This thesis is about university spin-offs and the competition in high technology industries. In the light of efforts to increase the competitiveness of the European Union, an effective transfer of cutting edge technology from universities to the industry plays an important role. University spin-offs, start-ups founded to exploit academic inventions, are likely to face considerable market entry barriers. This is among other reasons due to high capital requirements for further technology development and lack of complementary resources. With a combination of relevant literature and empirical investigation, commercialisation of technologies within spin-offs is investigated and analysed.

In this thesis an explorative study was undertaken with the aim to study how a number of private care providers, as well as politicians and officials from councils in and around the Stockholm and Uppsala counties, think about the future of the Swedish elderly care from a property perspective, i.e. homes for the elderly. The analysis shows that there is a demand for capacity in 6 out of 16 municipalities, and that the property is an important part of this capacity, and the fulfillment of it. This was mainly due to the cost of capital, but also because of several other factors such as lack of land, a wish to guide the design, ideology, and in many cases a wish to use the property as an instrument of domination to control private health care providers.Also, the property was show to be connected to economic competition, to freedom of choice, and to quality. The problems related to the property in the market for elderly care still remains to be solved.

Syfte: Att undersöka och analysera de möjligheter som den fristående herrmodebutiken har för att skapa innovativa konkurrensfördelar. Vår förhoppning är att denna undersökning ska utmynna i ett antal alternativ för hur herrmodebutiker kan positionera sig för ökad konkurrenskraft. Metod: Uppsatsen utgår från en abduktiv ansats, med utgångspunkt från Blue Ocean Strategy som ett operationellt ramverk. Teoretiska perspektiv: Vi har använt oss av Blue Ocean Strategy som ett ramverk och kompletterat med teorier kring service och samarbeten. Empiriska perspektiv: Vår empiri har vi erhållit genom 17 butiksenkäter, en semistrukturerad intervju med en herrmodebutik samt 90 kundenkäter.

The social dimension in the EU, explored through the document texts of the Treaty of Rome, the Lisbon Strategy, the Social Policy Agenda and the Swedish Strategy ReportThis paper explores the social dimension of EU social policy, except the aspects of the economic and labour market. The EU documents reveal an underlying line of thought stemming from the alignment of the six founding countries, spearheaded by France, with the conservative corporatist welfare model. As one of four European welfare models, the conservative corporatist model emphasises labour market issues, corporate social responsibility and the subsidiarity principle in EU social policy. It also influences how the texts define the terms social, social policy and social exclusion. The definitions determine how policymakers combat problems such as social exclusion and identify the policy issues to be included in EU social policy.The Swedish Strategy shows how the country is responding to the objectives that it has been assigned by the EU and how it plans to attain them.

The companies of today figures on a hardly competitive market. This makes it necessary for the company to find new way to create competition advantages. Since it is no longer enough to compete with the technical quality of the product the companies are forced to also enhance the functional quality. To accomplish this it becomes necessary for producing companies to be customer oriented. A customer oriented company culture can be reached with the help of internal marketing in which different activities work to inform and teach the employees about the company strategy and also about their own role as part-time marketers.This thesis examines Electrolux, a company which is currently striving to develop a customer oriented company culture.

The Swedish government has set up 16 environmental goals for Sweden to achieve. One ofthem is ?Living forests?, which is the foundation for the ?National strategy for the formalprotection of forests?. The ?National strategy? puts the private forest owner at the centre ofattention in order to achieve the environmental goal ?Living forests?.

The Swedish telecommunication market was prior to the official deregulation 1975 characterized by Telia?s former monopoly position. This thesis studies how the deregulation of the market, and the thereby increasing competition, has affected Telia and how it has influenced Telia?s marketing strategies.The theoretical framework, from which the conclusions will be made, is a combination of the theory about strategic learning behaviours by Slater et al, and Grönroos? theory about a marketing continuum. The empirical work material is the result from two interviews with former key figures at Telia, and a briefing of Telia?s annual report between the years 1993 and 2006.Research findings indicate that Telia has gone from being product oriented with a strong technical focus, to becoming gradually more market oriented with competition orientation but foremost customer orientation as their most distinguished learning behaviours.

