Swedish tech startups are at the forefront of innovation and growth. Startups however often face challenges in knowledge management, due to their fast paced growth. The purpose of this study is to explore how Swedish tech startups work with knowledge management in order to utilize inbound open innovation across a company. The study takes on an abductive approach. Furthermore, the study is qualitative including data gathered through semi-structured interviews with eleven Swedish tech startups. The findings show that the investigated tech startups work with knowledge management systems to transfer explicit knowledge, but tacit knowledge is communicated verbally, as the systems do not successfully facilitate the transfer of tacit knowledge, nor fully support the conversion from information to knowledge. Furthermore, employees have a high level of operative freedom and initiate collaboration and networking when needed. The investigated companies selectively hire like-minded people to create a culture that facilitates information sharing and collaboration through internal commitment across the organization. Top management is important to the overall structures and in communicating the company vision, while lower-level managers support and ease the daily operations. These activities strengthen a company's knowledge management and in turn its ability to utilize inbound open innovation. Overall, it is also evident that the startups are challenged by their fast paced growth, affecting all four researched dimensions of knowledge management.

[pt] Países do mundo todo têm envidado esforços para alcançar um crescimento econômico sustentável para enfrentar um ambiente de negócios cada vez mais globalizado, complexo e incerto. Nesse contexto a inovação é considerada como uma das principais soluções e caminhos. O Brasil, no que concerne à sua capacidade de inovação, está muito abaixo das grandes potências inovativas do mundo. Apesar dessa realidade, o setor de agricultura tem demonstrado crescimento considerável na sua capacidade de inovação e produção de conhecimento de fronteira. No entanto, mesmo dentro desse setor, a busca por resultados mais inovativos tem sido uma preocupação constante das empresas. Nesse sentido, a prática da inovação aberta como processo catalisador da inovação, tem se mostrado uma necessidade. Assim, o estudo de caso múltiplo, realizado em três unidades descentralizadas, da Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuária - Embrapa, empresa importante do setor agropecuário, permitiu analisar e avaliar como os recursos internos e as alianças estabelecidas por essas Unidades, interagem e afetam seus desempenhos de inovação, de modo que consigam aumentar suas contribuições para a capacidade de inovação do Brasil. O estudo constatou que, embora as Unidades pratiquem a inovação aberta, a interação entre suas fontes de conhecimento internas e externas propiciam um aumento de suas capacidades e desempenhos de inovação, ainda que tais interações propiciem apenas uma paridade competitiva às Unidades e desempenhos inovativos na média, os resultados confirmam a importância da interação entre os dois embientes internos e externos. / [en] Countries around the world have made efforts to achieve sustainable economic growth in order to face an increasingly globalized, complex and uncertain business environment. In this context, innovation is considered as one of the main solutions and paths. Brazil, in terms of its capacity for innovation, is far below the great innovative powers in the world. Despite this reality, the agriculture sector has shown considerable growth in its capacity for innovation and the production of frontier knowledge. However, even within this sector, the search for more innovative results has been a constant concern of companies. In this sense, the practice of open innovation as a catalyst for innovation has been shown to be a necessity. Thus, the multiple case study, carried out in three decentralized units, of the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation - Embrapa, an important company in the agricultural sector, allowed to analyze and evaluate how the internal resources and the alliances established by these Units, interact and affect their performance innovation, so that they can increase their contributions to Brazil s innovation capacity. The study found that, although the Units practice open innovation, the interaction between their internal and external knowledge sources provides an increase in their innovation capacities and performances, even though such interactions provide only a competitive parity to the Units and innovative performances on average, the results confirm the importance of the interaction between the two internal and external environments.

The mutual need between organizations and startups, from one side to stay competitive and the other to survive, leads to open innovation relationships. However, the actors are asymmetrical, leading to a risk that no value is created. Nevertheless, value needs to be created in the relationship to enable open innovation. This study identifies in literature four relational factors. The aim is to investigate how a startup and established organization perceive the relational factors of actor bonds, resource ties, activity links, network embeddedness, and their influence on value creation. Six semi-structured interviews are conducted. The main findings are: (I) all the relational factors influence value creation in this context. Thus, all are needed to enable an open innovation process (II) each theme that emerged in theory was confirmed (III) each actor􏰈s perceptions were found to be different, demonstrating that value is determined differently depending on the unique actor, their needs and context. Therefore, each actor needs to put more emphasis on the specific themes that actors in the relationship find valuable (IV) new themes are found to influence the relational factor of actor bonds (V) the level of value created depends on how the relational factors are managed by the actors.

