Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Technology, Management, and Policy Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-183). / We may have a serious problem with education in the United States. However, the literature suggests one can arrive at differing conclusions about the efficacy of the American educational system depending on what we measure, how we measure it, when we decide to measure, and why we measure. As will be shown, many testing methods currently in vogue in the United States generate data that can lead policy makers, parents, educators, and even students to arrive at invalid conclusions about schools; teachers, and student ability, especially when evaluating the ability of a student to apply (versus just know) concepts. It was hypothesized that, if applied in a manner aligned with accepted validity standards, modern computer technology could both dramatically improve the accuracy of our inferences, and provide significant new insights into student learning and understanding given present national and California state standards. As a "proof of concept", a quasi-experimental, interrupted time series study was conducted using a computerized learning and assessment tool to observe second semester high school chemistry students solving qualitative chemistry problems. The results presented here suggest that: -- Without intervention, once a student chooses a strategy to solve a problem, the student will continue to use the same type of strategy (in both the near- and long-term), whether or not that strategy has proven effective. These findings imply we now have the opportunity to both diagnose ineffective strategies as they are developing, and tailor interventions to individual student needs. -- Because technology allows us to look both at a student's answer and how s)he arrived at that answer, we conclude that we can accurately infer whether a student really understands the concepts of a particular knowledge domain. Our findings suggest that, if properly employed, technology can offer new, real-time insights into student understanding. The paper concludes by discussing the applicability of this research to other knowledge domains, some avenues of future research, and particular pedagogical interventions which the results suggest might be most promising. / by Terry P. Vendlinski. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2000. / Also available online at the MIT Theses Online homepage <http://thesis.mit.edu>. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-112). / Research was done on several public sources to identify the 828 practices of two players in the computer hardware industry. As key players in a technology intensive industry, such as computer hardware, yet coming from different starting points, IBM as an incumbent and Dell as an attacker should provide insights in key success factors in e-commerce and their application to a more general group of players in other industries. A framework for analyzing the specifics of the 828 strategy for these two companies was developed. This framework was an adaptation and evolution of the Value Chain and the Integrated Value Chain concepts. This framework provides a better understanding of the relationship between the 828 strategy and the overall strategy of the company. From the results achieved by these companies' 828 practices, several conclusions and recommendations were drawn for IBM and Dell. Specific recommendations on the key issues brought about by the Internet in areas such as channel restructuring, customer relationship management and trends towards providing full customer solutions are provided. This work also shows how specialization and partnerships will play an increasingly important role for computer hardware vendors, as clients look for integrated solutions and one stop buying for products and services. An assessment of the future challenges brought about by new marketplaces such as e-marketplaces, specifically 828 exchanges, shows how companies need to be prepared to embrace e-business rather than e-commerce in order to survive. Other new challenges are analyzed, particularly those related to the commoditization of the computer hardware industry, the birth of PC substitutes, such as wireless appliances, and the use of the Web as the software holder. Finally, a partnership or strategic alliance between these two companies is discussed as a plausible strategy to leverage on their distinct core strengths: Dell's capability to effectively manage outsourcing and the direct channel, and IBM's skills on building in-house capabilities for creating new service lines and developing world class software. / by Adriana Maria Noreňa [sic]. / S.M.M.O.T.

