Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2008. / Unpaged. / Includes bibliographical references. / High-technology Entrepreneurship has been a key driver of innovation and economic growth in the US. Aided by factors such as the success in IT and IT-enabled services industries and a booming economy, India has seen a sharp increase in activity in technology entrepreneurship. This thesis explored the opportunities and issues in building and growing technology startups in India. Money, market, manpower, and mentors were identified as the broad areas in which startups face challenges. The specific issues within these areas were analyzed from entrepreneurs' and investors' perspectives and potential solutions were recommended. While many of the issues faced by startups in India turned out to be similar to those faced by startups in the US, a few issues were found to be unique to India. The sources for data included in-depth interviews with participants in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem as well as existing research on entrepreneurship in US and India. / by Aparna Chennapragada. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-59). / by Benjamin Saltsman. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 94-95). / In the past twenty years, companies in the aerospace industry experienced major transitions: mergers and acquisitions, and lean transformation initiatives. This thesis presents research about the relation of lean efforts and mergers and acquisitions. It is based on case studies of mergers and acquisitions undertaken by Boeing Company. In order to obtain supplementary research data, case studies were also developed regarding the mergers and acquisitions of Vought Aircraft and United Technologies Corp. These different cases focus on mergers and acquisitions between companies at varying levels of lean maturity. For example, the merger between Boeing and McDonnell Douglas is between companies at a similar level of lean maturity, while Vought's acquisition of Aerostructure required integration between a low-level lean company and a company with more advanced lean initiatives. The thesis provides detailed discussion of the changes that occurred after the mergers or acquisitions in terms of lean effort, barriers and solutions to lean transition during the integration process, and changes in the rate of lean efforts during and after the merger or acquisition. The research concludes that leadership, communications, and education are pivotal to successful lean transition during the integration process. Lean offices and Process Councils, generally part of a structured lean effort, facilitate the process. The difference in level of lean maturity was not a big factor during the early stage of a merger or acquisition, but different levels of lean maturity, as well as lean expertise, had important impacts in later stages of the integration process. / by Junhong Kim. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2000. / "February 2000." / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-106). / by Anupam Sahai. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program; and (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-113). / by Séan Morgan. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, February 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-116). / Background: Despite the identification of a "software crisis" in the 1960s, large software projects are full of defects even today [19]. These defects cause the software to behave unexpectedly. The cause generally is attributed to the inherent property of software to possess arbitrary complexity [20]. Additionally, computer software is becoming all pervading. There is literally an explosion of software automating things that were considered impossible to automate only a few years ago. Essentially, software is growing to encompass anything and everything with such speed that we don't have the time to reflect on 'what happens when the software does something that it was not intended to do?' In other words, the software encounters an anomaly or a defect something customers encounter everyday. In any case, whenever customers encounter problems caused by defects they need help to solve these problems. They generally seek such help at a software vendor's product support services. With software getting more and more complex it is getting extremely difficult to support customers in a timely and cost effective manner. There is a constant struggle to ensure high Quality of Service (QoS) with low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), which in turn affects Return on Investment; in such a scenario considering nearly 80% of the costs associated with software occur after it is shipped to the customer. Currently, there are two solutions to such problems caused by defects: First, if the source of the problem itself is found to be a defect in the software then the software vendor generally fixes the problem by modifying their code. Such a problem is generally classified as a bug. By now it is known that software applications have such bugs or defects or anomalies. These bugs cause the software to behave unexpectedly. Depending on its severity this behavior can on one extreme go unnoticed or one the other end produce catastrophic results. It pervades all software whether it is the AT&T long distance switching node crash in 01/15/90, the well known Y2K bug in database related software, Microsoft Passport Security defect, Mars Polar Lander defect, or the Ariane 5 rocket defect. These are just a few examples of well known software bugs. For each well known bug there are untold numbers of bugs that may not see the limelight. These defects can arise due to many reasons during the design and development of the software however they primarily arise due the essence of software to possess inherent properties of complexity, conformity, changeability, and invisibility [20]. Hence, a question