Researchers, policy makers and practitioners alike have in recent years acknowledged a growing tendency towards opening up the innovation process by combining internal organizational assets with external actors’ resources. However, opening up the innovation process usually also entails revealing ideas, which may result in misappropriation. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate tensions related to the openness-appropriability relationship; this is done in three studies. The first study concerns a specific contextual factor that is likely to stress the openness-appropriability tensions: the location of external partners in innovation. The second study relates to the way managing openness-appropriability tensions affects performance, and the third study involves a theoretical discussion about the nature of the tensions occurring in the openness-appropriability relationship, i.e. paradoxical, dilemmatic, or dialectical. The first two studies apply quantitative methods, using survey data, while the third is a conceptual paper. The findings from the first study indicate that the use of different groups of appropriability mechanisms varies across various types of openness and that the location of external partners in innovation refines these linkages even more. The second study’s main takeaway is that the higher appropriability intensity, i.e. the extent to which appropriability mechanisms are put into practice, explains higher performance outcomes. The third study suggests that the tensions between openness and appropriability are more likely of paradoxical nature. From a theoretical perspective, findings indicate that paradoxical tensions between openness and appropriability may have a spatial dimension, and that these tensions should also be investigated in regards to performance. Managerial implications point out that opening up to innovation partners located abroad is likely to require more costly appropriability mechanisms. / <p>QC 20170126</p>

Huvudsyftet med denna uppsats är att analysera hur svenska organisationer arbetar med öppen innovation, i vilka former de gör det och vilken typ av innovationer de producerar. Uppsatsen definierar även uttryckligen begreppet "dolda problem" inom organisationer och kopplar sedan det till innovationsteori. Definitionen av öppen innovation har utvecklats tillsammans med förståelsen för begreppet, vilket i sig utgör en övertygande teori för både organisationer och forskare i strävan efter teknisk utveckling. De befintliga modeller som beskriver öppen innovation är emellertid inte förenliga med hur definitionen av termen har utvecklats. Genom att kartlägga nuvarande litteratur och innovationsteori, föreslås i denna uppsats en förening av två befintliga öppna innovationsmodeller som bättre passar den nuvarande definitionen. I uppsatsen föreslås också att syntetisk innovation - ett begrepp beskrivet i denna avhandling - är den primära typen av innovation som produceras inom en öppen innovationsram. Resultaten, analysen och diskussionerna baseras på en litteraturstudie, en handlingsstudie och fyra fallstudier av innovationsinitiativ i Sverige. Analyserade genom den föreslagna ramen visar resultaten att resurstypen som delas mellan firmor i ett öppet samarbete är mer empiriskt viktig än indikerat från befintliga innovationsmodeller. Det indikeras också att företagens permeabilitet förändrar vilken typ av innovation de producerar. Arbetet indikerar också att dolda problem empiriskt löses genom syntetisk innovation som särskilt kan uppnås i en öppen innovationsmiljö. / The primary purpose of this thesis is to analyze how Swedish organizations work with Open Innovation, in what forms they do so, and what type of innovations they produce.  Secondarily, it explicitly defines the notion of "hidden problems" within organizations and subsequently links it to innovation theory. The definition of Open Innovation has evolved alongside the understanding of Open Innovation itself, and it constitutes a compelling theory for organizations and researchers alike in the pursuit of technological advancement. The incumbent models that describe Open Innovation, however, are not compliant with the definition of the term. By surveying the current literature on Open Innovation, and Innovation theory, this thesis proposes a unification of two incumbent Open Innovation models that better fit with the definition of Open Innovation itself. It also suggests that Synthetic Innovation as defined in this thesis is the primary type of innovation produced under an Open Innovation framework. The results, analysis, and discussions are based on a literature review, an action study, and four case studies of innovation initiatives in Sweden. Analyzed through the proposed framework, the results from this thesis indicate that resource type is more empirically important than evident from incumbent innovation models. It also suggests that the permeability of firms, created in an Open Innovation environment, alters the type of innovation they produce. The research shows a need to update the early, yet fashionable, models of Open Innovation to better map against the current definitions. It also indicates that hidden problems result in a particular type of Synthetic Innovation that is especially achievable through Open Innovation.

