Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 98). / by K. Hari Reddy. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, February 2000. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 74). / by Lynn M. Tinker. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 226-237). / by Roberta E. Bivins. / Ph.D.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2017. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / The police are designed. Their tools, policies, and human services are all products of deliberation and choice, and therefore open to consideration and re-consideration in an era that has seen widespread abuse of power. This thesis takes up one element of the designed police system in the United States: its material culture-from vehicles, to uniforms and badges, to weapons. The physical tools and devices that the police force use are emblematic of explicit and implicit values. These values make certain conditions and encounters possible, and other scenarios impossible. What is behind these tools, and how might our culture see them anew? How might we re-imagine them in the civic act of designing a future? Oversight, transparency, and accountability are a critical piece of the civic fabric. In order for law enforcement to reflect the needs and expectations of citizens, it is in part, our responsibility to interrogate the designs of the key institutions we rely on. But agency in the design space of the police has not been encouraged. This thesis presents one example of how a dialogue around design is a form of productive civic activity and a check against state violence. In it, I offer a complementary set of tools for imagining possible futures of policing that reconsider scenarios for law enforcement, with a provisional freedom from its current form. Problematizing the physical designs of the police, it focuses on the values, priorities, and politics that are inevitably imbued in these objects. This practice-led research draws from interviews with both citizens and law enforcement, design research, and participatory, critical making. It makes a case for citizen engagement and civic imagination in the proactive design of the police. This speculative design approach fosters understanding and agency, and suggests one way in which the design of the police could be a more inclusive and collaborative project. / by Sands A. Fish, II. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 70-71). / The xerographic printing and copying industry has become extremely competitive. Xerox market share has gradually declined since the 1960s as the market share of corporations like Canon, Hewlett Packard and Ricoh has increased. In response to rising competition, various product architecture strategies are heralded as the means to gaining, or regaining, competitive advantage in this environment. Among the most popular of these strategies are platobrm strategy, product families and parts commonality, and outsourcing. The objective of this thesis is not to dispute the value of these strategies in the present context. Obviously, platform strategies and parts reuse enable firms to develop products faster and with less cost by leveraging previous investments. Likewise, in order to remain competitive in this environment, a firm can no longer afford to vertically integrate its products-clearly, firms can no longer afford to do everything themselves. Horizontal integration through outsourcing, or what Xerox calls extended enterprise, is therefore one source of competitive advantage. Platform strategy, parts reuse, and extended enterprise all make good sense but each of these strategies can easily backfire. In this paper we will examine these strategies and see how they relate to central themes in product architecture, such as, architectural modularity. Then we shall see how these strategies can, if not applied carefully, cause more problems than they attempt to resolve. Finally, in light of these problems, revised and more robust versions of these strategies are presented. / by David C. Craig. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2002. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Shui-Fang Chou. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, February 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 71-73). / by Khusrow M. Uzair. / S.M.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 399-410). / This dissertation is a two-theme ethnography focusing on the early history of one company within the context of the turbulent business environment of the 1990's. One theme is the control exercised by a corporation to mold its people to achieve certain productive ends, focusing on three areas: culture, physical environment and technology. The second theme is the ability of a corporation to be flexible. Taken together, the two themes form the self-contradictory notion of trying to control a group to increase its ability to be flexible. Many writers who focus on organizations have found the biological metaphor of evolution a useful way to conceptualize some aspects of a successful firm. In contrast I find the biological metaphor of genetic manipulation best illustrates the kind of control exercised by the leadership of this particular firm. From its inception, the leadership team wanted to create a flexible firm, one that could thrive in a turbulent environment. Rather than rely on a multiplicity of heterogeneous experiments, they actively manipulated specific aspects of the firm. The early results, the formation of a successful company, suggested that those controls and the decision to actively mold the firm using such controls were the right choices. When faced with a radical change in the marketplace, the arrival of the Internet economy, the leaders of this firm responded with the same technique and once again were able to mold a successful firm. To the extent that the Internet economy requires companies to change at Internet speed, this firm's ability to manipulate its own "DNA" may well be a model for success for other firms in this environment. / by Patricia Peterson Bentley. / Ph.D.

Thesis: Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 211-223). / This dissertation investigates the role of software in institutional transformation using the example of Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs. It ethnographically tracks the development of the software infrastructure being built for MOOCs, focusing on three communities-programmers, instructors, and researchers-who centrally participate in the MOOC start-ups' stated mission of reinventing higher education. It argues that MOOC infrastructures are best viewed as an example of a heterogeneous software assemblage that I call the "software-as-platform," that is today being widely deployed and used in a number of industries and institutions. The software-as-platform consists primarily of software that holds together a variety of normative logics: open-endedness; fast, iterative, production processes; data-driven decision-making; governance for emergent effects; scalability; and personalization. Of these, the most important is that its creators give to it an open-endedness as to its ultimate purpose: thus, the assemblage is often framed using the language of "tools" or "platform." I then argue that the software-as-platform is a vehicle through which the norms and practices of Silicon Valley are making their way into other institutions, a process I call "platformization." Finally, I suggest that the software-as-platform enables the emergence of a new form of expertise: tool-making. Tool-makers see themselves as building software tools, whose ultimate purpose comes from their users. The tools themselves draw on many other kinds of expert knowledge chosen at the discretion of the tool-builders. The dissertation consists of four chapters bookended by an Introduction and a Conclusion. Chapter 2 is an analysis of the public discourse around MOOCs. Chapter 3 describes MOOC infrastructures, showing how a cluster of institutions, software, and people are organized to produce the plethora of courses as well knowledge about education. Chapter 4 tells the story about how edX, a MOOC start-up, turned itself from an educational organization into a software organization by deploying the software-as-platform, thereby transforming and displacing particular institutional roles. In Chapter 5, I analyze the practices of a rising class of tool-makers, computer scientists, and describe how they are able to draw on other kinds of expertise, and intervene in new domains, while still presenting themselves as neutral system-builders. / by Shreeharsh Kelkar. / Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS)

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-167). / External advice can be a valuable resource for founders of high technology startup companies. As with any resource, the pursuit and efficient use of the external advice resource is one of the greatest challenges for founders. This thesis examines how the founders of eleven US venture-backed high-tech companies leveraged external advice to their advantage. By aggregating data extracted from case-based interviews, the characteristics of advice are fully understood. In particular, insights are made into the types of advice these business focused founders received, the types of advisors they selected and considered influential to the development of their company and the way they were connected to these influential advisors. Organizing the data by companies' business characteristics enabled further insights to be drawn. Notably, there was a significant difference in a variety of the advice sought by first time founders compared with that of more experienced founding teams. First time founders received broader and more tactical advice than did experienced founders. Furthermore, first time founder's advisors were much more likely to act as coaches, instilling confidence and expending effort to mentor these first-timers into successful CEOs. Silicon Valley advisors and others affiliated with Silicon Valley companies were much more likely to introduce the founders to their influential network, which illustrates the rich entrepreneurial nature of Silicon Valley. There was no statistically significant difference in advice characteristics based on the size of their founding team or on type of their industry. Since the eleven companies are private and thriving, the selected performance metric was the amount of venture capital raised per year of existence. / (cont.) This less than ideal performance data clearly shows a positive correlation between the size and experience of the founding team with company performance. However, no correlation between company performance and industry and geography could be determined. Since the advice characteristics that were correlated with performance were similar to those of large experienced teams, it is reasonable to conclude that none of the advice characteristics are predictors of success. It follows rather that advice characteristics are more a reflection of the companies' business characteristics than itself a predictor of venture success. / by Nick Cravalho. / S.M.