Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-236). / by David Gregory Rabkin. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 95). / by Yutaka Takahashi. / M.S.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. Thesis. 1966. Ph.D. / Bibliography: leaves 1-28. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2011. / "May 20th 2011." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-64). / This document investigates the possibilities of software entrepreneurship in developing economies, particularly Mexico, from an entrepreneur's perspective. It includes a broad analysis of the entrepreneurial environment in Mexico - venture capital, talent, regulation and market, in which it also touches on some topics that are relevant to the country today, like its growing violence trend. After creating a picture of the current environment in the first chapter, the second chapter investigates three different business models to create globally successful startups from Mexico. The first one of these models considers incubating a company in Mexico and then moving that company into the United States. The second one talks about ways in which Mexican companies can be created with the intention of selling software in the American market from their first day. Finally, the third one investigates going for the software market in emerging economies rather than the American market. The chapter closes with a proposed model to evaluate each opportunity, using as a base Michael Cusumano's eight point framework from his book The Business of Software. The third and final chapter presents three case examples of software business in Mexico that have had different levels of success, followed by some analysis. The businesses considered where two very successful ones, JackBe and Metroscubicos and one that had a lot of promise but could not materialize, Nibbo Studios. The document's conclusion contains two lists of ideas for entrepreneurs to keep in mind. One called "Seven myths and realities of Mexican software entrepreneurship" tries to paint the real picture of Mexico's entrepreneurial environment, and the second one, named "Eight principles for entrepreneurs creating a Mexican software startup" provides guidance for entrepreneurs creating new companies. / by Jorge Guzmán. / M.B.A.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 104-105). / Trends change, companies grow, merge and folds, things occur at an unusually rapid pace and clients' expectations of services value and costs take new form every day. The information for this research was gathered mainly between December and April of 2002 and reflects the situation as it was that time. The biggest change of all to occur during 2001 and 2002 was the collapse of share prices in many sectors, the fall of Enron and Global Crossing, and SEC probe of the way investment banks link research to brokerage. This environment creates tremendous pressure on financial institutions to improve business operations, not through cost cutting measures, but through a critical review of the way services are delivered. Investment banks in particular, are under scrutiny to shift their strategy from product to customer centric. We identified 2 reasons behind the impetus for shifting strategies. First, the cyclical nature of the financial markets requires an unusual flexibility in deploying and folding strategic assets with minimum damage to operations. Second, the competition among financial services to attract High Net Worth Individuals keeps extending the core services offered to clients. As a result, financial services are taking high risks to change the way business is delivered in order to respond to client changing needs; the service has become driven by "clients' expectations for more and more services for less and less costs". This case study assesses how a financial services firm introduces fundamental change to the way it does business in an attempt to respond to new market pressures. The case analyzes to what extent strategy is aligned with execution and evaluates service delivery changes from the lens of the Clients, Financial Advisors, and Client Associates. The findings of the study are based on the extensive use of operation research, marketing, and management models. The use of system dynamics, service delivery, and gap models identified various factors critical for successfully implementing changes . The results of intensive field surveys offered valuable data for creating a decision support system to our recommendations. / by Bassim Halaby and Qunmei Li. / M.B.A.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2014. / Thesis title as it appears in MIT commencement exercises program, June 2014: Essays in entrepreneurial strategy Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / This dissertation examines the conditions under which entrepreneurial firms are most apt to succeed. Besides grappling with the multiple strategic choices that they face, these firms also have to address the institutional complexities in their environments. Together these three essays contribute to our understanding of how the challenges associated with addressing these multifaceted environmental conditions impact firm outcomes. The first study examines the process of entrepreneurial strategy making by analyzing the competitive history of the Internet video industry in China. Leveraging a new hand-collected dataset that records activity by all entrants into the Chinese Internet video industry from 2006-2011, this study documents how entrants who adapted to a disadvantageous shift in the environment outperform those firms that chose a strategy that did not require change; and how strategic commitments to user communities can serve as a complementary asset to enhance the resilience of a start-up against disadvantageous shifts in their environment. The second essay considers how the endogenous nature of appropriability impacts entrepreneurial strategy and performance. This study focuses on the entrepreneur's choice between investing their time and scarce resources in ensuring appropriability versus investing in the execution and operation of their fledgling businesses. We investigate these ideas empirically in the context of a unique sample of academic entrepreneurs: within a sample of ventures that could have been developed by either faculty or students (or both), we find that faculty-led ventures are much more closely associated with intellectual property, but are less agile in terms of their start-up and commercialization activities. The third essay examines the impact of local institutional arrangements on firm-level spillover effects from universities. This study provides early evidence suggesting that foreign invested firms collocated with universities in China are more innovative than their domestic counterparts. Furthermore, the performance discrepancy is most apparent among smaller firms. This finding raises some substantial policy implications about public investments in universities when the benefits of such investments are juxtaposed against localized institutional arrangements. / by Kenny Hwee Ching. / Ph. D.

