Business Commons^™

On Empirical Validation Of Compactness Measures For Electoral Redistricting And Its Significance For Application Of Models In The Social Science, Christine Chou, Steven O. Kimbrough, Frederic H. Murphy, John Sullivan-Fedock, C. Jason Woodard

C. Jason Woodard

Use of optimization models in science and policy applications is often problematic because the best available models are very inaccurate representations of the originating problems. Such is the case with electoral districting models, for which there exist no generally accepted measures of compactness, in spite of many proposals and much analytical study. This article reports on an experimental investigation of subjective judgments of compactness for electoral districts. The experiment draws on a unique database of 116 distinct, legally valid districting plans for the Philadelphia City Council, discovered with evolutionary computation. Subjects in the experiment displayed, in the aggregate, remarkable agreement …

Green Freight Asia (C): The Road Ahead, Jason Woodard, Christopher Dula

C. Jason Woodard

Green Freight Asia is a three-part case series featured in the 2014 APEX Business-IT Global Case Challenge. The case is best used for group projects or workshop assignments concerning business-IT related topics. In this case, students take on the role of a small firm pitching to collaborate with GFA on an IT solution partnership to support GFA’s programme for the adoption of green freight practices in the Asia Pacific region. The case could also be adapted for classroom facilitation with adequate preparation.

Green Freight Asia (C): The Road Ahead is the third and final part of the case series. It …

Green Freight Asia (A): Driving The Adoption Of Sustainable Supply Chain Practices, Jason Woodard, Christopher Dula

C. Jason Woodard

Green Freight Asia is a three-part case series featured in the 2014 APEX Business-IT Global Case Challenge. The case is best used for group projects or workshop assignments concerning business-IT related topics. In this case, students take on the role of a small firm pitching to collaborate with GFA on an IT solution partnership to support GFA’s programme for the adoption of green freight practices in the Asia Pacific region. The case could also be adapted for classroom facilitation with adequate preparation. The first part, Green Freight Asia (A): Driving the Adoption of Sustainable Supply Chain Practices, chronicles the formation …

Green Freight Asia (B): Navigating Toward A Successful Partnership, Jason Woodard, Christopher Dula

C. Jason Woodard

Green Freight Asia is a three-part case series featured in the 2014 APEX Business-IT Global Case Challenge. The case is best used for group projects or workshop assignments concerning business-IT related topics. In this case, students take on the role of a small firm pitching to collaborate with GFA on an IT solution partnership to support GFA’s programme for the adoption of green freight practices in the Asia Pacific region. The case could also be adapted for classroom facilitation with adequate preparation. The second part, Green Freight Asia (B): Navigating Toward A Successful Partnership, explores how a collaborative partnership between …

Modeling The Evolution Of Generativity And The Emergence Of Digital Ecosystems, C. Jason Woodard, Eric K. Clemons

C. Jason Woodard

Recent literature on sociotechnical systems has employed the concept of generativity to explain the remarkable capacity for digital artifacts to support decentralized innovation and the emergence of rich business ecosystems. In this paper, we propose agent-based computational modeling as a tool for studying the evolution of generativity, and offer a set of building blocks for constructing agent-based models in which generativity evolves. We describe a series of models that we have created using these building blocks, and summarize the results of our computational experiments to date. We find in several different settings that key features of generative systems can themselves …

Sentosa (B): Creating A Platform For Integrated Customer Engagement, Jason Woodard, Kevin Sproule

C. Jason Woodard

This case is the second part of a three-part series on the Sentosa Leisure Group based in Singapore. The three cases focus on: Case (A) – Marketing / Analytics Case (B) – IT solution design Case (C) – Long-term strategy Sentosa (B): After helping Sentosa define their business model in the A case, the focus shifts to developing an integrated information technology system to enable business growth while working with existing the constraints of existing infrastructure. The goal is to have an IT platform that would provide a total customer experience ranging from tickets to personalised offers. The second case …

Architectural Control And Value Migration In Layered Ecosystems: The Case Of Open-Source Cloud Management Platforms, Richard Tee, C. Jason Woodard

C. Jason Woodard

Our paper focuses on strategic decision making in layered business ecosystems, highlighting the role of cross-layer interactions in shaping choices about product design and platform governance. Based on evidence from the cloud computing ecosystem, we analyze how concerns about architectural control and expectations regarding future value migration influence the design of product interfaces and the degree of openness to external contributions. We draw on qualitative longitudinal data to trace the development of two open-source platforms for managing cloud-based computing resources. We focus in particular on the emergence of a layered "stack" in which these platforms must compete with both vertically …

Sentosa (A): Asia’S Favourite Playground, Jason Woodard, Kevin Sproule

C. Jason Woodard

This case is the first part of a three-part series on the Sentosa Leisure Group based in Singapore. The three cases focus on: Case (A) – Marketing / Analytics Case (B) – IT solution design Case (C) – Long-term strategy Sentosa (A): This case starts as Esther Wong, deputy director of solutions technology is tasked with boosting local attendance to Sentosa, the resort island near the heart of Singapore. The island had done well in attracting foreign visitors, and management saw the next challenge to be attracting locals to the island, who often saw it as expensive and difficult to …

Sentosa (C): Advancing Sentosa’S Strategy Through Integrated Customer Engagement, Jason Woodard, Kevin Sproule

