DSpace Community: Sloan School of Management

Collective innovation

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:58:59 GMT

Title: Collective innovation

Authors: Slawsby, Alex (Alex David); Rivera, Carlos

Abstract: The ability to innovate sits at the heart of an organization's ability to succeed in a competitive environment. An organization can innovate by improving existing products, services, or processes or by generating new products, services, or processes. Achieving successful, repeated organizational innovation, however, is a significant challenge. The hurdles to such innovation run the gamut from psychological to structural to procedural. Managers can fall victim to myopia and other human level challenges. Organizational processes, structures, and values can short circuit innovation as well. Given these challenges, we posit that an innovation strategy embracing the concepts of collective intelligence and openness may enable organizations to surmount these hurdles. We refer to this approach as Collective Innovation and define it as a connected, open, and collaborative process that generates, develops, prioritizes, and executes new ideas. To develop our argument, we surveyed literature from a wide array of disciplines including economics, organizational behavior, social psychology, and organizational change.; (cont.) We begin this thesis by drawing a connection between the economic theories of Adam Smith and Ronald Coase and research into the changing workplace by Thomas Malone. We then introduce the concepts of collective intelligence and openness, core tenets of Collective Innovation. After introducing Collective Innovation, we examine its place in the history of innovation strategy. Next, we outline and describe the four stages of the Collective Innovation process. Having dealt mainly in theory, we then turn to the application of Collective Innovation and the myriad challenges that managers will face when attempting to implement such a strategy. Keeping in mind these challenges, we outline four ways in which organizations might use Collective Innovation to power the exploration-side of their operations. Finally, we revisit several remaining questions before concluding our analysis.

Description: Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2007.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 178-179).

Risk management framework for evaluating suppliers

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:58:59 GMT

Title: Risk management framework for evaluating suppliers

Authors: Croce, Steven A

Abstract: Sikorsky Aircraft Co. currently finds itself in a critical growth period, in terms of both sales contracts and supplier agreements. Popular supply chain strategies preach reduction and simplification of the supply base, but Sikorsky encounters "must-grow" situations with their supply base, due to factors like international offset provisions and capacity needs. Growth in the number of supplier relationships each year strains the supply management department and makes it difficult to complete full analyses of new suppliers. The goal of this research is to provide tools that combine the knowledge of experienced supply chain employees with statistical analysis in a package that will allow any member of the supply chain group to complete a thorough supplier risk analysis in the minimum amount of time. To address Sikorsky's supply chain risk, a concrete framework is desired that will ask the right questions about a supplier and produce an indicator of the level of risk involved in a supplier agreement. This project sets out to identify the connections between the sources of risk (risk drivers) and affected performance metrics (effects). These connections can be presented in an easy-to-use tool that enables quick yet thorough analyses. The framework links supplier analyses with the resulting performance, and uses the results to make data driven inferences about future supplier relationships. This allows quick and informed assessments by anyone in the supply chain group, regardless of their level of experience. The result of this project is a software-based risk assessment framework with scoring based on historical Sikorsky supplier performance.; (cont.) The data have revealed through statistical regression analysis strong correlations between a number of risk drivers and resulting supplier performance. These correlations can be used to score suppliers with similar attributes through the model. In addition, the model can be used as a knowledge retention mechanism of supplier performance data to facilitate future refinements of both the model and risk driver/effect correlations.

Description: Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; and, (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2007.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 50).

Essays in behavioral decision making

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:58:59 GMT

Title: Essays in behavioral decision making

Authors: Shampanier, Kristina S

Abstract: Essay 1: Zero as a Special Price: the True Value of Free Products. When faced with a choice of selecting one of several available products (or possibly buying nothing), according to standard theoretical perspectives, people will choose the option with the highest cost-benefit difference. However, we propose that decisions about free (zero price) products differ, in that people do not simply subtract costs from benefits and perceive the benefits associated with free products as higher. We test this proposal by contrasting demand for two products across conditions that maintain the price difference between the goods, but vary the prices such that the cheaper good in the set is priced at either a low positive or zero price. In contrast with a standard cost-benefit perspective, in the zero price condition, dramatically more participants choose the cheaper option, whereas dramatically fewer participants choose the more expensive option. Thus, people appear to act as if zero pricing of a good not only decreases its cost but also adds to its benefits. After documenting this basic effect, we propose and test several psychological antecedents of the effect, including social norms, mapping difficulty, and affect. Affect emerges as the most likely account for the effect.; Essay 2: Movies as a Mood Regulation Tool: Movie Watching Patterns Right After September 11. Is a sad person more, less or equally likely than a happy person to pursue a "happy" activity rather than an "unhappy" one (e.g. prefer a comedy to a drama)? Surprisingly, the literature offers theories and laboratory evidence in favor of all three possibilities. In this paper I attempt to resolve the puzzle by moving out of the lab and analyzing the changes in movie watching patterns following the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. Two data sets from the 7 weeks surrounding 9/11 are analyzed. One consists of US box office collections of top ten movies during the period. The other contains data on movie rentals in a rental store chain in Cambridge MA. The analysis suggests that the more private the mood-regulating decision is (rental vs. movie going), the more likely is the person to use the movie as a mood repair tool. When the decision is more public (movie going), the appropriateness issues induce more mood congruent behavior.; Essay 3: Measuring Liking and Wanting. Recently neuroscientists have gathered a vast body of evidence that wanting (motivated preferences) and liking (non-motivated preferences) are not one and the same. We explore the possibility of measuring the two types of preferences uintrusiveley, in a behavioral lab. In particular we find that wanting and liking for viewing pictures of attractive people are not perfectly aligned and especially for men.

Description: Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2007.; Includes bibliographical references.

Trust-based design of human-guided algorithms

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:58:59 GMT

Title: Trust-based design of human-guided algorithms

Authors: Thomer, Joseph L. (Joseph Louis)

Abstract: By combining the strengths of human and computers, Human Machine Collaborative Decision Making has been shown to generate higher quality solutions in less time than conventional computerized methods. In many cases, it is difficult to model continually changing problems and incorporate human objectives into the solution. Human-guided algorithms (HGAs) harness the power of sophisticated algorithms and computers to provide flexibility to the human decision maker to model correctly and dynamically the problem and steer the algorithm to solutions that match his/her objectives for the given problem. HGAs are designed to make the power of Operations Research accessible to problem domain experts and decision makers, and incorporate their expert knowledge into every solution. In order to appropriately utilize algorithms during a planner's decision making, HGA operators must appropriately trust the HGA and the final solution. Through the use of trust-based design (TBD), it was hypothesized that users of the HGA will gain better insight into the solution process, improve their calibration of trust, and generate superior solutions. The application of TBD requires the consideration of algorithms, solution steering methods, and displays required to best match human and computer complimentary strengths and to generate solutions that can be appropriately trusted.; (cont.) Abstract hierarchy, Ecological Interface Design, and various trust models are used to ensure that the HGA operators' evaluation of trust can be correctly calibrated to all necessary HGA trust attributes. A human-subject evaluation was used to test the effectiveness of the TBD design approach for HGAs. An HGA, including the appropriate controls and displays, was designed and developed using the described TBD approach. The participants were presented with the task of using the HGA to develop a routing plan for military aircraft to prosecute enemy targets. The results showed that TBD had a significant effect on trust, HGA performance, and in some cases the quality of final solutions. Another finding was that, HGA operators must be provided with additional trust related information to improve their understanding of the HGA, the solution process, and the final solution in order to calibrate properly their trust in the system.

Description: Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2007.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-229).