Energy, Environment and Livelihoods in the Lao PDR : Results from a 2011 Household Survey

This report presents the main results of a household survey collected in 2011. The data was originally collected for FFRC project Interlinkages between energy and livelihoods - Data, training and Scenarios for sustainable energy planning in Laos (INES), funded by the Energy and Environment Partnership (EEP) with the Mekong Region, financed by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and the Nordic Development Fund. The demographic profile of the households was surveyed first. The actual questions were related to the following topics: (1) household assets, (2) livelihood activities, (3) income and liabilities, (4) food security and (5) survival strategies, (6) energy use; and (7) environment. This publication is also organized according to these research themes. While the section exploring residential energy use was fairly extensive and utilized throughout the project, the other themes received less attention. The main reason for compiling this e-book was to disseminate all the key results from the survey, especially those with little publicity so far. Similar, recent household level data from Laos is not currently available from any other sources, as far as we know. Thus, this e-Book report provides unique results on the Laotian society and economy based on the household survey findings

Selling process development services

Process development projects should meet with the customer expectations in order to be considered as an asset for technology companies and be turned this asset into sellable services. Customers are looking for affordable, but technologically superior process development services to be delivered in shorter lead time from technology companies. However, it is not an easy task to integrate all these features to the development projects when the tremendous effort, resources and capabilities required behind the project. Therefore, technology companies should assess their business environment, resources and capabilities they have, seek their incompetence and make decisions according to their incompetence to acquire resources, skills or capabilities internally or externally from their business environment to be able to execute such quality projects. This thesis aims to address the execution and delivery of successful process development services through strengthening the networking around technology companies in consideration of their business environment, resources and capabilities. The success behind process development services in this thesis refers to worth buying services which meet the customer expectations. In the literature review, process development projects and the work required behind are introduced with industrial reasons why production companies might need these projects. Thereafter, process development services as being an asset are addressed in terms of business environment, essential resources and key capabilities, and possible decisions to be able to execute projects and deliver the related services to the production companies. Finally, the value-adding activities to enhance the services regarding quality, time and cost saving aspects are discussed. In the own contribution, the thesis studies the networking potential of technology companies in order to achieve successful process development services. More than 150 process developers consisting of technology companies and service developers available in the Western Europe and Canada & USA are investigated to determine the business environment of a technology company. Two different studies are conducted to assess the service capabilities of technology companies and service developers, which are Competitor Analysis of Technology Companies and Service Availability Assessment of Service Providers. These two studies shed the light on gathering necessary information and determining the roles of service providers in order to be able to construct a networking around technology companies