Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 49). / Accelerating diffusion of innovation to end users and enabling faster adoption is essential to product developers, especially in the industries having a rapid pace of innovation. The ability of innovators to engage with the user community to understand their needs, motivations and top issues is critical to developing products that hit the mark on meeting user needs. In the computing industry there is a need to evolve the innovation development process in parallel to the exponential growth in complexity of the products and the broad ecosystem support that is required to meet user expectations. There are many paths to engage a user community and to obtain end user insights to create a product vision and new usage models. A simple "proof of concept" framework extending product research and development to the end user community is articulated herein. This proof of concept framework is defined in the context of a platform - a collection of ingredients that work together to meet user need. Proof of concept is conducted with users prior to general availability of a product with early ingredients that are in the research and development pipeline. All business users of new product platforms do not adopt an innovation at the same time and can be qualitatively placed in widely accepted classification of adopter categories based on their receptivity to adopting a new product. The leading adopter categories in order are the innovator, early adopter and early majority. These categories of users may help shape current and future generations of a product specifically by validating usage scenarios with integration and deployment of a product under development in real user settings, and by helping to define trends and map requirements for future generations of platform capabilities. Using the proof of concept framework in this way helps ensure that when a product goes to market, it simply works and meets user expectations. / The importance of recognizing a user need cannot be understated. The user feedback from the platform proof of concept stimulates research and development activities to address specific user needs in the current or future generations of a product platform. There are multiple communication channels for potential adopters of an innovation. Mass media channels are effective means to create awareness of an innovation. Proof of concepts with potential users enables more rapid eventual diffusion by translating user deployment and integration learning's into product characteristics that are broadly appealing to potential adopters. / by Jayraj Nair. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 72). / It is obvious from many studies that an alignment and understanding around vision, strategy and goals must occur within a corporation across all organizations before the corporation can operate at its highest efficiency. This becomes even more important in a "flat" organization with distributed leaders. Having this type organization allows transformation to a lean enterprise because decisions can be made at a much lower level and therefore accomplished faster. However, the leaders must know and understand the corporate vision, strategy and organizational goals, which create the context and framework for many of the decisions that will need to be made. Absent this understanding, decisions can appear disjointed, uneven and without purpose towards meeting larger corporate goals and once made, the decision may not in fact support the corporate strategy. The results of this may manifest itself in internal instability caused by leadership vision changes.The Labor Aerospace Research Agenda (LARA) at MIT, starting in the late 1990's, has documented leadership vision changes as a major source of internal instability. This instability could be real or perceived but in either case if not properly managed could lead to a less efficient transformation. Thus, a structured approach around a common framework to create a shared vision from top to bottom throughout the corporation could prevent this instability from occurring. One corporation being studied has instituted a "roadmap" process, which was developed, in part, to address this issue. While the roadmap process does not address all stakeholders or potential sources of instability, it does address leadership vision and how that vision is turned into a strategy with shared goals. The purpose of this thesis is to: 1) Present an outline of the process used to align the corporation / (cont.) 2) Present the results of whether there is a measurable difference in instability driven by changes in leadership vision between departments that use the "roadmap" process and those that don't 3) Compare the results from this company and others previously studied to determine if there is more or less internal instability naturally within the company 4) Conclude whether the roadmap process evaluated is beneficial or not and propose potential modifications to the process. / by Thelton Raymond Salter. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-80). / In the 1940s and 1950s poor air quality in major metropolitan areas throughout the United States started to negatively influence the health of citizens throughout the country. After numerous studies the government concluded that mobile sources of air pollution were a significant contributor to the deteriorating air quality. From that point onwards, the automobile manufacturers have been forced to comply with ever tightening emission regulations. This thesis describes an original investigation into the conflicting clockspeeds that prohibit rapid integration of new automobile emission technologies into production automobiles. Common themes and barriers to technology implementation are uncovered by systematically analyzing current production emission technology and exhaust gas after-treatment systems, and investigating how those systems have evolved over the years. A heuristic for analyzing the technology clockspeed is developed by decomposing the problem into four interconnected cycles. These four cycles correspond to the government's process to develop new automobile emission control regulations and the automobile manufacturer's ability to engineer and certify vehicle platforms, engines, and combustion after-treatment systems. This thesis analyzes the emission control technology development process in six chapters. The first chapter deals with setting the scope and defining the boundaries of the systems that will be analyzed. Chapter two analyzes the driving forces behind the creation of emission regulations and the legislative processes that transform ideas into law. Chapter three analyzes the second level decomposition of the problem at the vehicle level with a specific emphasis on Ford Motor Company's Fox vehicle platform. / (cont.) The fourth chapter decomposes the problem to the engine system level with a focus on the production history of American V8 engines. Chapter five investigates the management of a catalytic converter development program and recommends an organizational structure to efficiently develop catalytic converter systems. The organizational structure recommendation is based on results obtained from a task oriented design structure matrix and a system engineering decomposition. / by John Penney. