Much research has been conducted regarding which steps to take to enhance the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. However, entrepreneurs often turn to practical books for insights on what steps to take, resulting in a research-practitioner gap. This thesis aimed at combining different models and methods into one integral yet simple framework that is practically applicable for startup founders in the early phase: customer discovery. The scientific literature for these models and methods was included. The framework included the Customer Development Model, Diffusion of Innovations Model, Technology Acceptance Model, the Mom Test method and the Lean method. This framework was then tested on a practical use case to test the applicability of the different aspects in a real-life scenario. This use case was the company Plense Technologies, a startup I recently co-founded and still in the customer discovery phase. The metric of learnings and insights was used to assess the framework during this phase. Although the initial framework proved to be insightful, some additions were made. These four additions were (1) the distinction between directive- and non-directive interviews at the different phases of the customer development insight cycle, (2) interviewing suppliers, (3) the benefit of startup coaches and (4) doing an internship to get a better understanding of the customer. With these additions, the resulting framework proved to be integral and simple to apply in a practical context. Entrepreneurs can use the models and methods in the framework to rapidly iterate and improve the business model, ultimately increasing the chances of entrepreneurial success. Factors mentioned that may influence how the framework can best be applied are the financial climate, regulatory environment, culture, market segment, market type, product type, the role of the customer and the relevance of deep tech. These should be further assessed in future research to validate their applicability in different contexts.

The current second quantum revolution heralds the biggest technological advancements of the twenty-first century. At the forefront of this is the development of quantum computers, which promise to bring transformations to almost all sectors, from banking to drug research. With rising investments in developing full-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers, the quantum computing provider market is starting to saturate with incumbents. In order to succeed, firms operating in this market need to start acting competitively. However, despite vast research on the potential applications, technological development and responsible innovation, little is known about strategic factors that drive the market.

To address this issue, this work identifies, describes and contextualises the use of alliances in firms’ business strategy in the quantum computing business ecosystem. Through literature review, publications of various types of collaborations on firms's websites, and interviews with four experts in the industry, the work describes the quantum computing business ecosystem, links the cooperations to literature on strategies, and provides contextual implementations of various alliances.

First, a value proposition is constructed, containing five components: Hardware providers, cloud service providers, quantum software providers, managed services providers and end-users, each with its own set of challenges and strategies attached to it. Furthermore, two technology strategies pursued by firms can be identified: an open innovation approach and a full-stack approach. The use of various types of collaborations are described, including licensing, standards agreements, business networks, joint marketing, selling and offering agreements, consortia, strategic partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, and joint ventures.

For SMEs, alliances through bidding consortia, formed for tenders and subsidies, are the main use of cooperation. Strategies herein are the acquisition of capital, reduction of R\&D costs, early product show-off, and staying in the loop for technological decision making on standards. Other partnerships are aimed at figuring out relationships with other firms in the industry, and fostering standardisation through the release of open-source software. The former is characteristic of the nascent ecosystem's formation, as the value proposition is still unclear and the industry's architecture is not set. The use of open-source software has also played a key role in the development of the classical computer, and firms are seen to adhere to a similar approach. Furthermore, we contextualise the strategic differences between the full-stack and open innovation approaches that are seen within the ecosystem. Where firms in the former are challenged by technical inflexibility, low sales volume and vast investment costs, firms in the latter need to balance an appropriability-adoption dilemma, create sufficient alignment with their value proposition and use extensive cooperation to ensure compatibility and modularity. However, through this, they get to enjoy increased economies of scale and agility.

All in all, the strategies can be summarised in two main categories: procurement of resources and embedding into the ecosystem. The work in this thesis encompasses a multitude of related fields including competitive strategy, ecosystems and alliances, and discusses the quantum computing industry from the standpoint of the technology providers and developers, which should aid managers in evaluating their strategic position in the ecosystem and in drafting cooperation strategies. From an academic perspective, this work provides the first managerial study of the quantum computing market from the standpoint of the technology providers. In addition to strategies, it identifies a lack of alignment of end-users as a key inhibitor to the constitution of the value proposition. Moreover, the findings of this thesis support the hypothesis that pre-adaptation-phase strategies are aimed at constituting Ortt and Kamp's technological innovation system (TIS) framework's building blocks, an important step to understanding ecosystem formation dynamics.

