Small business enterprises have escalated in Sweden during the last decade. However, new established companies are struggling to maintain their selves during the startup process and according to a survey from Tillväxtanalys, only 68 % of startup companies from 2008 were still active three years later. One of the main reasons is lack of capital and the most common approach to finance companies is to apply for a bank loan. In other words, commercial banks are of great importance for new businesses. Although, the problem arises when there is no previous history from the new businesses that the bank could base its credit assessment on.

Purpose: This study`s purpose is to investigate the role of a business incubator in the strategic decision situations during the process of a new venture startup. It also aims to explore the methods and instruments the incubator and its advisers applies during the process.Methodology: This study is built on the basis of a hermeneutic approach with qualitative method and abductive design. The empirical material collected consist of interviews from two case studies and secondary data collection from different related sources.Theoretical perspective: The theory in the study consists of the elements of previous research on innovation processes and entrepreneurship. To analyze the data, models and theories related to decision making, incubation, process theories and organizational theories.Empirical foundation: The empirical material consists of interviews and data from two completed case studies. Additionally consist a relatively large part of the empirical data out of a comprehensive information retrieval from various secondary sources such as internet, newsletters and annual reports.Conclusion: The assay was able to detect not just one, but a variety of roles that the incubator occupies at different stages of the innovation process.

This is a study of innovative technologies that are primarily based on collaboration with a client who in this study is called FTG, because they chose to be anonymous. A problem set has been presented, analyzed and worked with. The result of this is that we found some weaknesses in the leadership that have influenced the motivation in the workgroup negatively. The study has focus on changing leadership in order to increase motivation and openness to innovation within the company. With this focus on change in leadership, we have done a basic search for relevant theories related to the topic and found interesting data to work with.

Denna fallstudie utreder hur ett företag expanderar via ett innovativt projekt. Genom observationer, intervjuer och återberättelser har studien en etnografisk ansats för att skapa en bild av hur ett sådant projekt kan gå till och hur dess olika processer ser ut. Syftet med studien är att utifrån begreppen: innovation, projekt, projektledning och kunskapsöverföring analysera hur företaget Josephssons genomfört lanseringen av Josephssons Webshop och på vilket sätt det pågående innovativa projektet e?handel genomförs. Författarna har genom en litterär fördjupning av de olika begreppen skaffat sig en teoretisk referensram som sedan använts för att analysera det empiriska materialet.

This essay studies how and why large sports clubs from sports with a different degree of commerciality interact with their institutional surroundings in the way that they do. It compares two large Stockholm-based table tennis clubs, Ängby SK and Spårvägens BTK, with a large Stockholm-based football club, AIK Fotboll. In order to get proper data, a number of key persons within the organisations were exploratively interviewed using open and semi-structured questions, together with study of literature and other sources related to the subject. One of the key findings was that the non-profit table tennis clubs, who were expected to resemble the institution association closely, were subject to company-ization, and thus acted a lot more like the institution company than expected. The other key finding was that the football club, although driven partially like a public limited company, in many aspects placed a greater value on cultural capital than on economic capital..

We have performed a case study on Acne Jeans, a creative Swedish fashion company, which initiated a cooperation with the Swedish venture capital firm Öresund. The aim of our paper was to examine what motivates a venture capital firm to transform the management control system of a creative company, into a more formal system of control. Main results: Öresund did not have an excessive impact on the management control system of Acne Jeans, due to three main reasons. First of all, Acne Jeans had a satisfactory management control system prior to the cooperation. Furthermore, the relationship between the two parties was characterized by mutual trust.

Landsbygden står idag inför en rad olika problem. Några av de problem som är oroväckande är en dålig lönsamhet för företagare på landsbygden, tilltagande urbanisering samt ökande miljöproblem (Internet, Regeringskansliet, 1, 2010). Dessa tillsammans utgör barriärer för en hållbar utveckling av den svenska landsbygden. I Brundtlandsrapporten, skriven på uppdrag av Förenta Nationerna, är hållbar utveckling "en utveckling som tillfredsställer dagens behov utan att äventyra kommande generationers möjligheter att tillfredsställa sina behov" (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, s.43). Många gånger förknippas hållbar utveckling med tre specifika perspektiv; ekonomiskt, socialt, och miljömässigt perspektiv (Goosen, 2012).

