Seeing to the Needs of a Startup. Providing inventiveBoard with market knowledge and exposure

Abstract: This thesis is set out to provide an understanding on what actions a firm does to withstand competition with a qualitative research approach. The main medicine for this is considered to be innovation or fore-most the competitive advantage gained from it. In order to take in new knowledge a firms learning capa-bility is looked into bysampling firms from the KIE-segment. These firms has been interviewed in a semi structured matter and analyzed with a frame of reference that depicts the fields of: KIE-firms, Innovation and Absorptive Capacity. The empirical body is compared among the respondents and then contrasted with theory. The outcome of this project shows that the sample of KIE-firms regards the interaction with the customer to be the biggest source of input when managing the innovation process. This conclusion is then used as a recommendation for InventiveBoard, which is a innovation management company owned and managed by Joakim Wahlberg, GU-Holding and three students of the Knowledge Based Entrepre-neurship Masters program.