Lastly, we identify several key areas for future studies. This includes validating and strengthening the conclusions of this work through additional expert interviews, which should also help in exposing nuances in strategy between firm sizes, position in the value chain and geolocation, as well as similarities and differences with the development of the classical computer. Furthermore, future studies are suggested to investigate the differences in efficiency and effectiveness of governmental funding in the quantum industry, characterise end-users based on their expected moment of engagement with the quantum computing market, the role of alliances in quantum computing platform formation, and the link between innovation-phase strategies and the TIS framework's building blocks.

This study aimed to analyze the decision-making process and criteria of angel group members. These factors form the basis of the final decision of a member when they decide whether or not to invest in a start-up. To investigate this topic, the factors that affect member decision-making are investigated when these members receive a pre-validated set of investment options from an investor club. To collect data, eight interviews with members of one investor club in the digital health sector have been conducted. These members are of diverse member type and nationality to analyze differences between members. During these interviews, different factors that influence the investors, like regulatory approval or a strategic fit, have been indicated by members. Throughout these findings, differences of focus between different types of members were observed. In some cases, the service provided by the investor club does not line up with the strategy of members, posing a question for their future collaboration. This dissimilarity in strategy shows as well in the factors of importance for members. Where business angel members have many commonalities with traditional business angels and usually fit well with the opportunities provided by the club, especially corporate members focus on other factors. Because of these differences in focus between members, providing a satisfying service to all their members is complicated for the investor club. Creating a more synonymous member portfolio will lower the variance in member demands, allowing them to provide a better service. Although the results show many similarities between the decision-making of business angel members and individual business angels, this will need to be researched further to definitively come to this conclusion.

Recently, data breaches have been increasing in many organisations, causing a spotlight to be put on the security practices such as 2 Factor Authentication(2FA) technology and the methods used to protect cyberspace. This has resulted in an opportunity for passwordless authentication technologies. Biloq is an early stage venture which aims to develop hardware and software to provide continuous authentication without the burden of extra login steps that are present in existing technologies such as 2FA. This project aims to identify lead users for Biloq’s new product in the cybersecurity space. To answer this research question, first desk research was done to identify current trends in authentication technologies. This was followed by a stakeholder analysis to identify the people who are involved in ensuring the cybersecurity of their organisation, specifically with respect to the robustness of digital systems and how their staff perform authentication on a daily basis. After this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the identified stakeholders to spot behavioral and preference patterns and narrow down as precisely as possible the type of persona which would most likely be interested to adopt Biloq’s new products and services. The final outcome of the project is identification of lead users for this new paradigm of authentication.

