KARLSSON, ISAAC (2012). REGIONAL INNOVATION SYSTEMS: POLICY AND APPLICATION IN A SWEDISH CONTEXT. Uneven economic development has been an issue of interest for a long time. Recently focus has shifted from inequalities between countries to growing inequalities within countries. With the EU as one of the most prominent supporters, regional innovation systems have become a centerpiece in the battle against uneven development. This paper examines how these strategies and policies are transferred through the governance hierarchy from the supranational level to the periphery of small Swedish municipalities. The paper also examines how these strategies, influenced by theories and empirical evidence from successful innovative regions, are conceptualized and implemented in a Swedish context. Analysis of policy documents and interviews with regional and municipal actors have been the basis of the empirical material. The criteria for selecting cases to study are proximity to a university, and key economic variables for the municipalities. The analysis indicated that there seems to be a somewhat significant policy transfer effect into the strategies of the Swedish regions, but this does not necessarily reach the municipal level. There also seems to be a gap between the transfer of the strategies to their implementation, mainly caused by ambiguities in the structure of the system, in part stemming from an absence of a national plan on innovative regional systems.

Turism är den nya basnäringen i svensk ekonomi. För att företag inom turistindustrin ska bli konkurrenskraftiga och nå ökad tillväxt krävs innovationsprocesser. Tre studentuppsatser från 2007 har legat till grund för den här undersökningen. Syftet med den här studien är att kartlägga hur kunskapsöverföring som överlämnats från universitet till turistföretag bidragit med innovationsprocesser som lett till ökad tillväxt och konkurrenskraft i turistföretag. I samtliga undersökta fall påvisas att den överförda kunskapen varit mer bekräftande än innovativ för uppdragsgivarna. Vidare visar undersökningen att studentuppsatserna som erhållits varit för omfattande och för svåra att ta till sig för merparten av mottagarna. Undersökningen visar att kunskapen i sig, genom studentuppsatserna från universiteten inte varit bristfällig och obrukbar. Istället visar undersökningen att kommunikationen, mottagandet och situationen vid överföringen av uppsatsarbetets resultat varit bristfällig och hämmat implementering av innovationsprocesser.   Resultatet av studien visar att det behövs nya synsätt kring kunskapsöverföring och hur den kommuniceras. Att utveckla ett kunskapsöverföringsprogram, kvalitetssäkra överföringen och fastställa speciella normer för presentationen av utfört uppsatsarbete skulle kunna vara potentiella faktorer som förbättrade processen och medförde att merparten av mottagarna inom turistindustrin skulle kunna ta till sig den överförda kunskapen på ett bättre sätt.

<p>Organizational researchers have long considered innovation a critical activity. While insightful regarding the nature of the innovation process and the rewards and risk associated with innovation, prior work has neglected the perspective that innovations function within a firm's wider product portfolio. This perspective enables assessment of when innovations truly generate value for firms and the mechanisms through which it does so. I propose a general theory for how innovation creates new value for a firm and apply this theory to understanding how new value from innovation is reflected in the changes it manifests in the diversity of a firm's product portfolio.</p><p>This dissertation addresses these issues by examining how innovation introductions drive two types of changes in the firm's portfolio - product portfolio and within-brand portfolio diversification - and how those changes influence the new value firms will capture. In addition, I examine the degree to which these outcomes are contingent upon the characteristics of the innovation itself. Thus, I address the inherent interdependencies in managing innovations while still capturing the influence of individual innovation characteristics. </p><p>The importance of this topic lies in both theory and practice. Theoretically, this work sheds light on the degree to which innovation value is a function of the value accrued to the innovation itself and its interdependency with the firm's overall product and brand portfolios. Practically, understanding how the new value from innovation incorporates the effect of the innovation on the firm's portfolio enables firms to grasp how decisions they make regarding innovation pipelines and in managing their overall portfolio influences their expected success.</p> / Dissertation

Ratings of e-auction sellers have been an important index for e-auction buyers to form their trust. Many researches show that trust impacts the success of e-auction. Reputation or ratings have significant impacts on trust in e-auction. In order to investigate the phenomena of ratings and trust, this research adopts the diffusion of innovation model to perform an empirical data fitting analysis for the trends of seller¡¦s ratings. The results show that the rating grows slowly in the beginning, and it accelerates when the ratings are accumulated. The maximum growth rate change usually is in the range of 240 to 320 for the numbers of ratings. It implies the sellers with ratings of the amounts sell more and grow quicker. It implies they have gained more trust from the e-auction buyers. The other possibility is that those sellers become more familiar and skillful to perform e-auction.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the inter-relation between sense of humor and conduct of innovation on a comparative analysis towards different personalities. The samples of this study were under the employment of 30 different public and private firms and organizations on questionnaires. The measure instruments used in this study include ¡§Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale,¡¨ ¡§Conduct of Innovation,¡¨ ¡§Locus of Control Scales,¡¨ ¡§Type A Personality,¡¨ and ¡§Positive and Negative Affectivities Scales.¡¨ The effective samples of this study were 1213 employees. The survey was to prove that sense of humor is a predictable factor of the conduct of innovation. Also, it was to investigate if different personalities and other variables would do direct interferences to one¡¦s sense of humor, conduct of innovation and to every developing stage of the above mentioned. The variables of personality include ¡§Locus of Control,¡¨ ¡§Positive Affectivity¡¨ and ¡§Negative Affectivity.¡¨ The results of this study could be summarized as follows: 1.Sense of Humor and Conduct of Innovation are predictable. 2.¡§Locus of Control¡¨ is not an interference factor to one¡¦s sense of humor and conduct of innovation. 3.¡§Type A Personality¡¨ is an interference factor to one¡¦s sense of humor and conduct of innovation. 4.¡§Positive affectivity¡¨ is not an interference factor to one¡¦s sense of humor and conduct of innovation. 5.¡§Negative affectivity¡¨ is not an interference factor to one¡¦s sense of humor and conduct of innovation.

