Thesis (Ph. D. in Technology, Management, and Policy)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology, Management, and Policy Program, 2008. / "June 2008." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-244). / The US Air Transportation System is currently facing a number of challenges including an increasing demand for travel and growing environmental requirements. In order to successfully meet future needs, the system will need to transition from its current state using a combination of technology, infrastructure, procedure, and policy changes. However, the complexities of the air transportation system make implementing changes a challenge. In particular, the multi-stakeholder nature of the system poses a significant barrier to transition. Historically, many changes in the air transportation system were driven by safety concerns and implemented following accidents which provided the momentum to overcome transition barriers. As a result of past changes, the system has become increasingly safe resulting in the emergence of new drivers for change. Security has emerged as a driver following the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 in the US and a number of system changes have since been implemented. Currently, capacity is one of the largest drivers of change. Addressing capacity issues requires solutions that can be accepted by stakeholders, and pass the necessary certification and approval requirements for implementation. The contribution of aviation to global greenhouse gas emissions is also becoming a significant driver for change in the system. The goal of this work is to understand how the air transportation system changes in response to safety, security, capacity, and environmental drivers for transition. In order to understand the dynamics of transition, historical cases of system change were studied. Twenty seven such cases have been analyzed to construct a feedback process model of transition and to explore specific change dynamics observed. / (cont.) These dynamics include: understanding the role of crisis events as catalyst for change; the effect that timing of solution development has on the overall time constant for change; the role that stakeholder objectives play in the transition process, and the use of approval and certification processes to stall or block change. understanding the process of change in the US Air Transportation System can inform future changes in aviation as well as in other systems with similar properties. / by Aleksandra L. Mozdzanowska. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 1999. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-184). / by Sawan P. Deshpande. / S.M.M.O.T.

Thesis: Ph. D. in Technology, Management and Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology, Management, and Policy Program, February 2015. / Page 351 blank. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 337-350). / The term jointness refers to activities or operations that are executed collaboratively by more than one government agency or military department. While joint operations have become increasingly common and successful, the government continues to struggle with joint system acquisition: in fact, although a common motivation for joint acquisition is cost savings, recent studies suggest that joint programs experience larger cost growth than non-joint programs and that it may be more cost effective for agencies to acquire systems independently rather than jointly. This thesis explains why joint programs often experience large cost growth and how jointness itself may induce it. To understand the cost of jointness, this thesis proposes and demonstrates a new approach for studying large, complex acquisition programs whereby the evolution of a program's organizational and technical architectures is quantified and observed using a design structure matrix (DSM)-based tool. Using this approach, one is able to gain an in-depth understanding of the underlying mechanisms that drive a program's costs, as well as global perspective on cost growth throughout a program's lifecycle. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by applying it to study the cost impacts of jointness on three programs that developed environmental monitoring systems for low Earth orbit. The acquisition community's current understanding of joint programs suggests that jointness induces cost growth by increasing a program's organizational and technical complexity. However, using the DSM-based tool, this thesis demonstrates that complexity is a dynamic property of an acquisition program that is driven by government agencies' institutional interests and the actions that they motivate. Specifically, the thesis presents a more nuanced understanding of jointness, complexity, and cost growth by arguing that government agencies' institutional interest in retaining or regaining autonomy motivates actions that alter the agencies' relationships with one another, with the joint organization, and with the system under development. When agencies take action to retain or to regain autonomy, they increase the complexity of the joint organization or the joint system and the program's costs grow as result. Finally, the thesis discusses the implications of the proposed Agency Action Model both generally and specifically in the context of environmental monitoring programs. Aided by a trade space analysis tool that was developed to explore a broad set of concepts for future environmental monitoring systems, the thesis demonstrates how government leaders should approach the problem of joint program formulation and in doing so, generates a set a policy recommendations for future partnerships between the agencies that have historically collected environmental data from low Earth orbit. / by Morgan Maeve Dwyer. / Ph. D. in Technology, Management and Policy

Thesis: Ph. D. in Technology, Management and Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology, Management, and Policy Program, 2015. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 175-181). / Computer security incidents often involve attackers acquiring a complex sequence of escalating capabilities and executing those capabilities across a range of different intermediary actors in order to achieve their ultimate malicious goals. However, popular media accounts of these incidents, as well as the ensuing litigation and policy proposals, tend to focus on a very narrow defensive landscape, primarily individual centralized defenders who control some of the capabilities exploited in the earliest stages of these incidents. This thesis proposes two complementary frameworks for defenses against computer security breaches -- one oriented around restricting the computer-based access capabilities that adversaries use to perpetrate those breaches and another focused on limiting the harm that those adversaries ultimately inflict on their victims. Drawing on case studies of actual security incidents, as well as the past decade of security incident data at MIT, it analyzes security roles and defense design patterns related to these broad classes of defense for application designers, administrators, and policy-makers. Application designers are well poised to undertake access defense by defining and distinguishing malicious and legitimate forms of activity in the context of their respective applications. Policy-makers can implement some harm limitation defenses by monitoring and regulating money flows, and also play an important role in collecting the data needed to expand understanding of the sequence of events that lead up to successful security incidents and inform which actors can and should effectively intervene as defenders. Organizations and administrators, meanwhile, occupy an in-between defensive role that spans both access and harm in addressing digital harms, or harms that are directly inflicted via computer capabilities, through restrictions on crucial intermediate harms and outbound information flows. The comparative case analysis ultimately points to a need to broaden defensive roles and responsibilities beyond centralized access defense and defenders, as well as the visibility challenges compounding externalities for defenders who may lack not only the incentives to intervene in such incidents but also the necessary knowledge to figure out how best to intervene. / by Josephine Wolff. / Ph. D. in Technology, Management and Policy