Commercial greenhouse gas emissions from aviation are proliferating, as is the concern among freight carriers to minimize their carbon footprint. From a corporate point of view, the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organization ( ICAO) expects aircraft emissions to triple by 2050, with aviation accounting for 25% of the world's carbon budget . While ICAO and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) release annual overview statistics on the aviation industry and its related business economy, relatively few research data on fuel consumption, fuel quality and carbon emissions are available at global and regional levels, respectively. Policymakers and top decision-makers at transportation and logistics companies such as PostNL cannot determine the exact amount of carbon emissions associated with departing flights and needs a more robust model to determine marginal emissions due to cargo freight. To solve this problem, the research predominantly aims to answer the following research question: "How can PostNL be facilitated in calculating aircraft specific carbon emission factors, which can be used for accounting purposes, to promote sustainable purchasing and green market positioning?". Using empirical data from public, private-owned confidential data sets, and the PianoX aircraft emissions modeling, this research outlines a consistent and globally dispersed methodology for estimating CO2 emissions for air freight. An extensive review of the literature was carried out in the field of the emergence of "Sustainability Concept" and antecedent research in the Netherlands. This was followed by evaluating the current situation and the emergence of the supply chain processes. The study also describes and analyzes the operational process at PostNL and discusses the current methodology used at PostNL, i.e. DEFRA method for carbon emission calculation. Later, the flaws in the model were evaluated and addressed. Based on the review of the literature on antecedent research and the analysis of different carbon emissions calculation methodologies being used internationally in various institutions, a method was proposed for the calculation of Co2 emissions due to air freight. In order to measure commercial fuel consumption, many publicly available data sources were collected and incorporated with Piano X, an aircraft performance and design platform from Lissys Ltd. The data on the fuel-burning process and projected Co2 emissions were then compared and validated with the ICAO dataset and later implemented in the model proposed. This was followed by the creation of a conceptual simulation and optimization model build using VBA in Excel, which helps the company in making data-driven air transport procurement decisions taking into account tradeoffs between carbon emission, lead time, and cost to gain a strategic business advantage. Strategic goals were broken down into the priorities of the individual divisions at PostNL, expressed with the goal values of the lead time and the performance metrics for cargo costs. A graphical comparison was followed with the EU ETS datasets and the DEFRA datasets to compare and correlate the results obtained using the proposed methodology. The result also helps PostNL drive business sustainability in their partnerships while maintaining their flexibility and bargaining power with suppliers. The limitations and errors with the research were acknowledged in the areas of uncertainty due to the use of publically available information and the absence of the inclusion of dynamically changing time-dependent variables, including privately owned airline data. It was also concluded that logistics companies such as PostNL should always bear in mind that, often drastically, the logistics networks may shift. New ways of doing business, such as coopetition and better modeling, can help to increase effectiveness. Scenario planning and better business management approaches will have an advantage in improving the transportation and logistics industry to face the demands of the future and become ever more competitive and sustainable.

The airline industry has experienced enormous growth over the past decades, providing the opportunity to travel and explore new countries to more people than ever before. The enormous growth and serious drop in prices has created an ecosystem of very large airline groups and increasing consolidations of companies forced by very low profit margins. The airline environment can be conservative and innovation processes can be relatively slow, therefore startups can be an interesting and valuable sources of innovation for the airline industry. The survival rate of startups in general is very low and sources indicate that the airline industry is even more challenging for startups. Therefore, the objective of this research is to investigate the key success factors for startups in the airline industry and identify a strategy to exploit the key success factor successfully. The final objective of this research is to gain a better understanding of the success factors and find a strategy for startups to successfully exploit the key success factor. This should lead to an increased survival rates for startups in the airline industry and more efficient innovation. The results can than be used by multiple stakeholders such as airlines, incubators, startups and investors to better tailor their strategies and policies.

Platforms - defined as businesses with network effects, thereby becoming more valuable the more users they acquire - have become economically important in our current economies. They are ubiquitously present in our daily lives and drive an increasingly share of our economies. However, most platforms cease to exists within the first five years. Therefore, the goal of this study is to gain knowledge that can increase the chances of a platform reaching its critical mass – the minimum number of users required to be commercially viable. In this study, 66 healthcare providers, one industry collaborative, and one start-up participate in an action design research (ADR) to develop an entirely new digital platform within a commercial environment. The research - consisting of a knowledge-base review, interviews, focus-groups, a questionnaire - was split into four stages: 1) Problem Formulation, 2) Build Intervention and Evaluation Cycles, 3) Reflection and Learning, and 4) Formalization of Learnings. This study concluded with a failure of the platform to reach critical mass. The learnings produced by the instantiated platform and - problem are generalized, resulting in the articulation of three commercial platform design principles. These design principles aim to help the practitioner increase the chances for their platform to reach critical mass. The design principles being: Growth by Design, Mutation by Design, and Leadership by Design. Current theories were found to be primarily descriptive and suffer from a survival bias. This, as they are largely based on after-the-fact (ex-post) research and data. Furthermore, they do not account for irrational actor behavior or commercial implications. Therefore, further research is suggested, focused on the time between platform inception and reaching critical mass.