AbstractBackgroundEvery company has some kind of employee turnover and we can tell that som business has higher employee turnover than other business. Employee turnover is individual for all companies but in companies that is in the same business simularities can be seen. The employee turnover in the line of business hotel, merchandise trade and restaurants was according to Confederation of Swedish Enterprise closer to 40 % during the period of 2006-2007 and close to the business with highest turnover, the service sector. This is comparable to the buildning activity that with it?s 22 % is one of the business with lowest turnover.

Until recently the Danish government was hesitant about whether investments in climate and energy policies were the right strategy for Denmark. Today the Danish government argues that during the forthcoming climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009 (COP15), the world's countries must agree upon ambitious climate objectives. Denmark is together with EU-27 aiming at an ambitious climate agreement. This thesis intends to contribute with an understanding of why Denmark, both politically and economically, invests profound resources into committing the world's countries to a climate agreement. The study uses both a neoliberal institutionalism and a constructivist theory in analyzing the Danish engagement.

The purpose with this study is that examine if the contingency factors as sort of market and competition can affect the companies, which means of control they apply..

Environment friendly transports are one of the main topics in the industry and society today.Shell organizes an annual university competition called Shell Eco Marathon. The goal is to buildthe car that consumes the least fuel during a race. KTH participated for the first time in 2006.The engine for this competition, DoubleTwo, has been developed within the school. Theprinciple is a two stroke counter piston HCCI engine with variable compression ratio. HCCIstands for homogenous charge compression ignition.

The authors of this paper intended to study and compare local secondary schools(municipally owned schools) and independent secondary schools(privately owned schools) in Stockholm County. The purpose oft his paper is to explore how secondary schools market themselves and whether the view and use of marketing is different between municipal and independent secondary schools. The essay is by nature multi-case study and interviews were conducted with representatives from four high schools, two municipal and two independent, one representative from Education Committee and one from Privet Schools? Association.The introduction of School reform in 1992 enabled opening of privately owned schools and empirical datas hows that before 1992 secondary schools did not have the same extent of competition and the need of marketing was not widespread, but today there is fierce competition among secondary schools. The introduction of School reform changed the conditions for the Swedish school market, greater freedom of choice led to atougherfight for the students, which in turn increases the competition between secondary schools.

Demands on businesses are constantly increasing and the competition in the market-place is becoming ever tougher. To gain the long-term confidence of customers, not only the best businesses, but also the best supply chains are required.Volvo Cars is experiencing a changing competitive situation and their retailers are having trouble stocking the right spare parts. Shorter product life cycles and the growth of Volvo?s product program result in an increase in the number of spare parts to be stocked. In order to adapt to market trends and meet customer demands, Volvo has developed the LDC model, establishing a number of regional warehouses in strategic locations in Sweden, de-signed to supply spare parts to the regions? retailers through so-called Vendor-Managed In-ventory (VMI).The purpose of the study is to examine Volvo personbilar Sverige?s (VPS) motivation for a modified customer-service strategy through LDC.

The competition for customers in today?s society is growing rapidly. Companies invest a great amount of time and recourses to establish and preserve a strong brand. Repositioning is a process that today is necessary for virtually all brands at some point during its lifetime and is about to change a customer's perception of a brand name, by changing its associations. The goal is to create a new, stronger position for the existing brand.

The trotting in Sweden has a good reputation in an international view, both in the perspective of success and how the sport is managed with focus on security, animal protection and animal welfare. A large number of equipment details are fitted on the horses during training and competition. The Swedish law of prevention of cruelty to animals regulate training and competition with racehorses, and propose to protect horses from unnecessary suffering. The equipment permitted in races is regulated in Tävlingsreglementet (The Regulation of Competititon) and in the regulations of equipment, that the Nordic Regulation Committee and Nordic Animal Welfare Committee have worked out. Due to training and competition the equipment must even meet the Swedish law of prevention of cruelty to animals. However, the behaviour or the senses of the horses is often affected by the equipment due to the way the equipment corrects, modifies, restrains or reduces the behaviour of the horse, which may cause the horse stress or discomfort.