Technology & Operations Management

Technology & Operations Management

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About the Unit

As the world of operations has changed, so have interests and priorities within the Unit. Historically, the TOM Unit focused on manufacturing and the development of physical products. Over the past several years, we have expanded our research, course development, and course offerings to encompass new issues in information technology, supply chains, and service industries.

The field of TOM is concerned with the design, management, and improvement of operating systems and processes. As we seek to understand the challenges confronting firms competing in today's demanding environment, the focus of our work has broadened to include the multiple activities comprising a firm's "operating core":

  • the multi-function, multi-firm system that includes basic research, design, engineering, product and process development and production of goods and services within individual operating units;
  • the networks of information and material flows that tie operating units together and the systems that support these networks;
  • the distribution and delivery of goods and services to customers.

Recent Publications

Ein Booster für die Pharmabranche: Gerade erst hat die mRNATechnologie geholfen, Impfstoffe gegen Covid-19 zu entwickeln. Nun könnte sie wie Apples iOS die Grundlage für neue Innovationsplattformen bieten.

By: Ariel Dora Stern, Timo Minssen, W. Nicholson Price, II and Christoph Grimpe
  • Article |
  • Harvard Business Manager
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Mastering Innovation's Toughest Trade-Offs

By: Christopher B. Bingham and Rory M. McDonald
  • Article |
  • MIT Sloan Management Review
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Zalando: Becoming the Starting Point for Fashion

By: Antonio Moreno, Leela Nageswaran, Emilie Billaud and Federica Gabrieli
  • June 2022 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
Born in 2008 as a small startup selling flip flops, by mid-2021 Zalando had turned into an online fashion company with an assortment of more than 4,500 international brands, 45 million active customers, and a presence in 23 European markets. An essential component in the company's ambition to become Europe’s “starting point for fashion” was the ongoing transition from an online retailer to a platform business. The management team grappled with numerous strategic decisions. How could Zalando accelerate its transformation? Which new markets and novel customer propositions should the company invest into? And how should it balance the needs of consumers and partners?
Keywords: Transition; Customer Value and Value Chain; Digital Platforms; Distribution; Order Taking and Fulfillment; Infrastructure; Logistics; Service Operations; Strategy; Business Strategy; Fashion Industry; Apparel and Accessories Industry; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; Distribution Industry; Retail Industry; Service Industry; Shipping Industry; Technology Industry; Europe
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Disrupting Defense at Anduril Industries

By: Rory McDonald, Timothy Buehn, Aditi Ghai and James Heffelfinger
  • June 2022 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
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Causal Inference

By: Iavor Bojinov, Michael Parzen and Paul J. Hamilton
  • June 2022 |
  • Module Note |
  • Faculty Research
This note provides an overview of causal inference for an introductory data science course. First, the note discusses observational studies and confounding variables. Next the note describes how randomized experiments can be used to account for the effect of confounding variables. Then it walks through the steps to desiging an experiment, including a discussion of how to calculate the power of a test.
Keywords: Causal Inference; Causality; Experiment; Experimental Design
Related

The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry in the Accommodation Market: The Case of Airbnb and the Accommodation Industry

By: Chiara Farronato and Andrey Fradkin
  • June 2022 |
  • Article |
  • American Economic Review
We study the effects of enabling peer supply through Airbnb in the accommodation industry. We present a model of competition between flexible and dedicated sellers—peer hosts and hotels—who provide differentiated products. We estimate this model using data from major U.S. cities and quantify the welfare effects of Airbnb on travelers, hosts, and hotels. The welfare gains are concentrated in locations (New York) and times (New Year's Eve) when hotels are capacity constrained. This occurs because peer hosts are responsive to market conditions, expand supply as hotels fill up, and keep hotel prices down as a result.
Keywords: Peer To Peer; Airbnb; Digital Platforms; Market Entry and Exit; Competition; Accommodations Industry
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Worten Portugal: Becoming a Digital Marketplace

By: Antonio Moreno, Pedro Amorim and Tonia Labruyere
  • June 2022 |
  • Case |
  • Faculty Research
With Amazon's entry into Portugal, Miguel Mota Freitas, CEO of Portuguese electronics chain Worten, is reflecting on their strategy of building a competitive marketplace.
Keywords: Digital Transformation; Digital Strategy; Digital Platforms; Brands and Branding; E-commerce; Logistics; Service Delivery; Supply Chain; Competitive Strategy; Diversification; Consumer Products Industry; Electronics Industry; Retail Industry; Portugal; Spain
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Conservatism Gets Funded? A Field Experiment on the Role of Negative Information in Novel Project Evaluation

By: Jacqueline N. Lane, Misha Teplitskiy, Gary Gray, Hardeep Ranu, Michael Menietti, Eva C. Guinan and Karim R. Lakhani
  • June 2022 |
  • Article |
  • Management Science
The evaluation and selection of novel projects lies at the heart of scientific and technological innovation, and yet there are persistent concerns about bias, such as conservatism. This paper investigates the role that the format of evaluation, specifically information sharing among expert evaluators, plays in generating conservative decisions. We executed two field experiments in two separate grant-funding opportunities at a leading research university, mobilizing 369 evaluators from seven universities to evaluate 97 projects, resulting in 761 proposal-evaluation pairs and more than $250,000 in awards. We exogenously varied the relative valence (positive and negative) of others’ scores and measured how exposures to higher and lower scores affect the focal evaluator’s propensity to change their initial score. We found causal evidence of a negativity bias, where evaluators lower their scores by more points after seeing scores more critical than their own rather than raise them after seeing more favorable scores. Qualitative coding of the evaluators’ justifications for score changes reveals that exposures to lower scores were associated with greater attention to uncovering weaknesses, whereas exposures to neutral or higher scores were associated with increased emphasis on nonevaluation criteria, such as confidence in one’s judgment. The greater power of negative information suggests that information sharing among expert evaluators can lead to more conservative allocation decisions that favor protecting against failure rather than maximizing success.
Keywords: Project Evaluation; Innovation; Knowledge Frontier; Information Sharing; Negativity Bias; Projects; Innovation and Invention; Information; Knowledge Sharing
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