Two firms with innovative technology are potential licensors in the industry. In addition, there is a potential licensee which only possesses aged technology. When the two potential licensors have exactly the same technology, they will cut the license fee to zero due to severe competition no matter whether the fee is in the format of fixed payments or royalties. When one potential licensor possesses the technology far advanced than the technology the other potential licensor has, those two firms with less advanced technology will ask for technology licensing and pay the license fee in the format of fixed payment.

Contunued deterioration of the earth¡¦s ecology, the green energy industry comes into the latest industry. From United States, Europe to Asia, currently the world is committed to the development of new energy. Being one of the major economies, whether manufacture, production or market, the prospects in China are optimistic and attract investment from enterprises all over the world. However, in a number of competitors, how companies can earn opportunities and come out on top¡H In this study, three subsidiaries of foreign companies in Chian are discussed how to build up competitiveness and continuous innovation in the field of technical, marketing, personnel, products, services and R&D from perspectives of knowledge flow and organizational learning. After analysis and comparison, following conclusions are summarized¡G 1.Subsidiaries need to develop localized core competencies. 2.In addition to the parent company¡¦s resources, academic and research institutions and other external resources can be relied on for strengthening R&D and technical capabilities. 3.Making good use and enhance the quality of local talents, and cultivate staff to become the world¡¦s professionals. 4.Customer service oriented for customized research and development by interacting technology and marketing, strengthen customer relationships to maintain and establish a good corporate image. 5.Through resources complementary¡Bsharing and combination with core capabilities, companies can give consideration to both profit and social responsibility, and work together to upgrade the competitiveness.

Changes brought about primarily by accelerating information technology have elevated innovation to the forefront of organizations’ strategic concerns as the only sustainable competitive advantage. Innovation in turn requires organizational environments where creativity is supported and fostered. The vital initial step in an effective change effort to bring about more creative organizational environments is to conduct an assessment. However, no new creativity assessment instrument has been developed in over two decades. This study presents the findings from a new organizational creativity assessment instrument, supplemented with data from a qualitative data-collection process involving in-depth interviews with a few representative employees from each organization. The development of the instrument draws upon recent creativity literature, primarily theoretical and anecdotal, resulting in 28 questionnaire items. Each item represents a potential environmental influence of creativity in a particular organization. One subset is physical or tangible environmental factors, such as the building where people work, as well as less tangible factors, such as “management response.” The instrument was administered in four different organizations in four different industries in an effort to begin to determine the utility of the instrument (n = 81). The results from the different organizations, including straightforward statistical tests, facilitated comparisons of differences in the amount and type of creativity supports between organizations. The qualitative data provided a check of confirmatory detail to the quantitative results, as well as providing rich contextual detail. A factor analysis was conducted on the overall results in order to determine if there was a possible underlying structure to the multitude of variables included in the survey instrument. The analysis revealed five factors, Creativity Management Process, Cultural Support Mechanisms, Organizational Inputs, Discussion Stimuli, and Organizational Helpfulness. Overall, the major conclusion is that the instrument is a potentially useful tool warranting further development and refinement and, ultimately, a full test of its validity and reliability. Also, the qualitative data added valuable context to understanding an organization’s creativity culture, as well as providing confirmatory support for the survey findings. An additional finding is that physical aspects of the environment were not recognized as significant factors in influencing organizational creativity.

Electronic commerce (E-commerce) innovations: Internet-enabled commerce (I-commerce), mobile commerce (M-commerce) and ubiquitous commerce (U-commerce) have posed technological and organizational changes. This study develops an E-commerce innovation hypercube model to investigate these innovations and the impact of the innovations on the E-commerce stakeholders¡Ð E-businesses, providers, customers, and complementors. The results indicate that the innovation from I-commerce to M-commerce is architectural for customers and E-businesses, incremental for providers, but disruptive for complementors. The innovation from M-commerce to U-commerce is modular to customers, architectural to complementors, and disruptive to E-businesses and providers. Thereafter, several core dynamic capabilities that necessary for E-business transformation from I-commerce to M-commerce and from M-commerce to U-commerce and the practical indicators in developing these dynamic capabilities are suggested, respectively.

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