Marc H. Meyer

Product development cycle time and commercial success

Proponents of time-based competition argue that a firm will be most successful if its development times are shorter and products generated faster than its competitors. Intensive research in one firm shows that rapid development times are not correlated with expected commercial success, and that forcing rapid development when technological and market uncertainties are high may produce failure. Difficulties in technology integration, which occur when multiple core technologies must be combined, slow the speed of developing new products. New channels of distribution will also extend the time required to develop and bring new products to market. Shortened cycle times may be associated with commercial success, but to pursue reduced cycle time in isolation from underlying organizational and technical foundations will not lead to improved performance. These foundations include the longer term development and renewal of functional product architectures and manufacturing processes from which specific products can be efficiently and rapidly synthesized, as well as a product planning and control system that reaches beyond single product, single period thinking. Without these, the effort to drive down cycle time may drive the firm out of business.

Entrepreneurship and Start-Ups in the Boston Region: Factors Differentiating High-Growth Ventures from Micro-Ventures

The use of entrepreneurship to stimulate economic growth in lagging regions of the world has grown over the last decade. The type of business needed for job creation is a new venture rather than a micro-business. The experience of a major program in the U.S., empowerment zones, has failed to produce many jobs, mostly because the program has stimulated micro-businesses rather than growth ventures. This paper analyzed the factors differentiating between the formation of high-growth ventures and micro businesses, and discussed how these factors may best influence the activities of organizations that either nurture ventures or create government policies for regional development. The data consisted of ninety business plans submitted to a business plan competition in Boston. The results showed that founders of high-growth ventures have work experience or advanced training in their technologies, and teams rather than individuals created the plans. The results suggest that a combination of exogenous and endogenous approaches may be needed to stimulate a lagging regions economic growth.

Make Platform Innovation Drive Enterprise Growth

OVERVIEW: Most corporations lack a precise, operational definition of their product platforms, without which progress is difficult to achieve. With that definition, new product strategy must be recast to capture the degree to which common architectures and subsystems will be leveraged across existing and new market applications, as well as the timing of product introductions. Managers must also reconsider the financial model of the business, including investments in the development of platforms versus products, and the changes that are possible in the margins and contribution of platform-based products to profits. Perhaps most pressing are the organizational questions: How can the R&D executive best structure the organization and the processes by which groups plan and interact so as to facilitate platform development and platform-based product development? Recent efforts of IBM and other corporations to embrace platforms provide both a management and a technology paradigm.

An applied framework for classifying the complexity of knowledge-based systems

The development and use of knowledge-based (expert) systems has grown dramatically across a broad range of industries. Yet despite its growing importance, the study of expert systems lacks a cohesive framework for differentiating and comparing expert systems initiatives across different applications and in different industrial settings. The problem for IS managers is that a system that works in one situation may ot be appropriate for another. This article presents a classification methodology for the systematic evaluation of a broad range of expert systems. Of primary concern in this study is the measurement of the complexity of such systems. Complexity in the area of expert systems consists of two basic dimensions. The first dimension is the complexity of the underlying knowledge residing with the key experts. The second dimension of the framework focuses on the complexity of the technology incorporated into a given system. This framework is then applied to a sample of 50 successfully developed knowledge-based systems. The results can be used as a foundation for generating research hypotheses and for development time, budget, staffing, organizational control, and organizational participation.

Applying platform design to improve the integration of patient services across the continuum of care

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide the results of a case study that examined the application of platform design to improve the integration of patient care services across the continuum of care. This paper is designed to spark discussion and encourage further research in this area.Design/methodology/approach – The research in the paper involved a case study of a large health care provider in a major metropolitan area. The authors of this paper worked with directors of case management departments and other managerial personnel within the enterprise to study the case management interface services between different inpatient and outpatient facilities to examine existing processes, identify deficiencies, and to recommend improvements in case management.Findings – The paper finds that the current case management system of the provider, as structured, was not fulfilling its potential for achieving medical quality, operational cost, or patient satisfaction. A number of areas where improvements coul...

