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JournalISSN: 1532-8937

MIT Sloan Management Review 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
About: MIT Sloan Management Review is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Supply chain & Business model. It has an ISSN identifier of 1532-8937. Over the lifetime, 850 publications have been published receiving 56986 citations.


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Journal Article
TL;DR: In the old model of closed innovation, enterprises adhered to the following philosophy: Successful innovation requires control: In other words, companies must generate their own ideas, then develop, manufacture, market, distribute and service those ideas themselves.
Abstract: Is innovation dead? Actually, innovation is alive and well ? as underscored by the recent advances in the life sciences, including revolutionary breakthroughs in genomics and cloning. But the way companies generate ideas and bring them to market has been undergoing a fundamental change. In the old model of closed innovation, enterprises adhered to the following philosophy: Successful innovation requires control. In other words, companies must generate their own ideas, then develop, manufacture, market, distribute and service those ideas themselves. For most of the 20th century, that model worked well, as evidenced by the spectacular successes of central R&D organizations such as AT&T's Bell Labs. Today, though, the internally oriented, centralized approach to R&D is becoming obsolete in many industries. Useful knowledge is widely disseminated, and ideas must be used with alacrity. If not, they will be lost. Such factors create a new logic of open innovation, in which the role of R&D extends far beyond the boundaries of the enterprise. Specifically, companies must now harness outside ideas to advance their own businesses while leveraging their internal ideas outside their current operations. That fundamental change offers novel ways to create value ? along with new opportunities to claim portions of that value.

3,105 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, a "what if?" team exercise called "stress testing" is used to identify potentially weak links in the supply chain and then select the best mitigation strategy: holding "reserves," pooling inventory, using redundant suppliers, balancing capacity and inventory, implementing robust backup and recovery systems, adjusting pricing and incentives, bringing or keeping production in-house, and using Continuous Replenishment Programs (CRP), Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and other supply-chain initiatives.
Abstract: Natural disasters, labor disputes, terrorism and more mundane risks can seriously disrupt or delay the flow of material, information and cash through an organization's supply chain The authors assert that how well a company fares against such threats will depend on its level of preparedness, and the type of disruption Each supply-chain risk to forecasts, information systems, intellectual property, procurement, inventory and capacity has its own drivers and effective mitigation strategies To avoid lost sales, increased costs or both, managers need to tailor proven risk-reduction strategies to their organizations Managing supply-chain risk is difficult, however Dell, Toyota, Motorola and other leading manufacturers excel at identifying and neutralizing supply-chain risks through a delicate balancing act: keeping inventory, capacity and related elements at appropriate levels across the entire supply chain in a rapidly changing environment Organizations can prepare for or avoid delays by "smart sizing" their capacity and inventory The manager serves as a kind of financial portfolio manager, seeking to achieve the highest achievable profits (reward) for varying levels of supply-chain risk The authors recommend a powerful "what if?" team exercise called "stress testing" to identify potentially weak links in the supply chain Armed with this shared understanding, companies can then select the best mitigation strategy: holding "reserves," pooling inventory, using redundant suppliers, balancing capacity and inventory, implementing robust backup and recovery systems, adjusting pricing and incentives, bringing or keeping production in-house, and using Continuous Replenishment Programs (CRP), Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) and other supply-chain initiatives

1,737 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe how resilient companies build flexibility into each of five essential supply chain elements: the supplier, conversion process, distribution channels, control systems and underlying corporate culture.
Abstract: Many companies leave risk management and business continuity to security professionals, business continuity planners or insurance professionals. However, the authors argue, building a resilient enterprise should be a strategic initiative that changes the way a company operates and increases its competitiveness. Reducing vulnerability means both reducing the likelihood of a disruption and increasing resilience. Resilience, in turn, can be achieved by either creating redundancy or increasing flexibility. Redundancy is the familiar concept of keeping some resources in reserve to be used in case of a disruption. The most common forms of redundancy are safety stock, the deliberate use of multiple suppliers even when the secondary suppliers have higher costs, and deliberately low capacity utilization rates. Although necessary to some degree, redundancy represents pure cost with no return except in the eventuality of disruption. The authors contend that significantly more leverage, not to mention operational advantages, can be achieved by making supply chains flexible. Flexibility requires building in organic capabilities that can sense threats and respond to them quickly. Drawing on ongoing research at the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics involving detailed studies of dozens of cases of corporate disruption and response, the authors describe how resilient companies build flexibility into each of five essential supply chain elements: the supplier, conversion process, distribution channels, control systems and underlying corporate culture. Case examples of Land Rover, Aisin Seiki Co. (a supplier to Toyota), United Parcel Service, Dell, Baxter International, DHL and Nokia, among others, are offered to illustrate how building flexibility in these supply chain elements not only bolsters the resilience of an organization but also creates a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

