In this paper, we argue that incubators facilitate access to external financing for their incubatees. Incubators use a wide range of activities to facilitate the accessing of external financing from public and private sources. We have grouped these into two sets of activities. The general activities aim to develop the conditions for external financing through information, education of incubatees, network-building and lobbying activities. The specific activities aim to assist the individual incubatee in their pursuit of external finance through help in application procedures, establishing need for capital, making contacts with the best public or private investor, etc. Based on the survey data, we have also shown that it is more common for incubatees to attract external capital compared to non-incubator firms. The incubatees seem especially successful in attracting public capital. The incubatees also attract more private external capital, however, the observed frequency of private capital in the incubatees are low.

In order to shed light on the role of higher education and its importance for innovation and entrepreneurship this paper presents the results of a survey of the four major technical universities in the Nordic countries; Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland; Chalmers Technical University in Gothenburg, Sweden; the Danish Technical University in Copenhagen, Denmark; and the Norwegian Technical University in Trondheim, Norway. Through the survey we have investigated what forms or tools the four technical universities use to collaborate with industry in education and to what extent these forms affect innovation in companies and entrepreneurship. The survey results show that there are five main forms of educational collaboration for innovation and entrepreneurship: 1) Thesis and project assignments, 2) Internships, 3) Executive and continuing education, 4) Entrepreneurship education, 5) Meeting spaces for innovation, platforms or arenas, between companies and students. All four technical universities use all five forms but with varying intensity. In terms of volume of activities and an innovation perspective thesis and project assignments by engineering students in their finishing year seems to be the most important form. From an entrepreneurship perspective the entrepreneurship education and related facilities such as incubators seem be most important.

Syftet med denna rapport är ge en forskningsöversikt av fenomenet entreprenöriella universitet och de möjliga roller entreprenöriella universitet kan spela som regionala innovationsmotorer, det vill säga att bidra till en regions innovationsförmåga och innovationsprestationer. Forskningsöversikten baseras på svensk och internationell forskning. Rapporten ska också ge exempel på ”best practice”; föredömliga och framgångsrika case på hur universitet och högskolor arbetat med att bli mer entreprenöriella och effektivare bidra till regional utveckling. Vidare ska rapporten ge policyförslag på hur svenska universitet och högskolor kan stimuleras till att bli mer entreprenöriella och effektivare bidra till regional utveckling. Policyförslagen riktas både till den statliga politiska nivån samt till universitetsledningarna.

The purpose of this paper is to present the process and evaluation of case writing projects in co-operation with companies and organizations in a course for engineering students. The case writing projects could provide an illustration and example framework for working with companies in constructing cases. Normally cases are constructed for teaching purposes in higher education. However, in order to get closer co-operation and more interest from the companies the authors encouraged the students and the companies to construct cases on issues that the companies felt were especially relevant for them. Drawing on previous research on case writing in teaching case writing projects were set up. The companies who worked closely with the students were very satisfied with both the case writing process and the final cases. These companies expressed several benefits like getting a good public reputation, getting an analysis by a third party, a free look on possible future employees, maintaining good relations with higher education and also getting material for internal development purposes. The companies that had a more distant relationship to the projects or were the process had been problematic had a more critical view of the process and outcome. They saw few benefits with the case writing projects besides maintaining a good image.

The practices of open innovation have been advocated as an efficient way to accelerate innovation processes and expanding the markets for innovations in turbulent times. One specific way of practicing open innovation is the use of web-based innovation tools whereby, among others, any user and customer in the world may be reached for the spawning ideas, sharing of experiences, testing of products and even designing products themselves. While research has been extensive on the opportunities these tools may provide, the managerial challenges and competences needed to implement and operate these tools have been scarce. The aim of the paper is to develop a framework of managerial challenges and competences related to the implementation of web innovation tools. The framework is based on previous research and a case study of a telecom company’s web innovation site and management of this web site. The research reported in the paper intends to contribute to the research on web innovation tools and the management of web innovation tools.

The purpose of the paper is to develop a framework of management competences related to the effective management of three types of online innovation tools. The framework highlights the development of three types of management competences and related practices: (a) disclosure competence in order to find, direct and motivate users to contribute, (b) appropriation competence in order to appropriate users' contributions, and (c) integration competence in order to direct, transfer and integrate user contributions to the relevant parts of the organization. The study provides a managerially relevant view of the complementarities between external sourcing of knowledge and necessary internal competences to reap the benefits of involving users through an online innovation tool.

Denna bok handlar om företagsstrategiska perspektiv. Perspektiv betyder synvinkel eller synsätt. Företagsstrategiska perspektiv är sålunda olika synsätt på ämnesområdet företagsstrategi. Ett företagsstrategiskt perspektiv betonar vissa aspekter inom det företagsstrategiska ämnesområdet och erbjuder tankemodeller, angreppsmetoder och verktyg för att hantera strategiska problem.

