Learning to Industrialize

This book proposes a new, pragmatic way of approaching economic development which features policy learning based on a comparison of international best policy practices. While the important role of government in promoting private sector development is being recognized, policy discussion often remains general without details as to what exactly to do and how to avoid common pitfalls. This book fills the gap by showing concrete policy contents, procedures, and organizations adopted in high-performing East Asian economies. Natural resources and foreign aid and investment can take a country to a certain income level, but growth stalls when given advantages are exhausted. Economies will be caught in middle income traps if growth impetus is not internally generated. Meanwhile, countries that have soared to high income introduced mindset, policies, and institutions that encouraged, or even forced, accumulation of human capital – skills, technology, and knowledge. How this can be done systematically is the main topic of policy learning. However, government should not randomly adopt what Singapore or Taiwan did in the past. A continued march to prosperity is possible only when policy makers acquire capability to formulate policy suitable for local context after studying a number of international experiences. Developing countries wanting to adopt effective industrial strategies but not knowing where to start will benefit greatly by the ideas and hands-on examples presented by the author. Students of development economics will find a new methodological perspective which can supplement the ongoing industrial policy debate. The book also gives an excellent account of national pride and pragmatism exhibited by officials in East Asia who produced remarkable economic growth, as well as serious effort by an African country to emulate this miracle

Knowledge driven strategy formulation process to sustain large family-based businesses

This thesis aims to develop a knowledge-driven strategy formulation framework for large family-based businesses in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, to help them remain sustainable and able to deal with future external changes. Its objectives were 1) to capture best practice in the literature on developing strategies for ensuring long-term competitive advantage by promptly addressing external changes; 2) to identify the prominent factors of enterprise strategy using a literature review and industry-based case study; 3) on this basis, to develop a platform; 4) to define the knowledge-driven processes that support strategy formulation for the target businesses. Thus, the literature informs the framework and its elements, based on best practices. In parallel, 15 GCC case studies provided data on the activities, tools and influential factors affecting the strategic decisions of the strategy formulation team. In each case, CEOs and strategic managers were interviewed and corporate websites and other secondary data were analysed. The research deliverables were validated through case study methodology and evaluated by 8 experts in strategy formulation. The key contributions to knowledge are 1) development of a strategy formulation process based on best practices; 2) creation of an instance of modelling the strategy formulation process, using IDEF0, to show the interactions and interrelationships between decision making and decision support activities; 3) construction of an influential factor model to show which influential factors are written in which reports and how they influence different decisions; 4) development of a strategy formulation team model to understand the different roles and functions of the strategy formulation team members; 5) creation of a new taxonomy of the strategic tools proposed to strategy formulation teams for enhancing the process of collecting, analysing and reporting the knowledge of influential factors. The implications of this research are that 1) strategy formulation processes are not linear but systematic and iterative and thus can enhance the flow of information and decisions; 2) the existence of different members in the strategy formulation process enriches the decision making and decision support activities, since each has a specific role and function; 3) different report based influential factors are required in different decisions. However, the implicit preferences in understanding these influential factors are critical for decision-making

Self-Organised Schools

Self-Organised Schools: Educational Leadership and Innovative Learning Environments describes the results of the research we carried out at fourteen Italian schools that highlight how there is a positive correlation between the capabilities of school self-organization and the innovativeness of learning environments: in other words, the more self-organized schools are, the more innovative learning environments are. The results of this work are part of the strand of research of bottom-up emergency and self-organization, an extremely fruitful trend as shown by Sugata Mitra, the founder of the Self-Organized Learning Environments, according to whom, "education is a self-organized system where learning is an emerging phenomenon". This book gives new insights on self-organization studies, and most of all, to the idea that change - organizational and educational innovation - sparks from the bottom. This book is aimed specifically at school principals of all levels, scholastic reformers, educational scholars, organisation and management consultants who want to innovate learning and management of learning. These actors will benefit drawing useful examples from more than thirty different learning environments worldwide, fourteen examples of schools that self-organize, two frameworks - and two ready-to-use questionnaires - measuring the innovativeness of a learning environment, and the capability of a school to self-organize. Self-organization is the most fascinating future of innovative principal

