Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the innovation process of companies, and to analyse how important success factors and obstacles are in their innovation process.Method: The investigation strategy used for this essay was to interview companies that work with innovations. The essay has a qualitative approach. Both primary ? in the form of interviews - and secondary data ? literature found in books, scientific articles and internet - have been used to achieve our results.Results: The result of this essay is: there is not just one inovation process that is applicable to all companies. On the other hand, there are some guidelines that could be followed in the process.

User comments:Availability and Utilization in Online News Affiliated with Local Daily PressAuthor: Susanne AlmgrenSupervisor: Mats EkströmConstituent: Dagspresskollegiet (Annika Bergström/Ingela Wadbring)Course: Term Paper in Media and Communication StudiesTerm: Spring Term 2012Pages/word count: 91 pages / 38 334 wordsObjective: To examine the users availability to the user comment feature and how theusers utilizes the user comment feature in the context of an online news site affiliatedwith local daily press.Method: Mixed methods approach, content analysis and discourse analysisMain result: In this context, three out of four news stories (76.5 percent) has beenallocated with the user comments feature. The highest availability to the user comment feature was found in news themes covering sports and entertainment, followed by financial news. News stories lacking the user comment feature weremainly found in news themes concerning crimes and accidents. The user comment frequencies are not normally distributed along news stories. On the contrary, 62 percent of the news stories did not get any user comments at all.

Det kunskapssamhälle som råder idag medför att organisationer måste rusta sig och hålla ett högt tempo i den förändringsbenägna omvärlden. Kunskap och lärande ses däremellan som nyckelaktiviteter i relation till förändring vilket i sin tur föder innovation. Forskning har påvisat att småföretag förväntas bidra till en större del av näringslivets tillväxt, men att småföretagen samtidigt har behov av att höja sin innovationskapacitet för att möta utmaningen. Studien avsåg därför att utforska småföretag i extern samverkan för att se huruvida ett sådant kunskapsutbyte skapat förutsättningar för innovation hos den egna organisationen. Med hjälp av en kvalitativ forskningsmetodik undersöktes sex småföretagsledare som deltagit i det lärande nätverket, Tillväxtmotorn, via semistrukturerade intervjuer.

The web sites of Swedish public libraries display a high level of heterogeneity when it comes to design and graphical user interface. The thesis is based on the opinion that the visuals of a public library web site have implications for the user as well as for the library. The design of the graphical user interface influences the attention of the user and his/her ability to absorb information. Furthermore, there is a connection between the visuals and the users opinion about the credibility of the content of the web site, as well as of the organisation itself. The research question is: Which factors may have an impact on the design of the graphical user interfaces of a public library web site? The purpose is to create an understanding for these factors and emphasize them.

This report is a part of a diploma work, conducted as a part of a Master of Science degree. The diploma work consists of a preliminary study, two case studies, a user study, a paper and this report. It was created at the Linköping University for the department of Science and Technology, in cooperation with Unilever Research in the UK, and partly with the EC founded project, Smartdoc IST-2000-28137. Hand-held, mobile devices like Personal Digital Assistances (PDAs) are becoming increasingly popular in today?s wireless world.

The purpose of this thesis is to study and determine how working in cross functional teams can generate value in an effort to facilitate innovation. An inductive scientific perspective is chosen as the research approach. A single case is investigated with the theoretical framework based on Resource Based View, Intellectual Capital, Innovation theory and theories concerning Cross Functional Teams. The empirical material has been collected through primary data; surveys, interviews and secondary data; literature, websites and further complementary data. The practice of using Cross Functional Teams will enhance organizational learning, knowledge transfer, increase communication and innovation, which in turn will increase the speed and performance of the new product development process.

This thesis examines and evaluates user boards in Swedish public schools from a democratic perspective. In order to evaluate whether the democratic values are fulfilled five different democratic ideals are selected to serve as a theoretical fundament. These ideals derive from the Swedish Government Official Reports that preceded the reform of user boards in schools, and are identified as the following: participation, dialogue, trust, democratic schooling and influence. The study is based on cases and involves two schools with user boards and two comparative schools with informal parental influence, so called school advisory boards. The study concludes that the main difference between the two types of parental influence is the level of formality.

