Barriers to Business Model Innovation in Swedish Agriculture

Abstract: Swedish agricultural companies, especially small farms, are struggling to be profitable in difficult economic times. It is a challenge for Swedish farmers to compete with imported products on prices. The agricultural industry, however, supports the view that through business model innovation, farms can increase their competitive advantage. This paper identifies and describes some of the barriers Swedish small farms encounter when they consider business model innovation. A qualitative approach is used in the study. Agriculture business consultants were interviewed. In a focus group led by the researchers, farmers discussed business model innovation, including the exogenous and endogenous barriers to such innovation. The paper concludes many barriers exist when farmers consider innovation of agricultural business models. Some barriers are caused by human factors, such as individuals' attitudes, histories, and traditions. Other barriers are more contextual in nature and relate to a particular industry or company setting. Still other barriers, such as government regulations, value chain position, and weather, are more abstract. All barriers, however, merit attention when Swedish agricultural companies develop new business models

qbits : Combine usage and storage of bits

Aren’t you tired of never finding stuff? Take a bits as example, do you store these lose in your toolbox or carpenter belt? What if you could have it all accessible and assembled in a tool, always at arm’s reach? Today bits are used together with electric screwdrivers and handheld screwdrivers in a greater spread. For these different types of storage, from pure storage boxes to complex tools with storage built in, exist. The professional craftsmen commonly use some kind of box where the bits can be stored. Even so they tend to store their bits loose in a carpenter belt or toolbox, since they want the speed and accessibility of carpenter belt over the storage box’s tidiness. The project was started in the fall of 2010 and a referents group was early put together to ensure that the developed product became as user-friendly and attractive as possible. The referents group contained our target group, professional craftsmen and other competent persons within the field. In cooperation with the referents group a needs and wants list was put together to make sure that the product satisfice the need. The lack of a good storage solution has led to a unique product which suit for both usage and storage of bits. Through combining the carpenter belt and the storage box speed, accessibility and tidiness is obtained. A solution suggestion with a prototype was created which satisfied the set needs and wants. The solution was presented for the referents group and the response was good but improvements suggestions were given. These were taken and work began on a new version. The result became a new product, qbits, the unique tool which combine usage and storage of bits

Barriers to Business Model Innovation in Swedish Agriculture

Swedish agricultural companies, especially small farms, are struggling to be profitable in difficult economic times. It is a challenge for Swedish farmers to compete with imported products on prices. The agricultural industry, however, supports the view that through business model innovation, farms can increase their competitive advantage. This paper identifies and describes some of the barriers Swedish small farms encounter when they consider business model innovation. A qualitative approach is used in the study. Agriculture business consultants were interviewed. In a focus group led by the researchers, farmers discussed business model innovation, including the exogenous and endogenous barriers to such innovation. The paper concludes many barriers exist when farmers consider innovation of agricultural business models. Some barriers are caused by human factors, such as individuals’ attitudes, histories, and traditions. Other barriers are more contextual in nature and relate to a particular industry or company setting. Still other barriers, such as government regulations, value chain position, and weather, are more abstract. All barriers, however, merit attention when Swedish agricultural companies develop new business models. © 2015 by the authors.Lean Innovation (KK

The Role Of Vision for Empowerment in Born Global Companies.

The overall purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leadership, vision and motivation of the employees (empowerment) in order to get a better understanding of how the top manager of a Born Global company can develop the company. The study is based on two explorative case studies, where interviews have been conducted with both the top manager as well as the employees. This study is considered crucial in case of born global where the top manager spends maximum time in travelling. Top manager needs to integrate such a culture where employees are set in a framework wherein the operations are handled smoothly during the absence of top manager. In this era of global competition the key for a successful firm lies in the empowerment of employees with well defined boundaries. A qualitative strategy and a research design with two case studies on Swedish Born Global companies were used in reaching the purpose of this study. The primary empirical data were mainly collected from six interviews. Two interviews were conducted with top manager and rest with employees. Secondary data like general company information were gathered from the website of the companies prior to primary data collection to have a better understanding and preparation. The results of the study indicate that the vision is more important for the top manager compared to the employees working in a born global company. However, the vision manages to establish a supportive culture where their daily activities and decisions of the employees are in line with the vision of the company. We see that this has been possible due to the leadership style and motivational factors like delegation of responsibility and autonomy of work. Our findings indicate that empowering employees has a significant advantage supporting the growth and internationalization of the born global company. Based on these findings, practical and theoretical implications are presented and discussed in the paper

Participation and Frequency in Criminal Convictions across 25 Successive Birth Cohorts : Collectivity, Polarization, or Convergence?

Against the backdrop of an overall declining crime trend our overarching objective is to explore whether this development has concealed any degree of divergence between participation and frequency in crime. We employ Swedish longitudinal data comprising 25 complete birth cohorts born between 1960 and 1984 and followed to age 30 using convictions data. The results show a complex pattern of change, by which the crime rate partly conceals divergent processes between participation and frequency. In particular, among the males we find a consistent decrease in the size of the convicted population, whereas the frequency of crimes among convicted offenders has increased across cohorts born during the early 1970s and later. We discuss the results against both behavioral and reactional mechanisms and conclude that future crime trends research should consider a broad range of criminal career parameters which cannot be discerned using aggregate crime data

Participation and Frequency in Criminal Convictions across 25 Successive Birth Cohorts : Collectivity, Polarization, or Convergence?

Against the backdrop of an overall declining crime trend our overarching objective is to explore whether this development has concealed any degree of divergence between participation and frequency in crime. We employ Swedish longitudinal data comprising 25 complete birth cohorts born between 1960 and 1984 and followed to age 30 using convictions data. The results show a complex pattern of change, by which the crime rate partly conceals divergent processes between participation and frequency. In particular, among the males we find a consistent decrease in the size of the convicted population, whereas the frequency of crimes among convicted offenders has increased across cohorts born during the early 1970s and later. We discuss the results against both behavioral and reactional mechanisms and conclude that future crime trends research should consider a broad range of criminal career parameters which cannot be discerned using aggregate crime data

Design of Financial CDO Squared Transactions Using Constraint Programming

Abstract. We give an approximate and often extremely fast method of building a particular kind of portfolio in finance, here called a portfolio design (PD), with applications in the credit derivatives market, for example when designing collateralised debt obligations squared (CDO 2)transactions. A PD generalises a balanced incomplete block design (BIBD) and is usually harder to build. Worse, typical financial PDs are an order of magnitude larger than the largest BIBDs built so far by constraint programs, and in practice an optimisation version of the problem of building PDs has to be solved. Our method is based on embedding small designs, whose determination is itself a constraint satisfaction problem, into the original large design. Together with the detection of when a PD might be a BIBD, symmetry breaking, extended reuse of previously built PDs, and admissibility checking during search, the performance of the method becomes good enough for designing (near-)optimal CDO 2 transactions, with sizes common in the credit derivatives market, within minutes. For example, we optimally build a typical financial PD, which has over 10 746 symmetries, in just a few minutes. The high quality of our approximate designs can be assessed by comparison with a lower bound on the optimum. Our designs sufficiently improve the currently best ones so as often to make the difference between having or not having a feasible CDO 2 transaction due to investor and rating-agency constraints.