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 63-65). / Innovation and rapid fielding ("commercialization") of superior technology has been a key element in the United States military's strategy throughout its history. Maintaining this edge in the current environment of increased rate of technological change but dramatically reduced military procurement budgets will require strategically developing the most cost effective systems and optimizing the productivity of new product development teams. An emerging framework for a "metrics thermostat" based on an agency theory model for selecting and prioritizing metrics for product development teams has shown promising results in two commercial applications. This study focused on applying this framework to one of the government's largest procurement organizations, the Naval Sea Systems Command (NA VSEA), the Navy Department's central activity for designing, engineering, integrating, building and procuring U.S. naval ships and shipboard weapons and combat systems. A working metrics hierarchy and construct was developed. Desired outcomes or profit analogies were defined to value and differentiate strategic priorities, enabling metrics and covariates. Five strategic priorities aligned with NA VSEA' s stated goals were selected for the study and enabling metrics and covariates directly impacting these strategic priorities and desired outcomes were defined. Approximately 50 product/systems were identified and investigated to varying degrees. Significant progress was made toward populating the defined data fields for the selected data points/systems. Preliminary analyses offer hope that the combination of a large data set and broad, robust metrics will reveal meaningful correlations and leverages. The data sources have been largely been identified but substantial data collection remains to be done. As this is completed, comprehensive regression analyses will be performed to determine the relative effectiveness of the strategic priorities and enabling metrics. These results, and corresponding directions to program mangers on which strategies and metrics to emphasize and which to de-emphasize, will be validated by NA VSEA experts. / by Carl B. Frank. / S.M.M.O.T.

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-51). / The topic of this thesis is focused around the new possibilities in the field of market research opened with the advent of the internet, in particular around the use of web interfaces to perform conjoint analysis, a market research technique based on comparisons between pairs of potential product configurations to compute the perceived relative utility of each of several product design attributes. We first overview conjoint analysis and the online market research industry in general, so see how the use of the internet for this purpose can reduce the cost of these analyses in more than an order of magnitude due to a better accessibility to test customers, a cleaner and faster interface, and the possibility of reducing the number of questions necessary to compute the utility functions using an adaptive technique that generates optimal questions with dynamic web content as the test proceeds. We then study the issues related with the automation of web sites for performing this type of analyses without having to redesign the interface, with the introduction of dynamic content web technology for adaptive conjoint analysis, and with the possibilities offered by this technique towards fast segmentation of incoming customers. Finally, we report the first implementation - to the best of our knowledge - of an actual web architecture that uses a novel adaptive conjoint algorithm and automates the whole analysis setup process. / by Julio M. Faura. / S.M.M.O.T.

Thesis (Ph. D. in Aerospace Engineering and Policy Analysis)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology, Management, and Policy Program, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-128). / Current space launch/landing events are conducted only within Special Use Airspace (SUA), separate from air traffic. This is a strategic traffic management policy because SUA size and duration are set well in advance. It forces space operations to disrupt aviation, which could become costly with growth in air or space transportation. This was investigated through integrated engineering/policy analysis of strategic and tactical options. Total annual disruption cost was calculated using the number of conflicts per SUA event, the annual SUA events, the average disruption per conflict, and the cost per unit disruption. The conflict count was identified as most important, and an analytical airspace conflict model was developed to predict the number of conflicts associated with restricting an arbitrary region of airspace for a given duration. This approach was used to investigate the sensitivity of disruption cost to SUA radius, SUA active duration, air traffic density, relative velocity, annual SUA events, and conflict resolution distance. The current annual cost is under $1 million, but the expected ranges of all factors comprise a plausible range of $100 to $8 million. This cost was most sensitive to SUA radius: on average, doubling the radius multiplies the cost by 49, while doubling the traffic density simply doubles the cost, and doubling the SUA active duration multiplies the cost by only 1.8. / (cont.) The cost was also two orders of magnitude more sensitive to "control" factors (SUA size and duration) than to "market" factors (air and space traffic levels). Four scenarios investigated changes in multiple factors: 2% or 6% annual growth in space operations, managed by reducing only SUA radius or by reducing active duration and scheduling events to affect less air traffic. The results confirmed that radius alone is more powerful than other factors combined, and suggested that tactical alternatives could control costs over time, even with high aerospace transportation growth. However, a preliminary risk analysis indicated a safety need for large SUA, which also offers security benefits. The final recommendations were continued use of SUA for the short-medium term, with detailed safety analysis required for future consideration of several tactical options. / by John M. Falker, III. / Ph.D.in Aerospace Engineering and Policy Analysis

