Industry Clockspeed and Competency Chain Design: An Introductory Essay

Appeared in proceedings of the 1996 Manufacturing and Service Operations Management Conference, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire June 24-25, 1996, pp. TBA.This paper introduces the notion of industry clockspeed to classify industries by an aspect of their dynamic characteristics. The clockspeed framework suggests a dynamic theory of the firm where the "inner core" competency of an organization is the ability to continually design and assemble of chains of competencies to deliver value to the marketplace

Negative Specific Heat of a Magnetically Self-Confined Plasma Torus

It is shown that the thermodynamic maximum entropy principle predicts negative specific heat for a stationary magnetically self-confined current-carrying plasma torus. Implications for the magnetic self-confinement of fusion plasma are considered.Comment: 10p., LaTeX, 2 eps figure file

Dimensionality of spin modulations in 1/8-doped lanthanum cuprates from the perspective of NQR and muSR experiments

We investigate the dimensionality of inhomogeneous spin modulation patterns in the cuprate family of high-temperature superconductors with particular focus on 1/8-doped lanthanum cuprates. We compare one-dimensional stripe modulation pattern with two-dimensional checkerboard of spin vortices in the context of nuclear quadrupole resonance(NQR) and muon spin rotation(muSR) experiments. In addition, we also consider the third pattern, a two-dimensional superposition of spin spirals. Overall, we have found that none of the above patterns leads to a consistent interpretation of the two types of experiments considered. This, in particular, implies that the spin vortex checkerboard cannot be ruled out on the basis of available NQR/muSR experimental results.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

America's Giving Challenge: Assessment and Reflection Report

Provides an overview of Case's 2007-08 online Giving Challenge and its impact on grassroots fundraising. Outlines the types of participating causes, charities, and donors; characteristics of successful efforts; lessons learned; and recommendations

Civic Works, Inc. The Environmental and PAL After School Mentoring Teams - Final Evaluation Report

Civic Works is a youth service corps program based in Baltimore, Maryland. The program operates a number of activities in which teams of corps members perform community service work in urban neighborhoods. Several of its teams are funded by AmeriCorps. Civic Works commissioned Innovation Network, Inc. (InnoNet) to design and conduct participatory assessment activities with two of its AmeriCorps service teams: the Environmental Team and PAL After School Mentoring Team

America's Giving Challenge 2009: Assessment & Reflection Report

Based on a survey of participants and "conversational case studies," outlines lessons learned about social media outreach and giving contests, such as winners' common attributes, fundraisers' online media adoption, and best practices in vetting contests

Is the Make-Buy Decision Process a Core Competence?

Many of today's products are so complex that no single company has all the necessary knowledge about either the product or the required processes to completely design and manufacture them in-house. As a result, most companies are dependent on others for crucial elements of their corporate well-being. Typically, however, companies have some choice as to whom they become dependent upon and for what sorts of skills and competences. That is, although few companies can "do it all," most have significant influence over the strategic choice of corporate identity and what businesses to be in. What is the range of choices they face? How are different companies making those choices? Can we make sense of the variety of decisions we can observe now in different industries or different parts of the world? What are the skills that companies must retain? In this paper we address the challenge of making these choices rationally. We give examples in which similar companies, facing similar choices, select make/buy patterns in very different ways, resulting in very different patterns of interdependencies along companies' supply chains. These choices are not restricted to skills related to the product, but include choices related to key design and manufacturing issues. To make sense of these differences, we propose a framework that ties together the following engineering and management concepts into one coherent view: 1) core competencies 2) the product development process 3) systems engineering 4) product architecture and modularity, and 5) supply chain design.ONR and various MIT programs including Leaders for Manufacturing, International Motor Vehicle Program, Industrial Performance Center, Japan Program, International Center for Management of Technology