The entrepreneurs behind newly formed companies in Sweden as well as small medium-sized enterprises and start-ups are increasingly getting involved in open innovation or exploring its practices. They do this in order to develop innovative products and services. SMEs and start-ups are collaborating with external stakeholders, such as enterprise service providers, industrial suppliers, research institutions or universities, to either bring their innovative products and solutions to the market faster or to stay ahead of the game of competitions. By engaging in open innovation practices, the different stakeholders involved are able to combine human capital, in addition with a collection of available resources. By reading further into this thesis research, a typical exploration of resources can be noticed spanning from hardware to software and from soft skills to hard skills, thus resulting to innovative outcomes (product and services). This thesis research will investigate the benefits Swedish start-ups and small-medium-sized enterprises can gain from open innovation. There are several studies on large companies that use open innovation to generate additional values. Accordingly, external learning is very important in small and medium-size enterprises for growth. However, there are fewer studies on startups and SMEs, in terms of open innovation; therefore, this research study aims to address this gap. SMEs and open innovation are becoming very important in the local Swedish and global knowledge-based economy. In the past Sweden’s economy, SME played an important role and in the future SMEs are estimated to be more important, due to the rapid technology development and fast-growing services sector. An important contributing fact to the local economy is that 9 out 10 new jobs during the last twenty years were created within the SME sector in Sweden. Accordingly, this study has highlighted the importance of external learning and its contribution towards improving the innovative performance of small and medium-size enterprises. The findings from all interviews and case study revealed different impact about the importance of open innovation. All companies had their respective motivating reasons to explore external resources, while some could attest the resources helped to verify their assumption. Other SME and companies were collaborating with research institutes, academia in order to complement their innovation process, which ended up being a benefit to all parties involved in open innovation. / Entreprenörerna bakom nybildade företag i Sverige samt små medelstora företag och nystartade företag blir alltmer involverade i öppen innovation eller utforskande av sina metoder. De gör det för att utveckla innovativa produkter och tjänster. Små och medelstora företag och nystartade företag samarbetar med externa intressenter, såsom företagstjänstleverantörer, industrileverantörer, forskningsinstitutioner eller universitet, för att antingen föra sina innovativa produkter och lösningar på marknaden snabbare eller för att ligga före tävlingsspelet. Genom att engagera sig i öppen innovationspraxis kan de olika berörda parterna kombinera humankapitalet, dessutom med en samling tillgängliga resurser. Genom att läsa vidare i denna avhandling kan en typisk prospektering av resurser märkas från maskinvara till programvara och från mjuka färdigheter till svåra färdigheter, vilket resulterar i innovativa resultat (produkt och tjänster). Denna avhandling kommer att undersöka fördelarna svenska nybörjare och små och medelstora företag kan dra nytta av öppen innovation. Det finns flera studier på stora företag som använder öppen innovation för att skapa ytterligare värden. Externt lärande är därför mycket viktigt i små och medelstora företag för tillväxt. Det finns dock färre studier om nystart och små och medelstora företag, när det gäller öppen innovation. Därför syftar denna forskningsstudie till att hantera denna klyfta.

The inter-firm cooperation between partner companies is a central element of most business models in an open innovation perspective. A closed innovation approach cannot be effective anymore, and most of the companies have been trying to embrace open innovation concepts by developing various types of interorganizational ties with a diverse range of partner companies. Building a solid cooperative model with partner companies is becoming vital success factor in an increasingly competitive global market. Companies are required to build teams with other partner companies in order to develop or internalize new technologies, and commercialize new products, and to remain technologically competitive. In this context, this research focuses to develop a structured framework of organizational challenges and challenge management model in collaborative innovation projects in inter-organizational relationship. In order to achieve these goals, the key organizational challenges in cooperate with partner companies and root causes of them are defined and analysed. Furthermore, challenged management programs are analysed based on the framework developed in this research. The result of this study support for readers to gain a comprehensive understanding on organizational challenges in open innovation. Furthermore, it also provides managerial implications in terms of challenge management in a collaborative innovation project. / Samverkan mellan partnerföretag är ett centralt element i de flesta affärsmodeller sett från ett öppet innovationsperspektiv. En sluten innovationsprocess är inte längre effektiv och de flesta företag, framförallt företag i högteknologisk industri, har anammat en öppen innovationsprocess genom att utveckla olika typer av samarbeten med ett brett urval av partnerföretag. Att bygga en solid samarbetsmodell med partnerföretag är en vital framgångsfaktor i en alltmer konkurrensutsatt global marknad. Företag bör bygga team med andra partnerföretag för att utveckla eller internalisera nya teknologier samt kommersialisera nya produkter för att förbli tekniskt konkurrenskraftiga. Denna studie ämnar utveckla en strukturerad modell för hantering av organisatoriska utmaningar i innovationsprojekt mellan företag. Genom en fallstudie på Samsung Electronics, definieras och analyseras de viktigaste utmaningarna i samarbetsprojekt samt dess bakomliggande orsaker. Vidare analyseras etablerade teorier för hantering av utmaningar inom öppen innovation baserat på modellen som utvecklats i studien.