Desenvolvimento de novos produtos - uma revisão da literatura

Mestrado em GestãoA fase atual de globalização, turbulência, fortes mudanças, incerteza e competitividade leva às organizações a reformularem as suas estratégias, a adotares práticas e metodologias de gestão diferenciadas e a implementarem novas formas de negócio geradoras de vantagem competitiva. Tal competitividade de longo prazo de muitas organizações depende do seu sucesso nas capacidades de inovação e de desenvolvimento de produtos. Sendo que o desenvolvimento de novos produtos tem sido reconhecida como uma das atividades mais importantes das empresas. Deste modo, o objetivo do t rabalho é analisar e compreender a literatura científica recentemente produzida pelos autores na área de desenvolvimento de novos produtos, de modo a identificar e classificar os principais domínios de conhecimento, possíveis ligações, bem como a natureza dos artigos e ferramentas anal íticas utilizadas. Neste estudo a revisão da literatura e a análise de conteúdo foi realizada em 461 artigos focados no desenvolvimento de novos produtos, publicados em três revistas de topo (Journal of product innovation management, R&D management e Technovation) entre os anos 2000 e 2010. Como principais resultados e conclusões podemos afi rmar que a maior parte dos artigos analisados eram da natureza empírica, sendo os métodos de recolha de dados frequentemente utilizados são ent revistas e questionários. O método qualitativo foi mais popular nos artigos das revistas Technovation e R&D management, enquanto JPIM utiliza os métodos anal íticos como análise de regressão, análise fatorial, ANOVA. Notou-se uma falta de uso de métodos anal íticos mais sofisticados como análise discriminante e modelo de equações estruturais. Dos 461 artigos analisados, foi possível criar 13 categorias principais: ambiente global de negócios, inovação, equipas de DNP, estratégias de cooperação, envolvimento de cliente/usuário, integração de fornecedores em DNP, gestão de conhecimento, orientação para o mercado, I&D, riscos e falhas em DNP, produtos e processos, comercialização e lançamento e desempenho em DNP. DNP é uma área de investigação madura que integra muitos conceitos e assuntos indisciplinares.In the current phase of globalization, turbulence, strong changes, uncertaint y and competitiveness organizations needs to reformulate their strategies, practices and management methodologies, implement new ways of business to generate competitive advantages. Such long-term fi rms competitiveness depends on their success in innovation capabilities and product development. The new product development has been recognized as one of the most important activity of the companies. The objectives of this study is to analyze and understand the scientific literature recently produced by the authors in the area of new product development in order to identify and classify the main knowledge field, possible links, as well as the nature of the articles and used analytical tools. In this study, a literature review and content analysis was performed on 461 articles focused on new product development (NPD) published in 3 selected journals (Journal of product innovation management, R&D management and Technovation), from 2000 to 2010. As the main results and conclusions consists that most of the analyzed articles were empirical, the methods of data collection are often used interviews and questionnai re. The qualitative method was the most popular in the articles of journal Technovation and R&D management, while JPIM used analytics methods such regression analysis, factor analysis and ANOVA. We noticed a lack of the use of the more sophisticated methods as discriminate analysis and structural equation model. Among 461 analyzed articles it was possible to create 13 main categories: global business envi ronment, innovation, NPD teams, cooperation strategies, involvement of client/user, supplier integration in NPD, knowledge management, market orientation, R&D, risk and failures, products and process, launch and commercialization, and NPD performance. NPD is an area maturing that integrate many concepts and interdisciplinaries issues

Role of stage gates in effective knowledge sharing during the product development process

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2002."February 2002."Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-139).Premise of the thesis is that in today's knowledge economy, competitive advantage comes from effective use of corporate knowledge. This thesis compares and contrasts current practices for knowledge sharing in Xerox with an idealized model of best practices for knowledge sharing. The study explores the hypothesis that stage gates in a product development process are important for sharing corporate knowledge across functions and organizations, and that the product development process itself serves as an infrastructure for knowledge sharing. This study involved an analysis of knowledge sharing practices during stage gates reviews and how they evolved over time after stage-gate reviews. To develop an idealized model of best practices for knowledge sharing, experts of knowledge management in academia and industry were interviewed, and an extensive literature review was completed. This served as a backdrop for analysis in the case study at Xerox. The case study at Xerox utilized a personal interview approach complemented by a survey through electronic mail, and assessment was done against the idealized model of best practices for knowledge sharing. Twenty-six senior managers at Xerox were interviewed/surveyed. Strengths of Xerox in knowledge sharing and areas of improvements were identified. Using open ended questions, a holistic view for the scope of Xerox efforts, as well as the depth and quality of the best practices during the product development process was compiled. Using Carlile's knowledge boundary framework and boundary objects, attempt was done to transform engineering knowledge from one domain to another. This framework also served as a basis for suggestions for future improvements in knowledge sharing at Xerox in the areas of improvements identified through the interviews/surveys. Though any single company has not discovered the mantra for knowledge management and sharing; several good practices, which were consistently enablers of perceived success, were identified. The effective enablers towards knowledge sharing were a synergistic gathering of "common sense" items such as morale, trust, common goals, value and criticality of knowledge, diversity, and structure, rewards/recognition, support and knowledge initiatives along multiple fronts. It was discovered, that the product managers perceive that Xerox has considerable success in promoting a knowledge culture and has an effective product development process. It was also found that knowledge boundary framework and boundary objects serve as a good vehicle to explain the difficulty of knowledge sharing across functional and organizational boundaries. Engineering tools such as critical parameter management could benefit by a uniform, standardized approach to bringing together subject matter experts from various domains and creating the environment for creating new knowledge and innovations. Systems processes like the Xerox platform approach, where the systems architecture is composed of common platform elements, and core competencies in the development of reusable components for the platform elements are the basis for the Xerox product development process. Using the knowledge acquired through practical experience and education and taking a holistic view of the product development process as the boundary framework for knowledge transfer, we used the eCPM (Engineering Critical Parameter Management Tool) to translate knowledge from a domain expert in mechanical engineering to a common semantic base for transformation into the domain of software engineering. Specific tacit knowledge on what makes a parameter critical and how it plays a role in mechanical aspects in the design of Xerox devices, such as the system itself, media and motion path, marker path and the control and image path, as well as how to control these designs is to be transformed into the domain of software engineering. It was found that use of the eCPM tool to develop similar meaning of parameters for tuning software resources such as CPU speeds, memory utilization and performance is possible. Attempt to create new knowledge in the domain of software will be proceeding with a larger number of domain experts. Specific new knowledge in establishment of which software parameters to be labeled as critical (versus design parameters allocated and controlled via Input /Output/ Constraint values), which parameters should be system control parameters (those which span over multiple subsystems, and have latitudes within which to be tweaked in various sub-systems), the failure modes and latitudes for the failure modes will be part of future work. This will be part of a knowledge sharing and management framework proposed in the thesis because of the diagnostic analysis done of the current state at Xerox.by Tulsi D. Ramchandani.S.M

