Product development cycles become shorter and shorter. The time from idea to market has become an important competitive factor. Despite this, methods used for making the product development process faster are surrounded with uncertainty about their efficiency. The purpose of the thesis is to describe the pros and cons of ?best practice? methods for shortening lead times and how these methods effect the lead times in Research and development.

This study aims to examine Business Intelligence Research conduct within Swedish government agencies and workplaces in order to understand the recent debate regarding Business Intelligence Research ethics and thus answer the following question: Does Business Intelligence praxis in Sweden meet ethical guidelines recommended by international field experts? A theoretical analysis of relevant and also recent publications, including a Business Intelligence method review, was conducted using qualitative content analysis. In order to validate the results from my theoretical analysis I conducted a series of interviews with a number of professionals who useBusiness Intelligence Research in their work and decisionmaking process..

Self-destructive behaviour is a more and more occurring phenomenon in today?s society and there are mostly young girls who are affected by this behaviour. There are different explanations to why the phenomenon appears. The purpose of this Research essay is to give a literature overview of the phenomenon of self-harming behaviour of young girls. Two Research questions have been used to study this phenomenon; How can groups of friends contribute to reinforce an identity with the self-destructive behaviour among young girls? How can Internet contributes to reinforce an identity with the self- estructive behaviour among young girls? For the analysis this Research essay uses the social constructive theoretical perspective.

The aim of this Research review is to map Research about how children relate to nonfiction, and how adults, represented by parents, librarians and teachers, relate to children?s nonfiction and its possible purposes, and also the similarities and differences between them, according to current Research.A theory of three different ways to look at reading is applied to the material concerning adults? views of children?s nonfiction. To show children?s views, themes are extracted from the Research material, using an analysis model of four different ways to read.Studies show that most children as well as adults perceive children?s nonfiction in a traditional way as a means to gain knowledge and facts, and primarily related to school work.Nonfiction can also help children with reading difficulties to practise reading, by stimulating their interests. Many children read nonfiction because they prefer to read ?real stories? about actual people and events.

The goal of our Research is to give the general picture of the attitudes of immigrants to their own integration process into the Swedish society, focusing on the feeling of belonging, satisfaction with the social network, as well as confidence in the future. Moreover, in our study, we investigate a possible relation between the attitudes of the immigrants to the above-mentioned variables and their age and education. The Research is based on a quantitative questionnaire investigation, which comprises all Sfi students at level D in the northeastern part of Skåne county. The Research shows that the majority are open to the Swedish culture and traditions, keeping, at the same time, their own native traditions. Four out of five think that the Swedish language is important for integration.

The purpose of this report is to create and develop a model that streamlines and helps the innovationprocess of an idea owner and also in the development of ideas.This model should be able to apply for workshops and in innovation advice or business devlopment. I used the qualitative method in my essay just to get a maximum clear data collection, where the seven respondents were included in the interviews. However, much of the information retrieved from the theory books and Research/science articles, in order to answer the Research/Sceince question in the best possible way.

The aim of this study was to map the intellectual base at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science (SSLIS) at the University Collage of Borås, and to compare this intellectual base to the intellectual base of the Research area Library and Information Science. This was done by analysing the citations in publications published, between the year of 2001 to the first quarter of 2006, by Researchers at the institution, using the technique of author cocitation analysis. Cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling, statistical techniques that are traditional i the author cocitation analysis, formed an objective map of the intellectual base at the SSLIS. This map was then compared with three prior studies, that used the same technique to map the intellectual base of the Research area. The result shows that the map of the intellectual base at the SSLIS consists of the specialities: user studies, library studies, culture/cultural policy, information retrieval, bibliometrics and information in organisations.

Starting out as a minor form of amusement, the game industry has become one of the most lucrative andsuccessful in the entertainment business competing against giants such as television, movies and music.As the internal competition within the developer community grows companies work hard at discoveringnew ways to attract and keep customers. By having a playcentric approach focusing on user experiencethey hope to achieve that goal. This thesis describes the process of designing a game with focus on theplayer. We apply the concept of flow on game development and investigate through Research throughdesign if we are able to create a game that keeps the player in flow.Play tests showed several elements such as control issues and too difficult challenges early in the game,affecting the possibility for players to experience flow while playing. These negative factors came to becalled flowleakers.