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-58). / This thesis investigates the hypothesis "Building capacity for sustainable innovation, enabled by broader employee engagement and improved capabilities, increases both employee and organizational fulfillment". A deep understanding is first built around the relationship between individual fulfillment, organizational fulfillment, and innovation. We then examine capacity building for innovation, both in the context of capability as well as broader engagement of employee's in innovation. The intellectual bases of the thesis are literature surveys based upon the work of Peter Senge, in The Fifth Discipline and The Dance of Change; the work of Sumantra Ghoshal and Christopher Bartlett in The Individualized Corporation; the work of Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahlad in Competing for the Future; the work of Clayton Christensen in The Innovator's Dilemma; as well as current professional journal publications from these authors, and other literature relevant to the topic. Further intellectual support comes from author conducted interviews with Peter Senge, Sumantra Ghoshal, and Clayton Christensen, and exchanges with Gary Hamel. Study missions to two companies who are implementing the practices described in this thesis in pockets of their organizations provide relevant and current insight into the practical aspects and challenges of innovation, capacity building, individual fulfillment, and organizational fulfillment. / by Joy M. Greenway and Jeruld P. Weiland. / M.B.A.

Thesis: M.B.A., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2016. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 69-73). / Flowers are often gifted for major holidays and personal holidays, for both personal and corporate purposes. Today's solutions in the market are abundant but scattered, with many players offering products of varying quality at a range of price points. To command higher prices and stay relevant in the market, florists need to distinguish themselves through high quality and/or niche product and ease of service. The goal for this project is to map the current competitive landscape and supply chain of the flower industry, and to determine whether predictive modeling in the floral industry is feasible as a point of difference for new gifting company Clovette. Data collection through distribution of a survey called "Discovering Floral Preference" assessed the potential for prediction. Furthermore, the project explores Clovette's brand identity and potential "good" business development through sustainability initiatives and supply chain optimization. Keywords: random forest, predictive modeling, flowers, gifting, sustainability. / by Jeeyun Jennifer Lee. / M.B.A.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1990. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 231-234). / Ph.D.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. / The three papers in this thesis are devoted to understanding how Information Technology (IT) has and will continue to affect the organization of firms: -- IT and Firm Size The anecdotal evidence on changes in firm size is mixed. While! spin-offs and downsizing suggest a trend towards smaller firms, the recent wave of mergers points to a trend towards larger firm. The paper analyzes US Business Census data to examine trends in firm size empirically and relate them to the use of IT. This exploratory study shows that the trends vary considerably across sectors: IT appears to be associated with a trend towards smaller firms in traditional manufacturing industries and a trend towards larger firms in information-based industries. The paper suggests a possible explanation by considering the combined effect of multiple mechanisms through which IT may affect firm size. -- IT and Hybrid Organizations There appears to be a shift away from both large bureaucratic organizations and individually comp??ting entrepreneurs to "hybrid organizations." For instance, horizontal and networked organizations attempt to combine the initiative shown by entrepreneurs with the coordination achieved in bureaucracies. The paper models a tradeoff between initiative and coordination encountered in organization design. Improved IT is shown to relax this tradeoff, so that hybrid organizations can achieve both more initiative and more coordination. The results from the model are used to analyze the organizational design issues faced by hybrid organization. A case study of Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems (SNI) is used to illustrate the managerial implications. -- Costly Communication IT has dramatically improved the ability to communicate information in organizations. The effects of improved communication are difficult to analyze in traditional economic models since these generally assume fret. Communication. Previous economic theories of communication have substantial shortcomings. The paper proposes a novel approach based on the concept of communication protocols from information theory. It is shown how optimal protocols can be characterized. The properties of optimal protocols are then used to analyze the effect of improvements in communication on the standardization of organizational communication and on the allocation of decision rights. / by Albert E. Wenger. / IT and firm size -- IT and hybrid organizations -- Costly communication. / Ph.D.