the only academic paper within the area of Coworking.