There have been few studies on the long-term performance of university spin-offs (USOs). This paper builds on previous empirical research into the performance of USOs and on the resource-based model of USOs. Several research issues are addressed including, in particular, the long-term performance of Swedish USOs, the distribution of the main types of business, the extent to which USOs have been in contact with support organizations, and by how much the potential growth of USOs has been achieved by the dissemination of technological knowledge to other businesses through patents, licences and other activities of the founder of the USO. The results of studies of 25 Swedish USOs, all started between 1962 and 1990 and with a median age of 25 years, confirm previous research on USOs which experienced limited growth. The analysis indicates that most of the USOs usually operate as 'simple' types of business, such as consultancy services; and that 60% have been in contact with support organizations.

In this study, we respond to calls for further investigation on why and how scientists choose to commercialize their research. Mowery (University entrepreneurship and technology transfer: process design, and intellectual property, Elsevier, Oxford 2005), in his criticism of the US-system, emphasizes the need for multiple channels between university and industry. His argument makes the case of Sweden interesting, where the researchers own the intellectual property of their research. Sweden thus constitutes a unique case where data can be found on which choices researchers make in a setting where a variety of channels for transfer are available. Our empirical data, collected through case studies, allowed for the expansion of the typology for mechanisms for transfer of academic research as well as the development of a typology for determinants for researchers’ choice to engage in transfer of research. Apart from those contributions to the theoretic discussion, the data also provided policy implications.

This article uses case studies to address the sources of social innovation, a major contributor to economic growth and welfare services. Following the findings of user-innovation research in the commercial sector, the authors found that social-problem users innovate new social services for solving specific social problems. They also found that superior problem and solution knowledge is one reason for their ability to do this, that their legitimacy with other potential users is an important factor for their innovations’ diffusion and that the legitimacy of the new social services’ operators with other stakeholders is important for acquiring resources for their projects. This contributes to the understanding of the management of social innovation using the established theoretical framework of user innovation.

Lead userness (LU) captures to what extent a user, in a given product domain, is ahead of an important market trend and expects high benefits from innovating. A comprehensive understanding of antecedents and consequences of LU are important to both theory and practice. To lead-user theory, a more comprehensive understanding of antecedents such as intrinsic motivation may contribute to improved knowledge of the underlying motivational mechanisms that explain why some users display LU. Similarly an improved understanding of consequences may help explain why these users provide advice to other consumers or often come up with attractive innovations. To practice, such knowledge may provide insights on how to identify these users at lower cost as well as how to get use of them for developing or promoting new products.

Previous studies have investigated different antecedents and consequences in different product domains. Therefore, there is a need to further investigate the previously studied antecedents and consequences in more domains. This way a more comprehensive understanding of the relative importance of different antecedents and consequences within and across product domains can be gained.  Some antecedent may thus be more domain-specific than other ones.

In the current study we therefore set out to investigate three previously studied antecedents of LU: consumer knowledge, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. In addition we study a fourth antecedent, technology cognizance, which may be of particular importance in the information technology intense domain we study. Further, two previously studied consequences of LU, opinion leadership and opinion seeking, are researched in the present study of the mobile application domain.

Based on a survey study of 156 undergraduate students we report in a series of regression analyses: (1) consumer knowledge to be the only antecedent of LU; (2) opinion leadership and opinion seeking to be consequences of LU, the former being a relatively more important one, and; (3) Our findings to overall correspond highly to findings in researches of other domains ranging from extreme sports such as kite-surfing and sailplaning to the mass market of home kitchen appliances. Implications for research and practice are provided. 

In this paper we develop a framework of lead user roles and their functions. Two of the roles, innovating and diffusing are explicit in the lead user literature. The third role, the preventing role, captures how lead users act not to let inferior innovations be developed or spread. This role is much more implicit in lead user research and has until now thus received relatively less attention. Following that a high percentage of new products fail, it seems important to consider how lead users could contribute to lower such failure rates by preventing inferior innovations.

For each role we specify functions. For instance, in their preventing role lead users may fulfil functions such as opinion seeking and use making. They may opinion seek their own innovation ideas in order to avoid developing inferior innovations and they may engage in use making (refers to persistently using an innovation with the purpose of convincing others of its superiority) in order to prevent diffusion of currently commercially available products. In specifying functions of each role we particularly pay attention to how functions within a single role, as well as between roles, are conceptually distinct from each other.

We argue that is important to elaborate on different roles played by lead users, for instance, due to that  even in situations when lead users develop inferior innovations themselves, they may play important roles by preventing other inferior innovations from reaching the market or by recommending an innovation they perceive to be superior. Based on our developed framework we provide directions for future research. 

Many software-intensive product development companies are still struggling with the alignment of business and technology changes to find an optimal balance between products and services while remaining agile, effective, and efficient. Business model alignment is highlighted as a new business model research area for understanding the relationships between the dynamic nature of business models, organization design, and the value creation in the business model activities.

In this paper, we synthesize the impact of digitalization on business model change for the software-intensive product development industry. Based on established theories, we link effectiveness and efficiency, to value creation in business model activities and organizational learning, in a step towards conceptualizing business model change as a significant part of developing software architectural support for a business model change in a learning organization.  

Our unit of analysis is the value created in a transaction between two actors in a business model activity, and how that value is supporting transforming a capability into an efficient ability. Based on our results and to facilitate the cross-disciplinary analysis of business model dynamics, we present seven propositions and a conceptual model linking effectiveness, efficiency, value, transaction, and organizational learning to business model change via the \textit{value membrane}.