Companies, now more than ever, recognize the value of patent analysis in contribution to their competitive and business intelligence. In highly competitive technology oriented industries, this IP (Intellectual Property) -based intelligence has gained increasing awareness over the past decades (Rivette & Kline, 2000). As technologies have become more and more complicated over the years, inventions nowadays are often described by a vast amount (sometimes thousands) of patents (Kur & Dreier, 2013). In order to convert this ever-growing database of patents into actionable intelligence, automated technologies for patent analysis have been developed. Furthermore, also tools capable of text mining for technology mapping came to the market. The output of these mapping tools represent the technological content of a certain set of patents in a map that borrows its appearance from cartography (Trippe, 2015). By doing this, huge amounts of patent records (up to millions) can be analysed, clustered based on their technological content and represented in an easy to interpret manner. This all can be done in a fraction of the time it would take to do this manually. The question raised however, what the quality of automated patent mapping is and how can it be used as a source of competitive or business intelligence?

Decisions surrounding innovations are often made on a project-to-project basis, and therefore lose sight of the overview of projects, i.e. the portfolio, and fall short on their strategic orientation. The research explores how innovation portfolio management can benefit innovation decision-makers in private and public organisations. More specifically, the thesis emphasises on how innovation portfolio management can be improved for both its own practice and the innovation management process in general. Innovation portfolio management is a process that enables innovating organisations to better allocate their resources, strategically align their innovation projects, and reach a healthier portfolio balance. The research approach for the exploration and exploitation of the process, is the design of an innovation portfolio management model, and an innovation support framework to help position the model in current practices.

Startups are a major source of innovation and are capable of doing things where larger firms are not capable of. Many corporates are therefore looking at opportunities to collaborate with startups, also called external venturing, and to capture their value. Although working with startups has many benefits and great opportunities for corporates, it is currently not part of Fokker Services’ innovation strategy, and therefore the objective of this study was to determine the first steps for Fokker Services to start with external venturing. However, Fokker Services is mainly active in the commercial aviation industry, and this industry differs from non-aviation industries in many ways. Therefore it has been decided that it was required first to determine how external venturing should be done in the (Dutch) aviation industry specifically. The answer to this question, which has also been the answer to the main research question, has been found in the formof a normative framework. This framework describes success factors and pitfalls for external venturing in the Dutch aviation industry and exists out of five different levels. These levels are found during the literature study and describe prerequisites to do external venturing in the right way. The normative framework has been the foundation on which the first steps for Fokker Service, to start with external venturing, relied on and has been presented in the form of an implementation plan. This plan describes four short-term stage, a mid-long term stage and a long-term stage with accompanying steps at the five levels relevant for external venturing. The normative framework is, in its turn, has been build based on a two-fold approach. First by translating key learnings from other organisations and external venturing experts about the execution of external venturing (combined with a literature study) into a list of success factors and pitfalls. Secondly by translating solutions to overcome industry specific startup challenges into success factors and pitfalls. The research strategy to answer the first part of this two-fold approach is chosen to be a literature study combined with a qualitative, multiple case study strategy. The research strategy to answer the second part of the two-fold approach has also been chosen to be a qualitative, multiple case study strategy. Unstructured interviews served as main data collection method for the case studies, and as a result, one of the most important solutions to overcome startup challenges is to grow and improve the Dutch aviation startup ecosystem. Another important solution is to clearly define the opportunities for entrepreneurs in the Dutch aviation industry. Both solutions aim at increasing the likelihood of entrepreneurs to enter the Dutch aviation industry. To overcome the remainder of the startup challenges, four external venturing ingredients have been found which should at least be present in each external venturing program aimed at the aviation industry. These four elements are business services, financing instruments, network and people connectivity and opportunities to use the corporate image. All these solutions have been translated into success factors for external venturing in theDutch aviation industry by saying that having a full-grown startup ecosystem, clearly defined opportunities and an external venturing program with at least containing the aforementioned four ingredients increases the chances on successful collaborations. Together with the success factors and pitfalls for external venturing in general, we now know how Fokker Services and other organisations in the Dutch aviation industry can start with external venturing in an effective way.