<p>This thesis presents how and if open innovation software (OIS) supports different types of creativity. The relevant theories and information on how an OIS is designed and, the relevant theories of creativity are used for making a model to test on different OIS.</p><p>The result shows that most OIS functionality supported the structuralist and situationalist school of creativity but it also shows that the inspirationalist school was poorly supported in the current functionality. With the result we discuss the implications of supporting all types of creativity to support the most of the users and in the end enable more innovations.</p>

Over the last decades we have witnessed a profound digitalization of tangible products. While this shift offers great opportunities, it also exposes product developing industries to significant challenges. In these industries organizations, markets, and technologies are tuned for mass production, providing competitive advantage through scale economics. Typically, firms exercise modular strategies to deliver such scale benefits. Rooted in Herbert Simon’s notion of near decomposability, modular product architectures allow for production assets, such as tools, processes, and plants, to be effectively reused across product variants and over generations of designs. However, they come at a price; modularity requires overall design specifications to be frozen well before production. In practice, this tends to inscribe functional purpose in the structures of the system, effectively preventing firms from taking advantage of the speed by which digitized products can be developed and modified. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate and explain how product developing organizations adapt architectural thinking to balance the proven benefits of modularity and the emerging opportunities provided by digital technology. In doing so, it introduces a complementary architectural frame, grounded in Christopher Alexander’s seminal work on patterns. This frame associates the concept of architecture with generativity and reuse of ideas, rather than scale economics and reuse of physical assets. Sensitizing the theoretical framework through a longitudinal case study of digital product innovation this thesis derives several implications for theory and practice. Across four embedded cases in the automotive industry it demonstrates that generative capability follows from a shared organizational view on products as enablers and catalyzers of new, yet unknown functionality. Such an emergence-centric view requires product developing firms to rethink existing governance models. Rather than exercising control through specific functionality, inscribed in modular product structures, it offers the benefit of influencing innovation through general functional patterns, serving as raw material in distributed and largely uncoordinated innovation processes. This shift in focus, from specific functionality to general functional patterns, enables a new strategic asset for product developing firms. It opens up for proactive rather than reactive strategies, where the architecture makes an instrument to cultivate new ideas and business opportunities, rather than a tool for cost savings.

Background: In mobile phone industry, Smartphones are gaining popularity as an effective communication tool, providing users with “Smart” functionalities of both cell-phone and Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). Experts in mobile industry expect that smartphones are going to be dominant in mobile phone market. However, Smartphone industry is facing a different reality, with its declining sales and less market share, forcing research companies (Gartner, Canalys, etc.) to change their expectations. This situation leads us to another important and often ignored perspective of innovation challenges, i.e. consumers' resistance; as consumers' adoption and purchase decision makes a significant difference in the success of innovative products. Problem: Innovation has been called as a key factor for companies to survive and grow in the long run, especially in the dynamic &amp; complex markets and uncertain economic circumstances. Despite the successful outcome of innovations, inhibition or delay in the diffusion of innovation may translate this success into market failure, where resistance has been called as one of the main reasons for inhibiting or delaying the innovation diffusion. Consumers adoption of innovation depend upon several factors: the most important of which are specified as consumers’ characteristics (psychological characteristics of consumers; how they view the innovativeness with respect to that particular product), and the innovation characteristics (outcome and effects of innovation). Past research on innovation &amp; consumers characteristics represents good relationship among the innovation/consumers factors and the adoption/implementation of that innovation by consumers. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the relationship between consumers' resistance and different factors from innovation and consumers' characteristics. Thereafter, important factors are identified that mainly affect/determine consumers' resistance to smartphones. Moreover, the inter-relationship (correlation) among the selected factors is found out, to know the affects of each factor on other factors. Method: Following abductive approach, confirmatory factor analysis has been done on pre-test questionnaires to test, improve, and verify the constructs (variables/questions) for measuring the hypothesized factors. A theoretical model has been proposed from the hypotheses; and Structural Equation Modeling has been applied, where results are estimated through Partial Least Square and AMOS approaches, using a sample of 330 respondents from Sweden. SmartPLS software has been used to estimate results, thereafter, AMOS has been used to check and verify the results. Almost same results have been derived from both approaches, while results from PLS are found as more satisfactory. Conclusions: Five out of eight hypotheses have been supported by our empirical data, where H1 i.e. relative advantage, H3 i.e. complexity, and H4 i.e. perceived risk, are from innovation characteristics, while H6 i.e. motivation, and H7 i.e. „favorable attitude towards existing products‟ are from consumers' characteristics. Motivation, Complexity, Relative Advantage, and Perceived Risk are found as important factors (as per their order) that affect/determine consumers' resistance to smartphones. Relative Advantage &amp; Motivation are found as positively correlated, and Perceived Risk &amp; Complexity are found as positively correlated. Negative correlation has been found between Perceived Risk and relative advantage. Similarly, negative correlation has been found between motivation and complexity. The proposed model of consumers resistance to smartphones shows an acceptable goodness of fit, where 65% (R-square value) of variation in consumers resistance is caused/explained by the hypothesized factors. / The Presentation (Defense) has been attended by Cecilia Bjursel instead of our supervisor Desalegn Abraha.

No description available.