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2002 [first author]; and, (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2002 [second author]. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-81). / This thesis is construed as a part of M.I.T. Sloan School project sponsored by a Fortune 500 company (hereafter referred as "The Company") to study disintermediation in the IT service industry. In this thesis we develop an integrated framework of IT outsourcing processes for enterprise users based upon our research findings. Each individual element is supported by a published, industry-accepted framework; what is unique is our integration of these accepted frameworks into a best practices model that supports customer firms through the entire IT lifecycle. In addition, we analyze future trends in IT outsourcing as to how enterprise needs will change over the next three to four years. To achieve these objectives, we've employed three research methods: literature review, in-person interview with corporate users, and a paper-based survey. The key to successful IT outsourcing lies in the establishment of a strategic partnership between a firm and its IT service provider. From client's point of view, there is no short cut or cookie-cutter method for successful outsourcing. People skills are the most demanded skills for successful outsourcing because human beings ultimately manage all technology. As hardware becomes a commodity, users see more value in customized IT solutions that help companies achieve business goals. IT service providers who can understand a client's business strategy and processes will be able to compete in higher tiers of the IT value chain. / by Thomas L. LaBreque and Mitsushige Yamada. / S.M.M.O.T. / M.B.A.

Thesis: Ph. D. in Technology, Management and Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology, Management, and Policy Program, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-195). / Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) are seen as a key pathway to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in transportation, yet their sales are under 1% of new cars despite large incentives. Carsharing, a market where consumers rent vehicles for short durations, is a low-risk way for consumers to use Plug-In Electric Vehicles for their travel needs without a large financial commitment. However, deployment of PEVs in carsharing depends on three key factors: (1) consumer acceptance of PEVs for rental trips, (2) the ability of carsharing providers to manage technical limitations of PEVs, and (3) that real-world energy consumption of PEVs meets expectations. To explore the feasibility of PEV deployment in carsharing, this dissertation incorporates a Mixed-Integer Programming and simulation of the assignment of trips and vehicles, and a Hybrid Choice Model of carsharing user preferences. This dissertation's primary contributions consist of the combination of Hybrid Choice Models with a Structural Topic Model to incorporate respondent comments, a two-level representation of the assignment problem faced by carsharing providers in allocating trips to vehicles and locating vehicles, a case study of PEV deployment in Boston, and analysis of real-world energy consumption of two fleets of PEVs. Results suggest that a large fraction of round-trip carsharing fleets could be converted to PEVs, simultaneously increasing profitability and reducing gasoline consumption, and some benefits can be captured using simple heuristics. However, current user attitudes towards PEVs in carsharing vary widely, and while carsharing exposes many users to hybrids, few have tried PEVs. / by Stephen M. Zoepf. / Ph. D. in Technology, Management and Policy

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.C.I.T.)--Regis University, Denver, Colo., 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Aug. 30, 2006). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (S.M.)--Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology; and, (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-61). / The decline in Pharmaceutical R&D productivity has been attributed to high clinical failure rates suggesting that targets, leads and clinical candidates may be of lower quality in recent years. Senior R&D management generally believes that a greater integration of drug discovery and development will improve the selection and optimization of clinical candidates. I demonstrate the different nature of discovery and development with discovery tasks seen as more uncertain, having more reciprocal work flows and more under the control of management than development tasks. Discovery and development personnel have different characteristics and motivations, with discovery staff having greater creative skills and development staff greater planning skill. Following a congruence approach to organization design these differences imply that a complete merging of discovery and development functions would lead to poor fit between organizational design elements. This leaves an ongoing requirement for integrative systems which can preserve the important characteristic of discovery and development functions yet provide knowledge integration at key decision points to improve the quality of clinical candidates. A wide range of integrating mechanisms was found to be in use with an emphasis on cross functional teams. Information Technology was viewed as necessary infrastructure but not an important component of knowledge integration. No strong links were found between pipeline maturity and the integrative mechanism deployed. I speculate that company R&D performance could be better matched to internal and external circumstances by a more active approach to managing integrative systems. I propose a conceptual model of integrative systems to guide a more dynamic management approach / (cont.) to organizational design of R&D and suggest further work to formalize the model through an agent based simulation. / by Peter J.A. Smith. / S.M.M.O.T. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology; and, (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references. / The promise of personalized medicine lies in its potential to fundamentally change healthcare. In the past, pharmaceuticals were prescribed on a "one size fits all" basis-patients with certain disease phenotypes were given what were thought to be appropriate drugs. There is growing evidence however that the effectiveness of these drugs may differ by individual and by sub-group; presumably due to fundamental genetic differences in disease and metabolic pathways. Drugs like Herceptin, Gleevec and Iressa are part of an emerging trend in the biopharmaceutical arena of drugs that are accompanied by genetic diagnostic tests and prescribed only for patients with genotypes in which the agents are most effective. / by Chad D. Holland. / S.M.M.O.T. / S.M.