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 39). / This paper examines the concept of user innovation, how this concept has been applied to internet businesses, and behaviors and motivation of the users who have participated in user innovative activities for internet businesses. This thesis presents definitions and characteristics of both user innovation activities in web businesses. As a major research method, a survey is conducted to identify the trend and phenomenon of current user innovation activities on the web. Major discoveries from the web user innovation survey are two. First, most lead users who participate in user innovation activity in the web businesses do not significantly differ by gender, age, or profession. Second, most lead users participate in user innovation activities for social-networking purpose as well as the goal of contributing to society. User innovations are seldom oriented or initiated from financial benefit purpose as similar as many traditional user innovations are formed for non financial benefit reasons. Internet businesses can leverage these findings to bring a user innovation to their business more effectively. / by Jin Suk Park. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 134-138). / by Geoffrey P. Langos. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2009. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-75). / Innovations largely contribute to a technology company's continuous survival and its competitiveness in the market place. Traditionally most companies employed closed innovation model. They kept their discoveries or inventions highly secret and made no attempt to assimilate information from outside. This model worked well until 1990s when advances in technology and society had facilitated information diffusion dramatically. Mobile industry, as one of the most rapidly changing industries, is also forced to adopt the open innovation model in various forms. Recently announced Android platform caused a big stir in the industry. The gradual shift from closeness to openness is inevitable in this industry. A good example of Open Innovation is the open source software development that has been studied extensively. This study further examines the open innovation model beyond software development, i.e. open innovation in hardware and embedded system development. Lessons are learned through case studies of software, hardware and embedded system related business practice. Recommendations are given to Mobile industry, specifically the cell phone handset industry accordingly. This study will not focus on a specific platform or the user side. / by Yuanwen Wayne Liu. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2008. / Vita. / Includes bibliographical references. / Innovation is a hot topic; innovation is happening everywhere. Innovation is "romantic", reaching for the stars, against all odds, solving the problem no one thought possible. Most CEOs would not characterize survival as "romantic". Innovate or perish; the mantra, the truth, plain, stark, cold and naked. It gets worse; the environment is rapidly changing. Sophisticated customers are demanding quick responses with low cost, high quality products. What once worked with brilliant success is now failing. If innovation is happening everywhere, it is increasingly not happening here. During the past two years, a multi-vendor government project consisting of two vendors geographically segregated across three regions has seen tremendous success followed by almost total collapse. Initial program status and progress indicate near exponential trajectory: ahead of schedule, under budget and all functionality present. However, collapse was not too far off. The integration effort was a complete failure. Key schedule milestone dates were continuously missed. The gap between functionality believed completed and really completed widened. The story reads like a classic runaway project. Worse, the budget was near exhaustion. The central contribution of the analysis is the identification of the innovation trap. The innovation trap identifies conflicting corporate objectives governing the innovation strategy for new business development and the product development strategy of existing programs in the product pipeline. This study examines the innovation trap by applying System Dynamics techniques to develop a set of heuristics not only to identify collapse conditions but also how to address the problem. The goal of this study is to develop a concept for an improved organization and structure for today's high technology product companies where innovation is crucial for corporate success. / by Jeffrey Manning. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2001. / 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 110-111). / by David L. Cocuzzo and Brian W. Millard. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 50). / The emergence of composite material application in major commercial aircraft design, represented by the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350-XWB, signals a new era in the aerospace industry. The high stiffness to weight ratio of continuous fiber composites (CFC) makes CFCs one of the most important materials to be introduced in modern aircraft industry. In addition to inherent strength (per given weight) of CFCs, they also offer the unusual opportunity to design the structure and material concurrently. The directional properties (and the ability to change these properties through the design process) of composite materials can be used in aeroelastically tailored wings, the fuselage and other critical areas. Due to the longer lifecycle (25-30 years) of a commercial airliner and the tools and processes developed for the airplane of previous product development cycles, new technology often ends up being deployed less effectively because of the mismatch in the technical potential (what can be done) vs. design tools and processes (what was done before). Tools and processes need to be current to take advantage of latest technology, and this thesis will describe one possible approach in primary composite structural design area using integrated structural analysis / by Junghyun Ahn. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 68-69). / by Burl Amsbury. / S.M.