arises, "Do we still try to single-mindedly go for the elusory 0 bug product? OR Do we accept that there are going to be bugs and try incorporate / accommodate for this directly into the product or otherwise?" Second, if the source of the problem is such that the vendor cannot simply fix the product, then it is classified as a limitation of the software product itself. In such a case the support organization works with the customer to find a workaround. Additionally, if many customers encounter the same problem then the product needs to be modified based on the workarounds their support services have provided to customers. In other words the product evolves based on how its customers use it. Product support services also receive numerous problems that are non-defect related where the source could be customer error or ignorance, improper documentation etc and their solutions generally require end-user education and training, better documentation etc. However such nondefect related support incidences fall outside the scope of this thesis. In the defect related scenarios illustrated above most of the contemporary efforts to determine the root cause of a customer's problem, requires in-depth knowledge of the product, extensive debugging that is extremely tedious, painstaking, and manual. Resolution of a problem depends solely on the troubleshooting skills, experience and subjectivity of the Support Personal that the customer is able to get a hold of. Products have all along incorporated functionality such as better features, performance, scalability etc. into their designs however none explicitly addresses how to tackle a software application's problems. This is unfortunate since such problems deeply affect customers and software development organization alike. The former looses productivity, effectiveness, time and money while the latter expends dedicated monetary and human resources for troubleshooting software products for a number of years until the product is declared obsolete or the customer's license expires. Problems affect overall customer satisfaction with the software making them more skeptical of future releases. The bottom-line is that there is a strong need to innovate software design and development itself to address how to deal with software problems so that customers should not have to loose their time, money or their life because the software application they are using has problems. / by Prashant A. Shirolkar. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 148-151). / by Manu Vedapudi. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, February 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 65-68). / The Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) is becoming an integral part of our daily life and touching every part of the society around the world including both well-developed and developing countries. The simple technology and genuine intention of the original WWW, which is to help researchers share and exchange information and data across incompatible platforms and systems, have evolved into something larger and beyond what one could conceive. While WWW has reached the critical mass, many limitations are uncovered. To address the limitations, the development of its extension, the Semantic Web, has been underway for more than five years by the inventor of WWW, Tim Berners-Lee, and the technical community. Yet, no significant impact has been made. Its awareness by the public is surprisingly and unfortunately low. This thesis will review the development effort of the Semantic Web, examine its progress which appears lagging compared to WWW, and propose a promising business model to accelerate its adoption path. / by Shelley Lau. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of System Design & Management, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-161). / Manufacturing-intensive companies like Ford Motor Company have come to the realization that they need to have a strong consumer focus to survive in today's competitive world. Ford has just recently announced steps to further align its program team centers more strongly with their consumers, yet the lower levels of the teams will still remain aligned around a standard part decomposition that finds its roots back to Henry Ford's vertical integration methodology. In today's information age, with the growing expectations of the consumer, as well as product complexity, it has become essential for product teams to share and communicate efficiently. It is no longer adequate for the program manager to be the sole focal point, where the voice of the consumer meets the voice of part engineering. As complex as it sounds, the consumer voice must be decomposed for delivery throughout the program team as the driving force by which the parts are engineered. Herein outlines an approach which has been called 'enabling a consumer headset in product development,' that illustrates the possibility of handle this complexity using today's tools. Bottom line: Industry is ready to take this one on. Needs analysis has established a focal point at the program team decompositional structure, product development process, and the driving management metrics and engineering specifications. Suggested are concepts that lead to a more natural and efficient way of delivering that consumer headset and these concepts are applied on three implementation projects: 1) a MIT course exercise; 2) a new Docu-Center architecture program at Xerox; and 3) a forward model 200X Mustang program. Findings are summarize into a final recommendation for future Ford program applications. The conclusion of this thesis recommends three items: 1) Introduces the Role of Architects, 2) Aligns the Organization Around the Consumer, 3) Transitions Engineering Focus to Interface Specifications. / by James L. Goran, Michael L. Shashlo [and] Francis J. Wickenheiser. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Andrew J. Laures. / S.M.