The aim of this thesis was to locate examples of the active involvement of major food retailers in innovation in food manufacturing, and to explain their reasons for this activity. Two characteristics of the food industry had an important bearing on the research: (1) slow growth in the demand for food and (2) the interaction between increasingly concentrated food manufacturing and retailing industries. The thesis seeks to improve existing theories of innovation, which do not embrace the possibility that retailers may make contributions to innovation in industries from which they obtain their supplies. Two principal investigation techniques were deployed. The first comprised in-depth interviews with major food retailers, which provided data on their purchasing policy for own label products, and on their technological activities. The second assessed the results of these policies by identifying the responsibility for major innovations in chickenmeat processing: a technological history was compiled from data drawn from several sources including industry experts and a literature search. Further studies indicate that the findings from the chickenmeat study are not a special case. The thesis contributes to theories of innovation by showing that food retailers with substantial in-house technological capability have played important roles in influencing technological change in food manufacturing. The need for restraint on the purchasing power of large retailers is an important policy issue. This thesis makes a contribution to the debate. Retailers' procurement policies which have been successful in stimulating innovation may also have wider relevance to other sectors of industry.

Abstracts In this thesis, we presented a frugal product and methodology for customizing prosthetic socket for developing countries where an overwhelming number of prostheses are necessary, and the availability, accessibility and cost of prosthetics are significant concerns to limb deficient persons that without the assistance of a prosthetic device may not be able to function. In order to design a frugal prosthetic socket, a design methodology is sought that will best achieve an appropriately designed, low-cost, with simple production method. Through the study of modern design methodologies, a strategy is proposed that emphasizes the intersection of the mechanical design process (contemporary design tools), biomechanics, and low-cost design. Key components of this methodology are previous research and frugal innovation in the design process. Along with a review of the state of the art, provide the groundwork for both the proposed new methodology as well as generating a new concept of prosthetic socket. The result of this study, using the generated concept and simple methodology, a frugal prosthetic socket (FPS) is developed to demonstrate the basic functionality of the concept and manufacturability of the proposed method. Finally, Frugal Prosthetic Socket is found as a solution for the problems since it can reduce one heavy complex process for optimizing customization of the prosthetic socket and reduce 70 % of the cost of the prosthetic socket by using local material (rawhide), local manufacturing technique and implementing frugal innovation concept.

Denna uppsats ämnar studera dataspelsbranschens premisser till att skapa kreativa och innovativa produkter med ett genusperspektiv. Genom intervjuer med kvinnor på ett antal dataspelsföretag inom samma koncern studeras organisationsstruktur och -kultur samt respondenternas upplevelser utifrån genus, bakgrund och förhållande till spel. På det insamlade materialet appliceras teorier och tidigare forskning kring innovation och genus för att analysera vad företaget har för förutsättningar till att producera nyskapande och framgångsrika spel. Resultatet visar att strukturen kan se olika ut i olika delar av företaget. Beroende på olika produktionsfaser skiftar strukturen mellan ett mer fritt läge med utrymme för nya idéer och ett striktare med fokus på effektivitet och produktivitet. Kulturen framstår som öppen och vänlig men att den enskilde individen bör ha ett stort spelintresse för att på så sätt öka sin kredibilitet och acklimatisera sig socialt. Det visar sig också att olika yrkesroller kan ha olika sociala förutsättningar i fråga om att influera och engagera sig i spelens utveckling. Trots omfattande skandaler i spelvärlden verkar företaget befriat från sexism och könsdiskriminering. Det förekommer däremot exempel då den ojämna könsfördelningen blir påtaglig vilket medför att det kan vara svårare för kvinnor att ta plats. De största besluten kring vilka spel som ska produceras tas i en hierarkisk och centraliserad struktur. Tidigare forskning visar att kvinnor kan ha svårt att avancera i sådana organisationer och begränsas således i sina möjligheter till att delta i beslutsfattandet om morgondagens speltitlar.