C. Jason Woodard

This case is the third part of a three-part series on the Sentosa Leisure Group based in Singapore. The three cases focus on: Case (A) – Marketing / Analytics Case (B) – IT solution design Case (C) – Long-term strategy Sentosa (C): After successfully answering the ‘big’ questions like how to drive Sentosa’s core revenue and designing a new IT platform, students are asked to tie it all together. How can their learning be used to chart a strategy for the Sentosa Leisure Group? How can they realise the aggressive revenue and profit goals set forward by the board? In …

Circos: Tapping Into Social Media (A), Kevin W. Sproule, C. Jason Woodard

C. Jason Woodard

Social media was a topic that had entered into the daily vocabulary of teenagers and business executives alike. With this surge in popularity and influence worldwide the open question was what this new way of interacting would mean for businesses and whether or not social media could really be a driver of company profitability or just a nice way to share photos with friends? Circos, a Singapore-based company, developed a business that it hoped would help to answer those questions. By using a proprietary sentiment analysis tool, Circos had mined the vast world of online reviews available on various social …

Circos: Tapping Into Social Media (B), Kevin W. Sproule, C. Jason Woodard

C. Jason Woodard

After a successful presentation in the (A) case, Frederic Langlois, Circos.com general manager in Singapore, headed back to the company headquarters. He brought back not only the possibility of a new client, but also a specific request. The Raffles Hotel had asked him to provide new functionality beyond the existing social media analytics dashboard Circos had become known for. The Raffles Hotel manager had asked, “It would be great to have a simple and meaningful analysis of what people are saying about our property online. What would be really great, though, would be to know who is saying what. I …

Strategyproof Mechanisms For Ad Hoc Network Formation, C. Jason Woodard, David C. Parkes

C. Jason Woodard

Agents in a peer-to-peer system typically have incentives to influence its network structure, either to reduce their costs or increase their ability to capture value. The problem is compounded when agents can join and leave the system dynamically. This paper proposes three economic mechanisms that offset the incentives for strategic behavior and facilitate the formation of networks with desirable global properties.

Architectural Dualities In Complex Systems: Components, Interfaces, Technologies And Organizations, C. Jason Woodard, Joel West

C. Jason Woodard

Research on technological innovation and product development has long recognized the importance of product architecture, and many scholars have explored its relationship to the organizational structure of the product development process. Product architecture, in turn, has long encompassed both the allocation of functionality to components and the pattern of linkages between them. In this paper, we forge new connections among these established ideas by examining them as two pairs of dual relationships. First, we draw attention to the duality between components and interfaces. While innovation and product development researchers have historically emphasized the partitioning of products and systems into components, …

Platform Competition In Digital Systems: Architectural Control And Value Migration, C. Jason Woodard

C. Jason Woodard

Digital systems give rise to complex layered architectures in which products at one layer serve as platforms for applications and services in adjacent layers. Platform owners face a difficult balancing act. On one hand, they need to make their platforms attractive to potential complementors by mitigating the threat of architectural lock-in. On the other hand, platform owners must be careful not to give away too much too soon, or risk being unable to recoup their own investments. This paper presents an agent-based model that explores this tension at both the firm and industry levels. Computational experiments show that boundedly rational …

Competition In Modular Clusters, Carliss Y. Baldwin, C. Jason Woodard

C. Jason Woodard

The last twenty years have witnessed the rise of disaggregated “clusters,” “networks,” or “ecosystems” of firms. In these clusters the activities of R&D, product design, production, distribution, and system integration may be split up among hundreds or even thousands of firms. Different firms will design and produce the different components of a complex artifact (like the processor, peripherals, and software of a computer system), and different firms will specialize in different stages of a complex production process. This paper considers the pricing behavior and profitability of these so-called modular clusters. In particular, we investigate a possibility hinted at in prior …

Architectural Control Points, C. Jason Woodard

C. Jason Woodard

System designers and technology strategists have long recognized the concept of an architectural control point as a way to identify parts of a system that have particular strategic importance. Despite the vast body of work on system architecture in the engineering design literature, however, few authors have attempted to define architectural control points or study them systematically. Moreover, some industry participants have questioned whether architectural control is still a valuable or achievable goal in an era of increasingly open standards. This paper offers tentative definitions of architectural control, architectural control points, and architectural strategy. In a longer version of the …

Modeling Product Development As A System Design Game, C. Jason Woodard

C. Jason Woodard

A system design game is a model of a situation in which agents’ actions determine the structure of a system, which in turn affects the system’s value and the share of value that each agent may capture through bargaining or market competition. This paper describes a class of games in which agents design interdependent products, for example software programs, which may be complements or substitutes for each other. These relationships are epresented by an object called a design structure network (DSN). Depending on the modeler’s choice of allocation rules, agents may benefit from owning critical nodes in the DSN, corresponding …

Modeling Architectural Strategy Using Design Structure Networks, C. Jason Woodard

C. Jason Woodard

System architects face the formidable task of purposefully shaping an evolving space of complex designs. Their task s further complicated when they lack full control of the design process, and therefore must anticipate the behavior of other stakeholders, including the designers of component products and competing systems. This paper presents a conceptual tool called a design structure network (DSN) to help architects and design scientists reason effectively about these situations. A DSN is a graphical representation of a system’s design space. DSNs improve on existing representation schemes by providing a compact and intuitive way to express design options—the ability to …