The Managed Service Paradox

This paper examines the contrasts in the provision of managed service in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. It highlights the polarization between infrastructure services that are growing in scale and increasingly becoming a commoditized, and customized or even one-of-a-kind service projects. The paper refers to the approaches taken by three highly innovative advanced service companies, IBM, Ericsson, and Cable & Wireless, to package and deliver ICT service on a more industrialized basis. The authors identify the six-stage process that describes these companies’ journeys to date from. They explore the challenges these companies faced on that journey as well those currently facing them as they move to a higher degree of industrialization. To address these challenges, the authors propose a model with three axes: offering development, service delivery, and go to market. The model demonstrates how the increasing industrialization of managed service requires an approach integrating all three of these dimensions. They also show that strong governance is required to address the impacts of technological evolution, marketplace dynamics, and corporate culture. The paper has formed the basis of the academic and executive education programs taught at both Imperial College and is the heart of the new service design masters program at the Royal College of Art. Because of its relevance to large industrial companies seeking to transition from an industrial offering to a service or solution led offering, the paper has been turned into a course that has been delivered to Arup, Vodafone, Finmeccanica, Telefonica, Samsung and Laing O’Rourke to date and this programme has been delivered by the authors in Korea, Taiwan, US and the UK

THE ROLE OF UNDERLYING MECHANISMS IN ACHIEVING CONSISTENT HYBRID COMBINATIONS OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

This thesis takes a step beyond the current discussion on hybrid competitive strategies (HS) by identifying the underlying mechanisms and common elements of successful hybrid strategies. Reviewing empirical and theoretical literature revealed a significant gap in this respect. Therefore, the activity-based view of strategy is introduced to the discussion on HS. In a first step, four consistent and sustainable HS concepts are developed providing the basis for deriving specific HS models. A second step identifies commonalities among these HS types and theoretically derives a synthesized, common HS model. Thirdly, the critical realist stance was selected for answering this thesis’ research questions addressing consistent HS concepts, implementations, common activities achieving external and internal fit, as well as common capabilities and resources supporting these activities. In a case study approach, semi-structured, open ended interviews combining appreciative and laddering methods are conducted with twelve interviewees from five firms. The separate analysis of ladder elements and ladders allowed distinguishing constitutional from relational elements. Based on this, fourth, an empirically revised research construct is substantiated. This research finds HS firms applying intended and consistent, but mixed strategy concepts based on generating high customer benefits through combining competitive weapons of differentiation and price or total customer cost. Moreover, HS concepts centre on three strategic building blocks: customer centricity, fulfilment of customer needs and employee orientation. Additionally, the research indicates that firms apply activities primarily for achieving fit. While all firms combine both views, no activities are directed to both fit types simultaneously. Activities deploy capabilities and resources in general on two adaptive and two absorptive mechanisms. Several practical implications derive from this thesis. First, firms can apply the synthesized model as a kind of ‘blueprint’ providing orientation for how to combine competitive advantages. Second, policy makers can apply the outcomes as principles steering firms or industries to ‘higher’ levels of performance. Last, firm managers can adapt their own as well as their firm’s behaviour accordingly

Relay: A New IR for Machine Learning Frameworks

Machine learning powers diverse services in industry including search, translation, recommendation systems, and security. The scale and importance of these models require that they be efficient, expressive, and portable across an array of heterogeneous hardware devices. These constraints are often at odds; in order to better accommodate them we propose a new high-level intermediate representation (IR) called Relay. Relay is being designed as a purely-functional, statically-typed language with the goal of balancing efficient compilation, expressiveness, and portability. We discuss the goals of Relay and highlight its important design constraints. Our prototype is part of the open source NNVM compiler framework, which powers Amazon's deep learning framework MxNet

Carving out new business models in a small company through contextual ambidexterity: the case of a sustainable company

Business model innovation (BMI) and organizational ambidexterity have been pointed out as mechanisms for companies achieving sustainability. However, especially considering small and medium enterprises (SMEs), there is a lack of studies demonstrating how to combine these mechanisms. Tackling such a gap, this study seeks to understand how SMEs can ambidextrously manage BMI. Our aim is to provide a practical artifact, accessible to SMEs, to operationalize BMI through organizational ambidexterity. To this end, we conducted our study under the design science research to, first, build an artifact for operationalizing contextual ambidexterity for business model innovation. Then, we used an in-depth case study with a vegan fashion small e-commerce to evaluate the practical outcomes of the artifact. Our findings show that the company improves its business model while, at the same time, designs a new business model and monetizes it. Thus, our approach was able to take the first steps in the direction of operationalizing contextual ambidexterity for business model innovation in small and medium enterprises, democratizing the concept. We contribute to theory by connecting different literature strands and to practice by creating an artifact to assist managemen

How the reverse supply chain contributes to a firm’s competitive strategy: a strategic alignment perspective

The ongoing transition to a circular economy is changing the shape of supply chains. They are becoming more ‘Closed-Loop’, combining forward and reverse flows of products and materials. Reverse supply chains (RSCs), originally considered as a solution for handling waste or recovering residual value, can play a pivotal role in determining the competitive advantage of the firm. Firms do not always exploit the potential of the RSC, and the conditions allowing the exploitation remain unclear. This paper explores the alignment between the RSC and the competitive strategy of the firm. Results from seven case studies, focusing on original equipment manufacturers, show how the RSC can play a strategic, tactical or operational role for the firm. The paper applies for the first time the concept of strategic alignment to the RSC, and practitioners can use the proposed framework to analyse the role of the RSC within their firm