Title: Investor or Maecenas? ? A study on the usage of venture capital within the Swedish film industry.Author: Tobias MagnussonSupervisors: Ahmad Ahmadi, Clas GunnarssonPurpose: The purpose with this thesis is to complement the research on procurement of capital within the Swedish film industry.Methodology: The primarily research method that have been used to gather material is qualitative interviews, that has been performed with four individuals that are active in the Swedish film industry.Theory: In order to create an adequate theoretical base, theories regarding investments and cultural entrepreneurship are presented.Empirics: In this chapter the results of the interviews are presented, sorted in several subcategories. The material is thereafter analyzed and discussed in the following chapter, with the theoretical base in mind.Conclusion: The usage of venture capital within the Swedish film industry is relatively low today. Non-monetary values are the primary reason to invest in the Swedish film industry today. A significant risk diversification, together with knowledge dispersion needs to be made in order to make the Swedish film industry more attractive to investors.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att studera innovations- processen i ett fallföretag för att öka förståelsen för konsumentens betydelse och roll i denna. Studien är av kvalitativ, explorativ och abduktiv karaktär. Primärdata har samlats in med hjälp av djupintervjuer med utvalda personer inom Lantmännen och Lantmännen Cerealia. Sekundärdata har samlats in från litteratur, vetenskapliga artiklar samt elektroniska dokument. Kapitlet behandlar teorier om begreppet innovation, innovationsprocesser genom tiderna samt olika sätt för att integrera konsumenten i processen.

Studien syftar till att förbättra kunskapen om förhållandet mellan idéhantering och idégenereringsvilja hos Volvo CE och presenterar rekommendationer för fortsatt förbättringsarbete. Detta behov har uppkommit då Volvo CE uppfattat att antalet genererade idéer sjunkit. Följande frågor formulerades i arbetets inledningsfas: Hur påverkas deltagarnas vilja att komma med idéer och förbättringsförslag av idéhanteringssystemet? Finns det brister i Volvos idéhanteringssystem och om så är fallet, hur avhjälps detta? Arbetets empiri samlades genom ett antal intervjuer av deltagare och processledare under hösten 2011 och metoden har varit kvalitativ med grundad teori som ansats. Resultatet av arbetet är ett antal faktorer som tillsammans kraftigt påverkar deltagarnas idégenereringsvilja på lång sikt.

That many creative workers have uncertain and uneven incomes is well-established, but how or why they make a living is not. This paper examines the elusive value exchanges between creatives, buyers, consumers, and other economic supporters, and offers a model of how creatives make a living. By mapping income statistics of Swedish creatives together with in-depth interviews some patterns emerge. This, combined with Bourdieu's theories of social, cultural and symbolic capital, and Knorr's objects of sociality, forms a basis for a structured model of value exchange. The paper shows how creative workers create economic and non-economic capital (capitalization), how they advertise this capital (signaling), and how they convert between different types of capital (conversion) in order to make a living.

Title: The customer?s contribution to the innovation-process ? a study of using customers to discover latent needs. Level: Final assignment for Bachelor Degree in Business Administration Author: Robert Klein Supervisor: Agneta Sundström Date: 2014-06 Aim: The purpose of this study is to gain enhanced understanding of what knowledge costumers contribute with in an innovation-process lead by a producer of goods, and how that knowledge is used to fulfill latent needs. The area of research has formerly described which results customer-involvement lead to, but have been scarce in describing how results are produced. Method: From a qualitative onset, a case-study collecting data through observations and interviews capturing customer knowledge contributions, and producer use of fetched knowledge has been conducted. Data has been analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Results have been processed in several steps in which material has been categorized and enriched continuously. Result & Conclusions: Customer-knowledge is broken down into market-knowledge, everyday-knowledge, and specialist-knowledge, which all are significant to a producer of goods.

It is well known that small businesses and entrepreneurs in the initial phase has difficult to gain access to external capital and bank loans. With the background of the problems that entrepreneurs face when they ask for capital has since the financial crisis the phenomenon of crowdfunding developed and evolved. Crowdfunding is an alternative source of funding for entrepreneurs to fund their ideas through small or medium-sized capital contribution from a larger amount of investors, often investors who have any kind of relationship with the entrepreneur or to the very idea. This study examined the factors that motivate and guide an investor's decisions when they select their projects. The results of the study show that the motives of the various existing forms of crowdfunding is big.

The survey describes a number of risks that Swedish farming companies are exposed to. The risk areas covered by the survey are currency risks, price risks and financial risks. The survey further describes why these risks have a great impact on the future development of the farming companies. The survey highlights the interrelation between the risks and the measures which can be used to minimize the risks, so-called financial instruments. The aim of the survey is to put focus on above mentioned risks and describe how these risks can be reduced to prevent the Swedish farming industry from stagnating in the future. The survey is a secondary survey whereby existing knowledge about risks and risk management is applied to farming companies. The written information on price risks and hedging is primarily derived from foreign sources.

This master thesis has been written in collaboration with Science Park Jönköping and is based on a problem related to corporate innovation. Science Park Jönköping believes that there is an untapped potential in existing industry in the form of ideas that are never commercialized. These theories are also supported in the research in which other authors have perceived that the ideas and inventions which do not belong to the core business risk ending up in drawers. If more of these ideas could be spin-offs or other forms of enterprise instead of staying in the drawers it would lead to growth, both for companies and for the society in large.The purpose of the thesis work is to, based on the case Science Park Jönköping, analyze how science parks and incubators can support the commercialization of ideas that derive from industry, who otherwise had been left lying. The work began with a mapping of the Science Park Jönköping operations and the skills they possess, and then other initiatives that aim to commercialize more ideas from companies were examined.