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-109). / "When you write a book, you need to have more than an interesting story. You need to have a desire to tell the story. You need to be personally invested in some way. You need to care about it." Malcolm Gladwell Author, "The Tipping Point". "I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out, that is the reason why I compose. " Ludwig van Beethoven. The above quotes answer the basic question that many people have asked me (and I have asked myself): Why are you writing a thesis? The answer is simple: I believe there's a story to be told, and I have a personal passion for the subject. This thesis will analyze the patterns and practices of contemporary software startups. Though much has been written about software companies and much has been written on startups, I'm primarily interested in the intersection: software startups. More specifically, I will explore contemporary software startups that were started after the Internet bubble burst. About The Website: onstartups.com / As part of the thesis writing experience, I started a blog called "OnStartups" (http://onstartups.com) where I have been posting articles on software startups. More information on the onstartups.com site is included at the end of the thesis. My passion for learning more about software startups, the opportunity to work with two exceptional individuals as co-advisors and the overwhelming response to my onstartups.com website are my primary motivations for this thesis. Onward! / by Dharmesh Shah. / S.M.M.O.T.

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2000. / Also available online at the MIT Theses Online homepage <http://thesis.mit.edu>. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-63). / Alliances have been increasingly used in many industries as a way of obtaining competitive advantage. The enterprise storage marketplace is one in which alliances have been frequently used by many big players. In this paper, a comprehensive list of storage related alliances was compiled. The list covers a five-year period from 1995 to 1999, and the six leading domestic enterprise storage manufacturers including EMC, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Dell, and Compaq. Six forces that have led to the alliances in the enterprise storage space were identified. The alliances were broken down into three levels . based on the strategic importance of an alliance and the amount of effort involved. With the data obtained from press and company news releases, we were able to categorize the alliances with regard to the six forces. However we were not able to determine the level of each alliance due to the Jack of inside information regarding the true goals and processes of the alliances. Nevertheless we believe the evaluation methodology is worth presenting and the work can be completed once the information becomes available. A comparative analysis of the storage-related alliances for each of the six leading storage vendors was conducted. The analysis touched upon the firms' product positioning, competitive advantage/disadvantage, and the use of alliances. The thesis also discusses if and how the alliances were linked to business strategy. / by Jennifer Xiaoying Zhu. / S.M.M.O.T.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, Technology, Management, and Policy Program, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 181-192). / This thesis presents a technology to complement taxation-based policy proposals aimed at addressing the digital copyright problem. The approach presented facilitates identification of intellectual property using expression fingerprints. Copyright law protects expression of content. Recognizing literary works for copyright protection requires identification of the expression of their content. The expression fingerprints described in this thesis use a novel set of linguistic features that capture both the content presented in documents and the manner of expression used in conveying this content. These fingerprints consist of both syntactic and semantic elements of language. Examples of the syntactic elements of expression include structures of embedding and embedded verb phrases. The semantic elements of expression consist of high-level, broad semantic categories. Syntactic and semantic elements of expression enable generation of models that correctly identify books and their paraphrases 82% of the time, providing a significant (approximately 18%) improvement over models that use tfidf-weighted keywords. The performance of models built with these features is also better than models created with standard features used in stylometry (e.g., function words), which yield an accuracy of 62%. In the non-digital world, copyright holders collect revenues by controlling distribution of their works. Current approaches to the digital copyright problem attempt to provide copyright holders with the same kind of control over distribution by employing Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems. / (cont.) However, DRM systems also enable copyright holders to control and limit fair use, to inhibit others' speech, and to collect private information about individual users of digital works. Digital tracking technologies enable alternate solutions to the digital copyright problem; some of these solutions can protect creative incentives of copyright holders in the absence of control over distribution of works. Expression fingerprints facilitate digital tracking even when literary works are DRM- and watermark-free, and even when they are paraphrased. As such, they enable metering popularity of works and make practicable solutions that encourage large-scale dissemination and unrestricted use of digital works and that protect the revenues of copyright holders, for example through taxation-based revenue collection and distribution systems, without imposing limits on distribution. / by Özlem Uzuner. / Ph.D.