WoodCircus, Underpinning the vital role of the forest-based sector in the Circular Bioeconomy. D2.2 Resource Efficiency, Side Streams and Value Chain Analysis – WP2 Final Report

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Business Strategies for Sustainability-Motivated Innovation: A Conceptual Framework

Innovation has been and continues to be a key factor in the competitive advantage of business firms and economic growth of nations. However, while the creation of new offerings that are appealing to customers is central to corporate success, substantial negative outcomes may accompany or follow the unbridled pursuit of innovation. This paper investigates, among others, environmental damage and the diminution of social and political stability as problems arising from innovation and introduces a framework that may be used to enhance environmental and social sustainability through innovation. For the purposes of this study, innovation is viewed according to three types: product, process, and managerial. We also collapsed numerous sustainability strategies that have been identified in the literature into four categories: cost- and differentiation-based (environmental) and employee- versus communityoriented (social). The three innovation types are arrayed against the four sustainability strategies thereby yielding twelve approaches to innovating with sustainability in mind. Numerous examples are provided to illustrate how the framework is being or may be used. Such sustainability criteria can also serve vice-versa as drivers of organizational innovation

Combining Lean Management And Circular Economy: A Literature Review

In the drive for sustainability, companies are turning to Circular Economy (CE) principles, emphasizing resource conservation, waste reduction, and closed material loops. Strategies known as the R-principles (refuse, rethink, reduce, reuse, repair, refurbish, remanufacture, repurpose, recycle, and recover) guide CE implementation by maximizing resource use and minimizing waste disposal. Interestingly, the core focus of Lean Management (LM) on eliminating waste appears to align with goals of CE, providing a compelling opportunity for a synergistic approach to sustainability. This paper explores the combination of LM and CE through an in-depth examination of CE, an overview of LM, and a systematic literature review. The review builds upon 1,609 sources (2015-2024), reduced to 32 relevant papers, and adds expert insights to uncover conflicts, synergies, and success factors. The results are discussed with seven experts proficient in LM or CE to gain practical insights and explore implementation strategies. While LM targets immediate production gains, CE focuses on long-term resource preservation. This difference can create conflicts. LM methods like value stream mapping (VSM), total productive maintenance (TPM), or Green Lean Six Sigma can be adapted to achieve circular economy goals. Comprehensive key performance indicators (KPIs) and frameworks like sustainable VSM and environmental management systems (EMS) guide data-driven decision-making. Based on the literature review and expert interviews, further research should be conducted to measure the impact of LM and CE for (c)leaner and greener future

FPSA: A Full System Stack Solution for Reconfigurable ReRAM-based NN Accelerator Architecture

Neural Network (NN) accelerators with emerging ReRAM (resistive random access memory) technologies have been investigated as one of the promising solutions to address the \textit{memory wall} challenge, due to the unique capability of \textit{processing-in-memory} within ReRAM-crossbar-based processing elements (PEs). However, the high efficiency and high density advantages of ReRAM have not been fully utilized due to the huge communication demands among PEs and the overhead of peripheral circuits. In this paper, we propose a full system stack solution, composed of a reconfigurable architecture design, Field Programmable Synapse Array (FPSA) and its software system including neural synthesizer, temporal-to-spatial mapper, and placement & routing. We highly leverage the software system to make the hardware design compact and efficient. To satisfy the high-performance communication demand, we optimize it with a reconfigurable routing architecture and the placement & routing tool. To improve the computational density, we greatly simplify the PE circuit with the spiking schema and then adopt neural synthesizer to enable the high density computation-resources to support different kinds of NN operations. In addition, we provide spiking memory blocks (SMBs) and configurable logic blocks (CLBs) in hardware and leverage the temporal-to-spatial mapper to utilize them to balance the storage and computation requirements of NN. Owing to the end-to-end software system, we can efficiently deploy existing deep neural networks to FPSA. Evaluations show that, compared to one of state-of-the-art ReRAM-based NN accelerators, PRIME, the computational density of FPSA improves by 31x; for representative NNs, its inference performance can achieve up to 1000x speedup.Comment: Accepted by ASPLOS 201

Quality in MOOCs: Surveying the Terrain

The purpose of this review is to identify quality measures and to highlight some of the tensions surrounding notions of quality, as well as the need for new ways of thinking about and approaching quality in MOOCs. It draws on the literature on both MOOCs and quality in education more generally in order to provide a framework for thinking about quality and the different variables and questions that must be considered when conceptualising quality in MOOCs. The review adopts a relativist approach, positioning quality as a measure for a specific purpose. The review draws upon Biggs’s (1993) 3P model to explore notions and dimensions of quality in relation to MOOCs — presage, process and product variables — which correspond to an input–environment–output model. The review brings together literature examining how quality should be interpreted and assessed in MOOCs at a more general and theoretical level, as well as empirical research studies that explore how these ideas about quality can be operationalised, including the measures and instruments that can be employed. What emerges from the literature are the complexities involved in interpreting and measuring quality in MOOCs and the importance of both context and perspective to discussions of quality