The purpose of this essay was to Research the level of condition and requirements of democracy which faces states applying for a membership in the European Union. The focal point was to Research the levels of democracy requirements on two set enlargements which are the cases of the 1981 and 1986 enlargements together with the 2004 and 2007. The states that did reach the goal of becoming member states had similar political backgrounds that made them suitable for a most- similar system study. By using my theoretical framework which consists of democracy theories, together with the chosen method was I able to find answers to my Research questions when examining the material. The result of the study is that even though the condition might have been quite similar but the reality of them was different.

The Research work performed in this thesis has been carried out at the Production Tech-nology Centre where the Thermal Spray Research group of University West has its work-shop and labs.This Research work has been performed in collaboration with the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials (ARCI), Hyderabad, India.First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to my supervisors Dr. Nicolaie Markocsan and Dr. Nicholas Curry for their guidance, great support and valuable suggestions without which this work could not have been possible. I would also like to thanks Prof. Per Nylén for keeping faith in me and providing me an opportunity to work at PTC, which is a great place to perform Research.

This essay is a study about school success for immigrant pupils whose ages are between 16 and 19 years when they arrive to Sweden.The purpose of this study is to examine pupils difficulties in the school and the faktors which affect their success in the school and even possibilities which they can be offered by the school.This Research carried out at two upper secondary schools in the municipality of ?Södertälje?. The method which I have used is a qualitative Research method which depends on interviews.The results of the Research shows pupils difficulties and the different faktors which influence their success in the school.My conclusions are that these pupils have many difficulties and to reach a successful schooling, the shcool have to give these pupils a variety of possibilities which builds with pupils self possibilities a foundation for a good and successful schooling.The Research also shows that the both schools are not giving enough possibilities to these pupils. The education system in these schools doesn?t fits for multi ? lingual pupils.

This degree project documents the meeting of four high-school students with working life before and during the practical training period, which is a mandatory part of the Swedish media curriculum. We looked into practical training, which we qualify as the crossroads between school and working life, from a student?s perspective. We chose to approach the problem theoretically via hermeneutics and we used the case study method for our field Research. The foundation of our pre-understanding of the media curriculum?s practical training period lays on previously published Research, the study of specialist literature, own experience gained during practical training and teaching experience at high-schools as well as a pre-study we carried out.

Because of among other things the globalization and a focus on core competencies knowledge has become very important for the companies of today, especially for Research-intensive companies. The problem is that the companies become more sensitive to how knowledge is created and spread, that is, how organizational knowledge is created. Especially sensitive are companies who are small, young and Research-intensive. The purpose with this thesis is to explore how organizational knowledge is created in small, young and Research intensive companies.The theory is based on a five-phase model of organizational knowledge creation and four modes of knowledge conversion described by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995). These concepts constitute the foundation of the analytical model used in the thesis.The study is carried out by qualitative, highly structured interviews with low standardization.

The companies? managements acknowledge personal relations and trust, through good communication and predefined responsibilities and goals, as key factors to succeed in strategic alliance. These factors did not always exist according to the employees? involved. This Research, in contrast, suggests that these factors are subordinate to the correlation between the company?s vision and the alliance objectives, hence level of priority, which indicates that management has hidden motives for entering the strategic alliance.

An ongoing discussion concerning the possibilities of universal classification based on phenomena rather than on Research disciplines has been noticed. In order to discover if this was a limited discussion or the beginning of a major new field of Research a study of citations was made using the database Web of Science. In addition, references of the works concerned were studied to find out where the ideas originated. The study of references shows that the ideas originate in a limited number of older published works, some of them well established in Information Science, some of them less generally known. The main ideas commonly used in Information Science are Ranganathan?s facet theories and the work of the Classification Research Group.