A common approach to innovation, parallel search, is to identify a large number of opportunities and then to select a subset for further development, with just a few coming to fruition. One potential weakness with parallel search is that it permits repetition. The same, or a similar, idea might...

Product variety in many industries has increased steadily throughout this century. Component sharing-using the same version of a component across multiple products-is increasingly viewed by companies as a way to offer high variety in the marketplace while retaining low variety in their...

Substituting bicycling for driving is frequently promoted as a means of reducing energy consumption and the associated degradation of the environment. This paper estimates the magnitude of this effect. The analysis takes account of the first-order effects due to the dramatically lower energy...

Selection processes are everywhere in business and society: new product development, college admissions, hiring, and even academic journal submissions. Information on candidates is typically combined in a subjective or holistic manner, making assessment of the quality of the process challenging....

Component sharing - using the same version of a component across multiple products - is an approach adopted by many assembled product manufacturers to achieve high final product variety with lower component variety and cost. This paper presents a methodology for determining which versions of a...

User design offers tantalizing potential benefits to manufacturers and consumers, including a closer match of products to user preferences, which should result in a higher willingness to pay for goods and services. There are two fundamental approaches that can be taken to user design: systems...

This dissertation is based on three essays that study operational strategies to manage environmental uncertainty. In essay 1, we examine the costs and benefits of different supply chain structures in managing multi-product demand uncertainty. In particular we analyze the strategic performance of...