The concept of open innovation has received increased attention among practitioners as well as in academia in recent years. It provides a conceptual platform for understanding how external sources of knowledge drive internal growth. In addition, it also addresses the internal configurations needed for managing a more externally oriented innovation process. However, many firms still experience major managerial challenges in trying to adopt the principles of open innovation. The perhaps most important challenge in realizing the potential benefits of open innovation lies in modifying existing innovation activities and processes to incorporate the principles of open innovation, rather than creating something completely new. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to study the problems and opportunities arising when firms attempt to integrate open innovation activities within their development processes. Empirically, the results are based on three exploratory case studies within the process industries. In total, this thesis is based on 73 interviews from 2 process firms and 9 equipment suppliers to the process industries. Data was gathered in several different countries, and collectively these firms represent perspectives from Sweden, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands and The United Kingdom.Three papers are appended with the thesis. Paper I studies the overall challenges of integrating open innovation activities within an existing product development process. The key contribution is the enactment of a practitioner-oriented work model, named the open Stage-Gate model, which exploits the advantages of "openness" while simultaneously capturing the benefits deriving from the systematic and structured approach implied by the Stage-Gate process. Paper II studies a concrete application of open innovation by focusing on the development and installation of new or upgraded process equipment in process plants where collaborative efforts by a process firm and various suppliers of process equipment often are required. The analysis focuses on problems and opportunities in different stages of the equipments lifecycle and finds that the content and the intensity of the collaboration should be tailored to the different stages of the equipment's lifecycle. As such, the conclusions highlight the fact that being totally open in development activities is not always the most suitable option. Instead, different degrees of "openness" may be suitable at different stages. Paper III studies collaboration in the later operational stages of a process equipments lifecycle, from an equipment supplier perspective. The results presented in this paper underscore the importance of collaboration in the operational stages as these stages are critical to facilitate technology transfer and production performance.

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[pt] A transição energética se põe como um dos grandes desafios de nosso tempo. Até 2050 são previstos mais de 13 trilhões de dólares de investimentos só em energia elétrica, sendo 77 por cento em fontes renováveis. Nesse contexto o paradigma das inovações abertas deve exercer um papel fundamental, reduzindo os custos das tecnologias atuais, criando novos mercados e remodelando os existentes através da interação dos cinco principais atores desse processo: universidades, corporações, governos, empreendedores e capitalistas de risco. No nosso primeiro artigo, mostramos a importância da interação desses três primeiros atores ao redor de políticas públicas orientadas às missões. Construímos um framework capaz de endereçar as melhores práticas desse tipo de política quando estas são aplicadas à transição energética. No segundo, buscamos identificar os padrões que levaram startups de energia ao sucesso ou ao fracasso o longo dos últimos 20 anos. Descobrimos que os modelos de negócio, os valores investidos e o perfil dos investidores exerceram um papel fundamental nestas trajetórias. Por fim, dada a relevância da relação entre startups e corporações na transição energética, analisamos no terceiro artigo o papel do corporate venture capital (CVC) ao longo dos últimos 25 anos e identificamos a existência de uma quinta onda de CVC, que possui notáveis particularidades e que leva as unidades de CVC ao centro estratégico de inovação das corporações modernas. De modo geral concluímos que todos os cinco principais atores possuem papeis distintos, mas fundamentais, na transição energética. / [en] The energy transition is one of the most significant challenges of our time. By 2050, more than 13 trillion of dollars of investments are expected in the electricity sector, with 77 percent from renewable sources. In this context, the open innovation paradigm should play a key role in reducing the costs of current technologies, creating new markets and reshaping the existing ones through the interaction of the five main stakeholders in this process: universities, corporations, governments, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. In the first article, we show the importance of the interaction of the first three actors around mission-oriented public policies. We build a framework that can address the best practices of this type of policy when applied to the energy transition context. In the second, we seek to identify the patterns that have led energy startups to success or failure over the past 20 years. We find that business models, invested values, and investor profiles play a key role in these trajectories. Finally, considering the relevance of the relationship between startups and corporations during the energy transition, we analyzed in the third article the role of corporate venture capital (CVC) over the last 25 years and we recognize the fifth wave of CVC, which has many particularities and drives the CVC units to the innovation s strategic center of modern corporations. Overall, we conclude that all these main five stakeholders have a distinct but fundamental role in the energy transition.