A dual perspective towards building resilience in manufacturing organizations

Modern manufacturing organizations exist in the most complex and competitive environment the world has ever known. This environment consists of demanding customers, enabling, but resource intensive Industry 4.0 technology, dynamic regulations, geopolitical perturbations, and innovative, ever-expanding global competition. Successful manufacturing organizations must excel in this environment while facing emergent disruptions generated as biproducts of complex man-made and natural systems. The research presented in this thesis provides a novel two-sided approach to the creation of resilience in the modern manufacturing organization. First, the systems engineering method is demonstrated as the qualitative framework for building literature-derived organizational resilience factors into organizational structures under a life cycle perspective. A quantitative analysis of industry expert survey data through graph theory and matrix approach is presented second to prioritize resilience factors for strategic practical implementation

Latecomer firms and pursuit of a dual frontier: the case of Korean handset manufacturers

The subject of this thesis is a group of emergent leading firms in developing countries pursuing a ‘dual frontier’, achieving technology supremacy and establishing market autonomy, and entering a newly emerging market in the context of the latter half of the 20th century. Whilst the previous literature on catching-up and transition generally centres on the area of technological development of latecomer firms, this thesis extends the scope of analysis to a broader issue of technological development and marketing strategies of latecomer firms in transition. The thesis builds upon two different streams of literature: first the catching-up process in latecomer firms for the theoretical and empirical rationales, and second the boundaries of a firm and inter-firm coordination in technological frontier firms for the theoretical guidance to a systematic analysis. Using industry case studies of the Korean mobile handset manufacturers Samsung and LG Electronics, the thesis first shows that there could be windows of opportunity available for international technology transfer to emergent leading firms in the emerging stage of a new industry from competition to achieve a dominant compatibility standard among technology leaders. However, the research stresses that the characteristic of these technologies is cutting-edge but technologically incomplete and commercially unproven, which highlights the importance of previous experience and capacity for successful commercialisation. Moreover, the thesis shows that Korean firms pursuing a dual frontier overcame their uneven development between technological and marketing capabilities through intensive inter-firm collaborations with intermediary users, that is Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). In the thesis, it is stressed that Korean firms competed against technology leaders like Nokia in export markets by complementing weak marketing capabilities based on continuous collaborations with MNOs, evolving from von Hippelian to Teecean inter-firm relationships. Lastly, the thesis introduces to the literature on industry organisation a new form of an outsourcing organisation, termed a ‘contract developer’ (CD), which has been identified as a group of firms that is unilaterally specialised in, and that carries out development outsourcing projects for, mobile handset Own Brand Manufacturers (OBMs). The thesis reveals that CDs emerged from the industry shake-out and the co-specialised structure between mobile handset OBMs and MNOs in the industry and served as one of main mechanisms that supported the successful globalisation of the Korean firms. Therefore, the thesis argues that the key strategy that Korean emergent leading firms adopted to compete at the world frontier can be described as a ‘quasi’ extension of firm boundaries in terms of development resources (the CDs) and in terms of downstream capabilities (the MNOs)