A large part of the Namibian low income population lack access to grid distributed electricity. This mean they are effectively shut out from basic functions such as lighting, information technologies and hygienic food handling. Hence, finding ways of providing affordable off-grid electricity is an important, not to say critical, task.This master thesis is an innovation and concept development project that has been carried out in cooperation with organisations in Sweden and Namibia. The purpose of the project has been to (1) develop a concept for off-grid electricity supply in Namibia and (2) to gain a deeper knowledge within the area of innovation and product development for the Base of the Pyramid population, i.e. the poorest, but largest, socio-economic part of the global population.Essential in this project has been to acquire user understanding and to identify user needs to create a foundation for developing the concept.

This project investigates the cooperation between architect and engineer. The context of the investigation is the design of buildings for a sustainable society. The goal of the project is to further the development of the sustainable built society by increasing the knowledge of the interdisciplinary cooperation between these two fields. The focus is a close cooperation already from the start of a project. By involving both fields in the early design stages it is thought that the knowledge and skills of each field is better utilized.

In recent years, the demands for effectiveness and evidence in social work have increased in all work areas, including that of healthcare. This has sparked the discussion on concepts such as practical- and theoretical knowledge and their respective roles in social work. In the light of this, the purpose of this candidate thesis is to investigate healthcare social workers understanding of practical- and theoretical knowledge in the working process as well as their respective influence and importance. This candidate thesis is based on three interviews with social workers from different departments in Norrlands Universitetssjukhus in Umeå, Sweden. To provide range to the thesis, the interviewees were chosen from a purposeful sampling.

Organisation X är en del inom en större global koncern, med kontor belägna runt om ivärlden. Syftet med studien var att skapa en kunskap för anställda inom organisation X:supplevelse av organisationsklimatets kreativa aspekter. Vidare studerades hur de anställdasupplevelse förhöll sig till tidigare referensvärden för innovativa respektive stagneradeorganisationer, samt i förhållande till organisationens uttalade strategi för kreativitet ochinnovation. Betydelsen av ett kreativt organisationsklimat ligger till grunden förorganisationers förmåga att lyfta innovativa idéer. Studien visar att medarbetarnas upplevelseav organisationens kreativa organisationsklimat inte uppnår Ekvalls referensvärden för eninnovativ organisation, resultatet ställs vidare i relation till organisation X:s strategi gällandeinnovation.Slutligen ges förslag på områden att uppmärksamma samt förslag till åtgärder..

This paper aims to provide a description of how knowledge can occur in Apoteket AB, anorganization that is operating on the Swedish pharmacy market. The purpose of this paper isalso to describe how the organizational learning occurs in the organization, and how theoutcome of this learning can be stored in the organizational memory. This subject is ofinterest since Apoteket AB experience changes in their external environment in that they nolonger have monopoly to sell pharmaceuticals on the Swedish pharmacy market. Earlierresearch claims that organizations need to develop new knowledge in order to take action, andthis development needs to be supported by the management within the organization.The collection of primary data was done by two qualitative interviews with employees withinthe organization of Apoteket AB.Our conclusions are that knowledge can occur in many forms, such as tacit and explicitknowledge. The vast majority of the knowledge within the organization is the information thatcan be found in the electronic database Aponet within Apoteket AB, and that is useful for theemployees in their daily work, and therefore is known as explicit knowledge.

Utvecklingen av Living Labs kan förklaras av framförallt tre utvecklingar. För det första en uppfattning om att vissa behov i samhället inte kan tillgodoses av enskilda organisationer. För det andra att innovation allt mer betraktas som öppna system och slutligen att användaren har erkänts en större roll i innovationsprocesser. Living Labs är en experimentell innovationsmiljö som definieras av: ? användarens delaktighet i fokus ? tvärsektoriell samverkan; mellan näringsliv, offentlig verksamhet och ideella aktörer ? öppenhet ? utvecklingsarbetet sker i verkliga miljöer Detta relativt nya fenomen uppvisar en rik variation av uttryck och de olika nyckelattributen som grundar begreppet Living Labs tillskrivs olika vikt. Studien ämnar besvara frågeställningen: Vilket samband finns mellan de organisatoriska kompromisserna och Living Labs konceptets nyckelattribut? Studien är en komparativ undersökning av två Living Labs som har tagit mycket olika uttryck.

AbstractThe aim is to find out the teachers´ different point of views regarding what and why it´s important to teach children about the human body and in what way educationists can teach this knowledge. Seven teachers are asked, through qualitative interviews, about their point of views on teaching the human body in pre-school.The teachers don`t seem to reflect upon the subject, which shows that a development of knowledge needs within the area.Fist of all the children´s spontaneous questions direct what the educationists talk about with the children. The most frequently mentioned questions are about the circulation of the blood and the digestion organs. The teachers think it´s important that the children get knowledge about the human body in order to get a better opinion of their own bodies and themselves. It´s also important because this is the basis of other kind of knowledge, for instance the knowledge about animals..

Workers are more demanding than ever and stay a shorter amount of time within the same organization. For this reason we wanted to look further into how organizations work with motivation in order to create success in Knowledge Intensive Firms. The complexity of knowledge workers formed the base for our interest within the subject. The purpose of our thesis is to reflect upon what is written about the motivational effects of recruitment and reward strategies in Knowledge Intensive Firms. Further our essay is based on an abductive advocacy.