Innovation and regional development are two topics that were (separately) very much discussed by scholars, and in recent literature there have been attempts to combine and show how the former can contribute to the latter. At the same time, different types of regional agglomeration systems have been developed and discussed such as: clusters, hubs, innovation systems, technopolies, and knowledge cities. However, there is a significant gap in literature when it comes to innovation zones. As a result, there is a need to look into the role of innovation zones in regional development and examine the possible benefits (if any) that the innovation zones can provide to the region to which they are affiliated   . / MASTERS THESIS IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

As a result of today`s competitive situation, the demand on the rapid development of research has increased. Both universities and companies are realizing the importance of a functioning and well-developed cooperation. A close collaboration and communication between universities and the business community has in many studies been shown to be very important for business development and knowledge transfer. The purose was to examine how communication and collaboration between universities and industry can be developed and strenghthen on the basis of innovative thinking. In order to initially identify the perceived problems the authors studied how communication and cooperation manifests itslelf today between the two parties, what does not work and how the existing tools for communication and collaboration look like today. The study was conducted based on a qualitative approach and the empirical data have primarily been based on interviews with represantatives from both universities and industry, but also by a smaller invironmental scanning and the authors own experience. The results indicate that the perceived deficiencies concem the establishment of cooperation but also the communication quality, for instance the feedback on the performed. There also appears to be difficult to achieve a high degree of win-win situtation as a result of cooperation. The part that belives that it does not work is the students. None of the responding seems to see the full potential of interacting with each other; Although there are many reasons and much to gain from a partnership the empirical data shows that the parties focus on only two motives for cooperation. The students focus on the opportunity for jobs after graduation and the representatives from the companies see the universities as a recruitment channel. The existing tools for communcation seem to work in a very limited extent. The authors have as a result of this thesis generated a proposal of how communication could be improved in order to respond to the perceived problems. These ideas are presented in the section of suggestions for improvement.

Abstract Title: Closing the gap between frugal and reverse innovation – Lessons learned from the case of the Tata Nano Authors: Martin Aschmoneit (martin.aschmoneit@gmail.com) Dijana Janevska (dijana.janevska@gmail.com) Supervisor: Malin Tillmar Date: May 27, 2013 Background: Emerging markets are growing and have become increasingly important for the global economy, while the growth of developed markets has slowed down. Emerging economies are the home of a new type of innovation that can help multinationals (both Western and local) to achieve further growth. Reverse innovation is a new approach that entails developing frugal products in emerging markets that are later introduced in advanced economies. Aim: To develop a framework of reverse innovation, and to use this framework to find critical issues necessary for the Tata Nano to enter developed economies. Hence, we develop our own definition and a model of reverse innovation that will be used in the analysis of the Nano, with a specific focus on: the search for reverse innovation features present in the case and the problems/obstacles in the reverse innovation process. Methodology: Qualitative approach using a single-case study based on predominantly secondary data. The case study of the Tata Nano was chosen due to its compatibility with our research aims. Completion and results: The case of the Tata Nano fulfills all but one of the requirements for a reverse innovation: the last step of the process or the transition of the innovation to a developed market. Several critical issues regarding the reversal process were identified and discussed. Keywords: reverse innovation, frugal innovation, emerging markets, multinational companies, Tata Nano.

Denna studie syftar till att ta reda på vilka element som höjer det innovativa klimatet i företag och organisationer. Utifrån dessa element har författarna skapat kriterier som heter ”Soft innovation”. Visionen är att framtiden skulle kunna standardisera dessa kriterier. En abduktiv metod har använts. Metodvalet har motiverats med att kriterierna lättare accepteras om de är socialt konstruerade. Man kan påverka innovationsklimatet i företag, då det tar kortare tid än att förändra organisationskulturen. Dock antas att organisationsklimatet på sikt kan påverkar organisationskulturen. Kriterierna ska ses som vägledande riktlinjer för att stimulera ett innovativt klimat. Teori och empiri visade på många gemensamma faktorer som påverkar innovationsklimatet i företag. Resultatet av teori och empiri visade att de viktigaste faktorerna för att uppmuntra till kreativitet hos medarbetare var ett bra ledarskap, uppmuntran, belöning av kreativt beteende och misslyckande, projektgrupper som driver idén till verklighet och strukturer för hur kreativiteten ska hanteras.

Denna studie syftar till att ta reda på vilka element som höjer det innovativa klimatet i företag och organisationer. Utifrån dessa element har författarna skapat kriterier som heter ”Soft innovation”. Visionen är att framtiden skulle kunna standardisera dessa kriterier. En abduktiv metod har använts. Metodvalet har motiverats med att kriterierna lättare accepteras om de är socialt konstruerade. Man kan påverka innovationsklimatet i företag, då det tar kortare tid än att förändra organisationskulturen. Dock antas att organisationsklimatet på sikt kan påverkar organisationskulturen. Kriterierna ska ses som vägledande riktlinjer för att stimulera ett innovativt klimat. Teori och empiri visade på många gemensamma faktorer som påverkar innovationsklimatet i företag. Resultatet av teori och empiri visade att de viktigaste faktorerna för att uppmuntra till kreativitet hos medarbetare var ett bra ledarskap, uppmuntran, belöning av kreativt beteende och misslyckande, projektgrupper som driver idén till verklighet och strukturer för hur kreativiteten ska hanteras.

This thesis presents how and if open innovation software (OIS) supports different types of creativity. The relevant theories and information on how an OIS is designed and, the relevant theories of creativity are used for making a model to test on different OIS. The result shows that most OIS functionality supported the structuralist and situationalist school of creativity but it also shows that the inspirationalist school was poorly supported in the current functionality. With the result we discuss the implications of supporting all types of creativity to support the most of the users and in the end enable more innovations.