Winter 1999, Vol. 40, No. 2

 

Several years ago, a group of executives and faculty met at the Sloan School to discuss the issues and challenges they faced. All felt that the existing management frameworks did not address the business environment in which they were working. From that dialogue, called the Delta Project, and further research, Arnoldo Hax and Dean Wilde II developed the Delta model, a new approach that responds to complexity, uncertainty, and change. Their article captures their reflections and research at this point in time and will be further expanded in a forthcoming book. It addresses a CEO's two tasks, decision making and implementation, by delineating three choices for positioning a firm and by explaining the adaptive processes, feedback, and metrics needed for executing strategy.

Should you hire a chief knowledge officer? What does a CKO do? What are the characteristics of a good CKO? Or is knowledge management just a trend that will soon die? Michael Earl and Ian Scott present the findings of their survey of twenty CKOs. We think you may find some of the results quite surprising.

Approaches to the implementation of advanced software technologies frequently place little emphasis on the results achieved at successive stages. Robert Fichman and Scott Moses describe a strategy for implementation in which each short cycle delivers a measurable business benefit — results-driven incrementalism (RDI). Their study of Herman Miller, Inc.'s supply chain planning and scheduling software provides a detailed picture of RDI and the factors critical to its success.

Information technology, consumer preferences, and a growing number of brands and their extensions have all affected the value of brands and how they are managed. Pierre Berthon, James Hulbert, and Leyland Pitt discuss the forces driving change in brand management and predict several routes for brands: a status quo approach, a focus on the customer, or a complete revolution that is enabled by IT. In the end, the authors suggest that managers should focus on the functions of brands rather than the brands themselves.

An article published in SMR's Spring 1995 issue, "The Second Toyota Paradox: How Delaying Decisions Can Make Better Cars Faster" (reprint 3634), generated much interest and skepticism, according to the authors. Here, Durward Sobek II, Allen Ward, and Jeffrey Liker report on their expanded research into the "paradox" and substantiate some of their earlier findings. They now identify three principles of set-based concurrent engineering and contrast Toyota's methods with typical U.S. firms' approaches to product design and development.

As production systems become more technically complex, managers need in-depth understanding of the processes involved in order to effectively improve factory operations. Anil Khurana summarizes the results of a detailed three-year study of the color picture tube industry. Among his conclusions — that complexity requires extensive knowledge and greater capability on the part of engineers and greater use and sharing of information between process steps.

In an examination of the semiconductor industry, Allan Afuah discusses the strategies of three companies — Intel, Micron Technology, and Texas Instruments — to show how each responded to a difficult environment. A combination of the strategies enabled them to remain competitive and bring about a resurgence in the U.S. industry.

— Jane Gebhart

 

 

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