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2000. / Also available online at the MIT Theses Online homepage <http://thesis.mit.edu>. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-101). / The technology platform in the research and development of pharmaceutical drugs is changing dramatically -- from the traditional trial-and-error method to modem sophisticated methods that use Combinatorial Chemistry (CC), High Throughput Screening (HTS), and Gene Technology. Since the beginning of the 1990s, pharmaceutical companies have actively invested into such technologies. Some investment has been in-house, but many companies have acquired high-tech ventures or formed strategic alliances. Today it is necessary for every firm to make the best use of all these technologies in order to improve their R&D productivity. However, it is expensive to use all of them. Over the past five years, many leading global companies have begun to merge. There are various reasons for merging, but the most common is to enhance R&D activity and marketing by reducing redundancy and reinvesting the savings. These attitudes indicate that the critical mass of the industry will increase rapidly. Similar technological change is occurring in Japan. In addition, other changes in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry are also having a significant effect, such as the national health insurance system and the R&D regulatory environment. However, compared to the magnitude of radical change among global companies, much less has occurred in the Japanese industry. That is, fewer mergers have occurred between leading Japanese pharmaceutical companies. Instead, Japanese companies seem to be mired in a dilemma in a rapidly changing environment. To break through this situation, Japanese pharmaceutical companies must consider making some deals. I analyzed the R&D strategies of five pharmaceutical companies, to learn how they acquire genetic technology strategy, and I found some interesting points. The research found that increasing the critical mass of the industry through M&As and strategic alliances, coupled with excellent strategies and effective R&D management, is indispensable for the industry as a whole, specifically for medium-sized firms. Finally, I conclude with some specific recommendations for Welfide Corporation, as it seeks to solve the dilemmas and enter the global markets of the pharmaceutical industry. / by Yoshifumi Togo. / S.M.M.O.T.

Thesis (S.M.M.O.T.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Management of Technology Program, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-99). / History has shown, and much management research has pointed out, that the structure of industries is not static. In some cases, striking shifts in industry structure have led to value creation explosions, the entry of new firms, and dramatic shifts in the value capture capability of firms within the industry. Perhaps the most oft-cited example of this phenomenon is the dis-integration of the personal computer industry into a horizontally organized cluster of hundreds of firms, and the emergence of Intel and Microsoft as dominant value-capture powerhouses within that industry. A large and ever-growing body of research studies the structure of industries. That is, the composition and structure of products created by firms in the industry, the structure of the design processes that generate these products, and the markets in which components and design services are offered to the industry. Of great concern to research in this area are the concepts of modularity and value chain structure. Some argue that the degree of modularity inherent in both an industry's products and the design processes that produce them have a profound effect on industry structure. They argue that modularity affects the structure of design and production value chains within the industry, the markets in which components and design services are made available, on the firms that participate in those markets, and the ability of those firms to create and capture value. Motivated by the striking example of the PC industry itself and this growing body of research, this thesis studies possible shifts in industry structure in the field of microprocessors, or, more generally, very-large-scale-integrated circuits (VLSICs) for computing. High-end microprocessor design, like PC design in the early 80's, is currently vertically integrated within a few dominant firms. But a fundamental trend is at work: the rate at which transistors are becoming available exceeds the rate at which the designers and design processes of incumbent firms are able to use them. This situation creates pressures on the boundaries of design and production that may lead to shifts in value chain boundaries that have previously not been considered by the industry. Will the microprocessor industry itself dis-integrate? If these shifts were to manifest, they may consequently impact the value-capture capability of new and incumbent firms, improving some firms' profitability at the expense of others. This thesis surveys and summarizes the existing body of research on the relationship between modularity and industry structure, and applies it to the field of computing VLSICs. It analyzes the microprocessor industry using those mechanisms proposed in the body of research, suggesting scenarios for how the industry structure may evolve in the near future. It studies and suggests how firms might influence this evolution. This leads to recommendations for firms currently in the industry, and for firms considering entry. / by Michael J. Bass. / S.M.M.O.T.