The Challenges of Innovation in American Companies: An Executive Ethnographic Investigation

Effective, sustained innovation remains one of the great challenges facing almost every company in America. But research shows that the average firm is failing at innovation most of the time. Using an ethnographic research approach, including field research and depth interviewing, the authors of the paper report what executives revealed as the principal reasons why their companies are struggling with innovation.

Modular, layered architecture: the necessary foundation for effective mass customisation in software

This paper posits that developers cannot sustain extensive customisation of software without clear software product line architecture, modular subsystem platforms, and disciplined interfaces among these platforms. To explore this proposition, we initially define the basic principles of desirable software architecture and then apply these definitions to the development of software and the business strategy for creating software product lines. We then illustrate how these concepts not only explain the success of leading software companies but also have motivated fundamental architectural redesigns of their product architectures.

The value matrix: a tool for assessing the future of a business model

Good companies innovate. In the process, they consider target markets, target customers, new product or service offerings, and the positioning of these relative to competitors. This forms a basic strategy for the innovation. However, the lesson of competitive dynamics today is that innovation effort stops short of its ultimate potential if it does not also embrace the business model possibilities provided by the innovation itself. This short article provides a strategic lens for considering the efficacy and power of a business model for a product or service innovation.,The current paper is grounded in the empirical results of an ongoing longitudinal study (undertaken by the authors team in the U.S., Canada and Ukraine) aimed at exploring the structure, characteristics, evolution, and performance outcomes of organizational business models.,The business model’s key characteristics are customer value (the “effectiveness side” of the equation, i.e., doing right things for customers that the latters are ready to appreciate and pay for, but not always to the focal firm) and business value (the “efficiency side” of the equation, reflecting translation of the customer value into profit). Importantly, our evidence strongly reveals the dynamic nature of the business model construct, implying that the companies evolve in terms of these two dimensions.,The recommendations part of the article is primarily based on the in-depth analysis of the recent history of large companies that were struggling to: sustain customer value, and develop and apply internal product and production platforms to increase operating efficiency, and hence business value. All these firms had either slipped into or were in the danger of slipping into Impostor status, and were seeking ways to regain and sustain their Innovation advantage, often over newer entrants in their respective industries.,Introduction of the Business Model Value Matrix allowing to analyze the current company’s business model; practical recommendations regarding getting to and remaining in the Winner quadrant

The Entrepreneurial Climate in Canada: The Entrepreneur's Viewpoint

Abstract This exploratory study examines the entrepreneurial climate in Canada from the perspective of the Canadian entrepreneur. The goal is to examine whether or not Canada offers a nutrient-rich environment for entrepreneurial development. Respondents believe that Canada has the infrastructure as well as the business support (suppliers and vendors) to assist entrepreneurial firms. They also suggest that Canadians are capable of seeing entrepreneurial opportunities and that there is substantial entrepreneurial talent in Canada, both men and women. However, entrepreneurs view the lack of cultural support and encouragement for entrepreneurship in Canada, the Canadian tax system, lack of capital, lack of entrepreneurial education, and a national aversion to failure as key impediments to entrepreneurial development in Canada. While some of hese barriers are amenable to changes in government policy and entrepreneurial education, the cultural impediments may be more intractable.

Locus of organizational control in the development of knowledge-based systems

Abstract This paper reports the findings of a study of the effectiveness of organizational locus of control strategies for the development of knowledge-based information systems. Research hypotheses regarding project control by data processing departments, business departments, and newly formed organizational entities are generated and tested using project organizationdata gathered for a sample of twenty-six expert system applications. These data are assessed in the context of a conceptual framework that is used to differentiate and classify the respective expert systems according to their embodied knowledge and technological complexity. We find a significant association between the combined levels of knowledge and technological complexity for successfully fielded knowledge-based systems and the organizational locus of control that was established during development.