The authors of this thesis have studied the handling of personal information in various kinds of organizations, because the perception is that the knowledge in this area is weak relative to the weight of the subject.The purpose of this paper has been partly to shed light on how knowledge of this area in the organizations that we have visited during the study but also to answer questions about handling, knowledge and security, and identification of individuals in different systems. What kind of problems the processing of these data creates and why these problems occur.In the beginning of our study we understood the importance of using the correct identifier and therefore chose also to examine what the various identifiers used by the organizations and why they chose these particular identifiers.In the qualitative analysis, Datainspektionen´s general rules and advice has been used as a basis together with the laws applicable to the organizations to get a good picture of how management of personal information is in these organizations.What we have found in this paper is that knowledge about how personal data is handled and what laws and rules are saying is very much dependent on how central the information is to these organization's activities. The police use so many different types of records for their organization to function well and they have very good knowledge of laws and regulations. In contrast, schools that do not handle as much of personal data themselves nor have the same knowledge among staff and do not have enough resources to cope with keeping the same knowledge base as the police. This is something that applies to all types of handling, depending on how important the information is for the organization, the better the security and knowledge in handling the data is..

In today?s fast changing environment it is important for knowledge intense companies that want to stay competitive to actively work with their knowledge, knowledge sharing and Knowledge Management (KM). Barriers decrease the efficiency of how knowledge is created, stored and shared, and they are therefore important to reduce or preferably remove making the KM activities result in as much value for the organisation as possible. To achieve this, it is important that the KM activities become a natural part of the employees? daily work.

Nature conservation agreement (NCA) is a way to voluntarily protect and manage nature for limited time-periods. The agreement is settled between the government and a landowner. All public authorities can represent the government but it is only the Swedish Forest Administration who does that regularly (because it is the only authority with economic resources for that purpose). Therefore, NCAs are almost only used to protect forested nature. The government agencies have experienced NCAs for about ten years and it is now time to examine how they are applied in the forests. This study is based on a computerized questionnaire to the persons responsible for the LEKO-projekt.

Offentliga sektorn i Sverige skulle, enligt en rapport från Europeiska centralbankssystemet (ECBS) 2003, kunna hålla samma kvalitet med bara hälften av resurserna. Det behövs därför nya sätt som kan öka värdet och minska kostnaderna i offentliga verksamheter i Sverige. Innovativa processerföreslås vara en möjlighet till att hitta nya arbetssätt för en effektivare offentlig sektor. I studien undersöks innovationsprocessen i ett offentligt bolag i syfte att ge förslag på arbetssätt som kan effektivisera bolagets innovationsprocesser. Följande frågeställningar vägledde studien: Vad kännetecknar effektiva innovationsprocesser? Hur kan effektiva innovationsprocesser tillföra värde för ett offentligt bolag? Hur kan Bolaget AB arbeta för effektivare innovationsprocesser i sin verksamhet?Syftet med studien är att ta fram förslag på arbetssätt för effektivare innovationsprocesser i Bolaget AB: s verksamhet.I studien används en kvalitativ metod i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer med totalt fyra personer.

Abstract Title: Enabling Smart Research and Development through Knowledge Conversation Seminar date: 2005-06-08 Course: Master thesis in business administration, 10 Swedish credits (15 ECTS) Authors: Andreas Johnsson, Johan Rosendahl Advisors: Lars Bengtsson Key words: Knowledge management, Knowledge conversation, Research and development, Ba, Trelleborg Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to create a model that shows how knowledge management aimed at research and development processes can be used and how the theoretical fields can be connected. Methodology: The thesis is based on abductive perspective where empirical and theoretical material has been mixed to create a foundation for the analysis. Theoretical perspectives: Theories concerning knowledge management and research and development have primarily been used. These have been complemented with material about team structures and incentive systems. Empirical foundation: The empirical material is based on semi structured, mostly qualitative interviews and strictly quantitative inquiries performed at Industrial Hose within the Trelleborg group.

Människan är en social varelse som har behov av andra människor men eftersom vi är olika uppstår det ibland konflikter. Måste konflikter vara negativa? Kan det komma något bra ur en konflikt? Studien vill lyfta fram konflikter som något som kan ge motivation och kreativitet till att skapa förändringar. Studien vill se om det finns något samband mellan konflikter och innovationer. Studien vänder sig till medarbetare, företagsledare, och studenter.

The aim of this two year master thesis is to study the knowledge production within the field of Textile Studies at Uppsala University, with special focus on the use of artifact documentation as a research method. With domain analysis as a theoretical framework, ontological and epistemological assumptions as well as historical and social aspects are studied in relation to the research process. Qualitative research methods are used, including interviews, observations and text analysis. In the analysis of the knowledge processes in the field, perspectives on tacit knowledge and the concept of documents, are used as a theoretical basis. In the field of Textile Studies, the artifacts are used as one of the main objects of study, along with archival and pictorial sources. The main epistemological assumptions are that artifact analysis is dependent on a knowledge base, where technical handicraft skills, contextual knowledge and practical experience of object observation are the most important qualifications.