User friendly and usable are two words that are often mentioned in the context of marketing new products. By doing so it adds an extra sense of quality to the product. The meaning of these words is therefore something that every product wants. But what is it that makes a product usable and user friendly? What methodology exists formaking sure that a product is usable? Does it exist applicable processes to ensure user centered development? These questions together with a practical example are parts of what will be addressed in this report.The thesis was carried out for C2 Management, a company that works with supporting other companies in their work with quality and constant improvements.

Our examination project has been to develop today?s existing walking frames and make them more exiting and user friendly for tomorrow?s users.The use of a walking frame today makes it easier for a person with a movement difficulty in different extent. It makes it easier with their living condition and the user get a more movement easier life where they can take care of the daily chores without any help from the society or the family members.With our product we get a product that not only makes it easier for the user to get out and get forward. We help the user to get forward where they often would have difficulties to get forward. An example is where its more steeper parts where it could be more difficult to get up or down and even with more difficult foundation due to bad weather.

En intressant del av innovationsprocessen är hur transformeringen fråninnovatör till entreprenör går till. En djupdykning i den initialainnovationsprocessen bör därför göras. Litteratur och tidigare forskningredovisar olika metoder för hur man skall hantera innovation. Men användsdå dessa metoder av verklighetens innovationsrådgivare? Detta samt enjämförelse hur olika organisationer jobbar görs genom ett fältexperiment.Resultatet visar att dagens innovationsrådgivare använder samma typ avprocess när det gäller att starta ett företag som att hantera en potentiellinnovation.

User education is an important aspect of university libraries' service to its users. This Masters' Thesis is about online user education. The aim of this study is to analyse five Swedish online user courses in relation to information literacy and learning theory. The web-sites were explored through textual analyses to find how concepts of information literacy and learning theory are expressed. The theoretical framework is based on Carol C Kuhlthau's three levels of user education, Paul Ramsden's three theories of teaching in higher education and Christine Bruce's different aspects of information literacy.

The purpose of this bachelor's thesis is to see how public libraries have adopted the new e-book readers and how the libraries think the e-readers will affect them in the future. There are three different theories in this study which are used to see how the e-book reader influences the libraries as an innovation and as a remediation from the paper book as well as its evolution. The authors have used four qualitative interviews where they have tried to find the most relevant librarians for the purpose. It was found that all the libraries in the study think that they need to learn about the e-reader and its functions to be able to understand users? needs, but they haven´t agreed if they should have the e-reader as a library loan.

Innovation är av stor vikt för ekonomisk tillväxt och mycket pengar satsas på att föra ut idéer från akademi till industri. Tidigare forskning visar att endast en liten del av innovationerna inom industrin kommer från akademin. Frågeställningarna har behandlat vilka problem som uppstår under innovationsprocessen och hur en innovation påverkas av den kontext där den utvecklas. Teoretisk grund har varit en processmodell som behandlar invention, diffusion och tillämpning samt ett nätverkssynsätt som behandlar kontextuella skillnader. Studien bygger på en kvalitativ fallstudie av medicinteknikföretaget Sensodetect som utvecklar objektiva diagnosmetoder för psykiatriska sjukdomar.

The aim of our study is to deepen our understanding of how both social workers and clients describe how user influence within substance abuse care for adults can work. What difficul-ties do they describe meeting, with regards to possibilities to influence the care? To achieve our purpose we had a qualitative approach for this study. It?s based on open thematic inter-views with 3 clients who have substance abuse problems, and with 3 social workers, working at Social Services in Stockholm.

This thesis investigates how web agencys in Stockholm use, value and incoroprate the terms usability, user experience and interaction design in their work process. The purpose of this study is to investigate how creative professionals works with the notions of usability, user experience and interaction design with focus on the end user. Our definition of creative professionals is every employee at a web agency involved in the work process of developing digital artefacts in any capacity. We wanted to investigate how these notions are considered, consciously or unconsciously, during the workprocess. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at three different web agencys with eight different employees.