The globalisation processes changed in a short period of time the framework of the world economy competitiveness and bring new opportunities and challenges. In this new scenario, the European enterprises can only compete by taking full advantages of the new opportunity offered by knowledge-based economy. In fact, Europe cannot compete on the base of reducing labour costs, polluting environment or overexploiting raw materials. Indeed European economy productivity and growth should be based on use of frontier technology and ability to produce high-tech goods, manufactures and services (Lisbon Strategy, 2000). In this perspective, innovation is considered to vital importance, to have in Europe enterprises able to compete on a global scale and to take fully advantages of new market opportunities offered by ICT exploitation. EU expect such a transition will boost fast economic growth, creates better jobs, while at same time maintains and improve the European welfare model and the environment protection (Lisbon Strategy, 2000). The thesis wants to compare innovation policy programs in two Italian regions: Emilia-Romagna and Friuli-Venezia- Giulia. The proposal of the work is to analyse how the Regional Innovation Strategy of the two chosen cases were implemented in the last program period 2000-2006. Which structures have been created? How the money was allocated? What can we learn from the past? Which opportunities were missed and what can be done? Are they really innovative? The last part of the thesis is dedicated to compare the Regional Innovation Strategy of the chosen regions. Which differences we can detect? What are the similarities between the two cases? In order to understand this, I will study what characterize an innovative region and which forces drives innovation in a particular region. The thesis will be based on Lisbon Strategy (political perspective) as point of departure to explain the role of innovation and innovation policies as peculiar importance to European social, economic and environmental development. Furthermore, regional innovation strategies (policy perspective) will be discussed to explain how the two chosen European regions have implemented their strategies to boost their development trough innovation. In particular the Regional Innovation System theory (theoretical perspective) will be assessed. The method used is to analyse economic data in the two regions, analysis of documents from EU, national and regional level, comparative analysis of innovation policies in EU, national and regional policy documents. Tables and figures will be presented and used as an element in the work thesis. The expected results of the work are: understanding how the two chosen European regions have implemented their innovation strategies and compare regional innovation strategies of two selected regions (existent similarities and differences). / 0039-3296499184

The objective of this research is to examine the institutional development of biotechnology in Brazil and, in particular, the role played by small firms in fostering biotechnology in the health and agriculture sectors and their relationship with both universities and large firms. The interest in this study stems from the crucial role played by small, high technology firms in innovation and diffusion of new technologies. Case studies emphasising the innovative capacity of small firms in several advanced countries are now available. In the US, in particular, there has been a proliferation of hundreds of small firms in biotechnology since the late 70s. The pattern of biotechnology development in the US suggests that small firms are functioning as a "bridge" between academia and large corporations. In developing countries, very little is known about the role of small firms in innovation, especially in a new, high technology area such as biotechnology. In the early 1980s, however, the emergence of a number of small companies operating in biotechnology in Brazil suggested that this might be the beginning of a new indigenous industry in this area. The purpose of this study was therefore to find out precisely what these biotechnology companies were doing, how far they fitted the American model of the new biotechnology firms and their links with the academic base, financial structures and large firms. It is the first study in this area, and it has been deliberately directed towards concentrating on the role of these small companies have played in the development and diffusion of this new technology. The empirical research presents original data collected from detailed interviews with twelve representative firms and relevant governmental agencies, carried out in 1989. Interviews were also conducted with academics in order to assess how far the small biotechnology firms were linked into the growing competence in this area of Brazilian universities. The main findings show that there are differences but also similarities between the American and the Brazilian pattern of biotechnology development. The Brazilian companies are not operating at the cutting-edge of this technology. On the contrary. they are using older and well tried techniques such as plant tissue culture. They do, however. link into the universities and large corporations.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how and by what paths a developing economy like Korea builds a competitive and innovative capital goods sector. The enquiry focuses on the role of user firms in shaping the dynamics of machine tools innovation. It develops the hypotheses that the users, on the one hand, create a basis for the specialised suppliers to embark on a dynamic path to innovation through investment activities and on the other, they become involved directly in the development and commercialisation of machine tools; and that such user activities have a positive impact on the building up of competitive advantage not only for users themselves but for specialised suppliers. In order to confinn the hypotheses, this thesis carries out empirical investigations into Japan and Korea. It analyses quantitative data at the industry level with some firm-specific information for the Japanese case, while it analyses the results of a field survey for the Korean case. The results show that the users in both countries, represented by car makers, appear to have involved themselves in the technological and entrepreneurial entry into machine tools along with making active investments. In consequence, they made a considerable contribution to machine tools innovation, increasing the competitive advantage for the machine tool sector as well as user sectors in both countries. This thesis also attempts to apply the hypotheses to an international-level analysis. It develops the notion that the international differences in the investment of local user sectors explain the international asymmetries of machine tools innovation, bringing the consequence of the differences in the competitiveness of the machine tool sector as well as its user sectors. Cross-country analyses are conducted in order to test the notion. The results reveal that the intercountry variations in the investment performance in national user sectors are closely associated with the international gaps in machine tools innovation, which in tum significantly explain the variations of the export performance between countries in both the machine tool sector and its user sectors. These theoretical and empirical analyses produce many useful policy implications for developing the capital goods sector of Korea as well as other developing countries. They also contribute to the understanding of the dynamic process of industrial innovation and so to the development of innovation theory. In addition, the study yields an insight into why Japan has succeeded in a large area of user sectors and the machine tool sector over a short period of time.

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