Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The article deals with the analysis of the Czech company Linet in an effort to reveal a sustainable business model. It describes the company in the historical context (birth and gradual development), the organizational context (infrastructure) and the innovation context (sources of innovation). The main aim of the article is to find out answers to questions how the company´s journey looked like from zero to the position of European leader in the hospital beds production and what prerequisites the company had to fulfil in order to create a creative culture and what are the imaginary seeds from which its innovations are growing. Fulfilling this goal required to search for literature sources dealing with innovation, innovation sources (opportunities windows), innovation process and innovation companies and also to create a case study that focused on the company´s innovation practice in years 1990-2016. The Linet study is based on six structured interviews with both the founder of the company as well as its current CEO. Research has shown that the company achieved rocket growth thanks to two basic principles, namely constant improvement and respect to people and market focus (openness to the outside world). These principles were applied in practice through controversial thinking, staff inexperience, learning infrastructure, learning and learnership. Openness to the outside world has been identified as an important source of innovation. This openness was ensured by systematic monitoring of the internal and external environment which consisted of staff testing, centres of excellence, patent scanning and the Academy of Productivity and Innovations. The results of the study have led to the conclusion that the company has achieved high innovative performance through ability of absorbing theoretical knowledge, applying it to its processes and principles and integrate it into a comprehensive system that responds to its needs (adapt).

The demographic decline, economic uncertainty and high unemployment rate allow predicting the exit from the market the weakest privately run HEIs. The aim of the paper is to identify strategies that privately run HEI might pursuit in current high-velocity environment sustaining competitive advantages. Author applied the dynamic capabilities framework as a theoretical foundation and propounded four research questions. Having investigated the stage of Latvian privately run HEI industry consolidation, authors answered the first research question: what should be the cornerstone of a HEI long term strategic plan in current industry consolidation stage? Then authors conducted the survey of students’ opinions among different privately-run Latvian HEIs and answered second research question: what educational philosophies have been adopted by many privately run HEIs: customer or product oriented approach towards students? Next, the research paper identifies the necessity of product oriented approach and determined dynamic capabilities for such strategic move. Finally, authors answered on the forth research question: is it possible to develop and sustain the competitive advantage, pursuing international strategies by exploiting a HEI’s resource and capabilities? The paper has potential to generate a scholar’s discussions and might lead to further research.