Innovations, with inspirations from a socio-technical perspective : “A research of AB Electrolux intranet ‘E-gate’ and their product development process”

Abstract: AB Electrolux is a company that focuses on innovative products and collaborationamongst others. Today, they are using their intranet “E-gate” to enhance collaboration.AB Electrolux has recently introduced new Web 2.0 social media technology on E-gate.In contemporary business, it seems like social media and innovations are hot topics; butit is not easy, to implement social media, create innovations, and also make use of it inan organisation. In a majority of organisations are these matters often overrepresented.In organisation different policies, rules, guidelines and employees are involved duringchanges, and this is aiding organisations to establish how social media features canenhance and promote innovation.Nowadays, innovation is significant to organisations, especially when it comes togain advantages toward competitors or when trying to advance in the marketplace. Inthis thesis the collected information is objectively applied. This, in order to gainqualitative knowledge about subjects of interest such as; cultural issues, knowledgemanagement and the socio-technical perspective – because these areas could beconsidered to have a huge effect and impact on innovation. Further it could have aneffect on how innovation emerges in organisations. This is of importance especially inareas such as knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer.The results are showing: Organisational culture and knowledge management plays acrucial and important part of innovation. These areas must be considered iforganisations are implementing or using new technology. It is also to be recommendedwhen organisations are trying to enhance the pace of innovations. In this thesis I havealso constructed a model that illustrates how an organisation could create an innovativeatmosphere, along with a socio-technical perspective.