1,427 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a set of tools that can be used to help organizations rethink the signals they are sending to customers in order to improve their customers' experience and to orchestrate the sum total of all the clues.
Abstract: Offering products or services alone is no longer enough: Organizations must provide their customers with satisfactory experiences. Competing on this dimension means orchestrating all the clues "that people detect in the buying process." Customers always have an experience ? good, bad or indifferent ? whenever they purchase a product or service from a company. The quality of the experience lies in how effectively the company manages it, in all its facets and from beginning to end. Organizations that simply tweak design elements or focus on improving isolated pockets of the customer experience ? by providing a quick hit of entertainment, for example ? will be disappointed in the results. An organization's first step toward managing the total customer experience is recognizing what the authors call clues: the signals or messages given off by everything that touches on the buying process. Clues can include the product itself (does it work as advertised?), the layout of a retail outlet (are the signs easy to follow?), the tone of voice of the salesperson (did he really mean it when he said, "Have a nice day"?), and so on. Organizations that orchestrate the sum total of all the clues can create an optimal experience for their patrons. Addressing the clues that speak to emotions is especially important. Emotional bonds between companies and customers are difficult for competitors to sever. The internalized meaning and value that the clues assume can create a deep-seated preference for a particular experience ? and thus for one company's product or service over another's. The authors explain the tools that are available to help organizations rethink the signals they are sending to customers. They also show how the tools work in practice by presenting two case studies in which organizations dramatically improved their customers' experiences.

1,027 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: Fareena Sultan and William J. Qualls as discussed by the authors argue that consumers must make these and many other online research and purchasingdecisions almost solely on the basis oftrust, and that most Web sites provide con-sumers with scanty information on which to base their trust.
Abstract: Professor Glen L. Urbancodirects the Center foreBusiness@MIT, SloanSchool of Management.Fareena Sultan is associateprofessor of marketing,College of BusinessAdministration. NortheasternUniversity, Boston. ProfessorWilliam J. aualls directs theIndustrial DistributionManagement Program at theUniversity of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Contact theauthors at: glurban@mit.edu,fsultan@cba.neu.edu andwqualls@uiuc.edu.When consumers visit a retail Web site,how do they know that the informationdescribing the products or services theywant to buy is accurate and unbiased?When they order and pay for a productonline, how do they know that theirfinancial records will be protected, thatthe product will be delivered on time, orthat they can return something that isdamaged or fails to meet their expecta-tions? The answer is they often don't know.Consumers must make these and manyother online research and purchasingdecisions almost solely on the basis oftrust. Yet most Web sites provide con-sumers with scanty information on whichto base their trust. Some Web retailers arestart-ups with little or no track record offulfillment. Some may be on shaky finan-cial footing and unable to meet their ser-vice and delivery guarantees. Some secretlycollect data about each customer's Webactivity and then sell this information tothird-party marketing firms. Even well-regarded companies like AOL have suf-fered embarrassing security breaches,while auction sites such as eBay havebeen scrutinized for their failure to effec-tively police self-serving "customerreviews" posted by the sellers and theirfriends. It's no exaggeration to say that asconsumers become more sophisticatedabout the Internet, Web-site trust is going

868 citations

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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers from the Journal in previous years
YearPapers
20216
202019
201910
201811
201711
201675