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  • Presentation 
    The Power of Competition: How to Focus the World's Brains on your Innovation Challenges

    The Power of Competition: How to Focus the World's Brains on your Innovation Challenges

    This video was recorded at MIT World Series: Back to the Classroom 2009. Cooperation may be making us "a little bit too nice" when it comes to innovation, suggests Fiona Murray. She believes there's nothing like competition for injecting energy into the process of solving key innovation problems, whether in business or society. Murray is convinced competition make ventures "more effective, more global, more inclusive and more democratic," all important dimensions for business in a flattening world. She describes the rapidly expanding R&D expenditures of India and China, including the vast numbers of Ph.D.s these nations are producing in science and engineering. The corporate sector has found building global R&D organizations and collaborations difficult. In this challenging environment, where the advantage goes to those firms snagging the best scientists, Murray believes "prizes are complementary mechanisms" for attracting global talent. Just like historic rivalries among great artists (Nb., Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese), or the race to discover the structure of DNA, "fierce competition" can yield "dramatic productivity" and innovation, especially when the right rewards are at stake. Murray cites the 18th century competition to invent a mechanism for determining a ship's longitude, which offered a 20 thousand-pound prize. She jumps to the present, with the X Prize Foundation and its various competitions to solve engineering challenges and societal problems, such as the three-person reusable spaceship, and a 100-mpg car -- each with a $10 million prize purse. But it's not just the money. Recent studies show that prizes prove alluring when they focus efforts and resources on a problem that people are already studying, offering fame and "putting fun back into innovation." The fascination skews rational calculations, with competitors often spending well beyond the amount offered to the winner. Corporations should adopt the prize mechanism, believes Murray, to help generate new ideas (such as new applications for Google's phone); or to help solve very specific problems. Campus competitions are up markedly, she notes, which might be a distraction for students at places like MIT. Start small and inside the organization first, creating a shared bulletin board and offering small prizes, she advises, which will "generate energy." Then take competition beyond the company. And don't forget, "the work must be fun" in order to "get a richer set of people to participate.

    Subjects:
    Management
    Keywords:
    Competition
    Resource Type:
    Presentation
     
    OER
  • MOOC 
    Qualitative Research Methods: Conversational Interviewing

    Qualitative Research Methods: Conversational Interviewing

    This short course is adapted from a semester length graduate level coursetaught at MIT covering Qualitative Research Methods. This online course will focus specifically on teaching how to prepare for and conduct a conversational interview for data gathering purposes. We will also discuss the nature of qualitative research as a methodology, how it compares and differs from other forms of research, and how qualitative and quantitative research complement each other in a research project. This isthe first in a multi-part series which will be released over the coming year, which will focus on Conversational Interviewing, Data Analysis, and Constructing Theory. You might have encountered other forms of interview techniques in your studies and training. The form that we are teaching is the preferred method of Professor Silbey's, one that she has used extensively throughout her career. The goal is to construct an interview protocol such that you will be able to guide your interviewee through topics of interest to your study without bringing them up explicitly, in order to explore experiences and accounts without pointing respondents in particular directions. Not sure what an interview protocol is? No problem! You will by the end of the course.

    Subjects:
    Statistics and Research Methods
    Keywords:
    Conversation analysis Qualitative research -- Methodology Social sciences -- Research -- Methodology Interviewing
    Resource Type:
    MOOC
     
  • Courseware 
    Principles of Microeconomics

    Principles of Microeconomics

    Principles of Microeconomics is an introductory undergraduate course that teaches the fundamentals of microeconomics. This course introduces microeconomic concepts and analysis, supply and demand analysis, theories of the firm and individual behavior, competition and monopoly, and welfare economics. Students will also be introduced to the use of microeconomic applications to address problems in current economic policy throughout the semester. This course is a core subject in MIT's undergraduate Energy Studies Minor. This Institute-wide program complements the deep expertise obtained in any major with a broad understanding of the interlinked realms of science, technology, and social sciences as they relate to energy and associated environmental challenges.

    Subjects:
    Economics
    Keywords:
    Microeconomics
    Resource Type:
    Courseware
     
  • Courseware 
    Principles of Macroeconomics

    Principles of Macroeconomics

    This course provides an overview of macroeconomic issues: the determination of output, employment, unemployment, interest rates, and inflation. Monetary and fiscal policies are discussed. Important policy debates such as, the sub-prime crisis, social security, the public debt, and international economic issues are critically explored. The course introduces basic models of macroeconomics and illustrates principles with the experience of the U.S. and foreign economies.

    Subjects:
    Economics
    Keywords:
    Macroeconomics
    Resource Type:
    Courseware
     
  • Courseware 
    Political Economy I

    Political Economy I

    Political Economy I explores the major social science paradigms for analyzing relations among state, economy, and society. Through readings, lectures and discussion of original texts in political liberalism and individualism, neo-classical economics, Marxism, sociological and cultural theories, and neo-institutionalism, the seminar examines the fundamental assumptions on which our understanding of the social world and our research are based.

    Subjects:
    Economics and Political Science
    Keywords:
    Economics Political science
    Resource Type:
    Courseware
     
  • Courseware 
    Microeconomic Theory and Public Policy

    Microeconomic Theory and Public Policy

    This course applies microeconomic theory to analysis of public policy. It builds from the microeconomic model of consumer behavior and extends to operation of single and multiple markets and analysis of why markets sometimes fail. We will study empirical examples to evaluate theory, focusing on the casual effects of policy interventions on economic outcomes. Topics include minimum wages and employment, food stamps and consumer welfare, economics of risk and safety regulation, the value of education, and gains from international trade.

    Subjects:
    Economics and Political Science
    Keywords:
    Microeconomics Policy sciences Political planning
    Resource Type:
    Courseware
     
  • Courseware 
    Microeconomic Theory IV

    Microeconomic Theory IV

    The topic of the class is information and contract theory. The purpose is to give an introduction to some of the main subjects in this field: decision making under uncertainty, risk sharing, moral hazard, adverse selection, mechanism design, and incomplete contracting.

    Subjects:
    Economics
    Keywords:
    Risk assessment Decision making Contracts Microeconomics
    Resource Type:
    Courseware
     
  • Courseware 
    MBA Study Tour: Innovation Islands - How New Zealand Became a Global Player in the Race to Innovate

    MBA Study Tour: Innovation Islands - How New Zealand Became a Global Player in the Race to Innovate

    This International Study Tour went to New Zealand during the first half of the 2016 Spring semester and travel during the Sloan Innovation Period. International Study Tours provide students with a course credit opportunity to identify and address issues about which they feel particularly passionate. After classroom sessions featuring faculty, industry, and cultural experts, students embark on site visits to their destination of choice, meeting with industry and government leaders, as well as local alumni. Through these visits, students are able to build on the preparatory course work with an in-depth exploration of industries, companies, and countries they have visited.

    Subjects:
    Management
    Keywords:
    Management Technological innovations New zeal
    Resource Type:
    Courseware
     
  • Courseware 
    Introduction to Operations Management

    Introduction to Operations Management

    This course provides students with concepts, techniques and tools to design, analyze, and improve core operational capabilities, and apply them to a broad range of application domains and industries. It emphasizes the effect of uncertainty in decision-making, as well as the interplay between high-level financial objectives and operational capabilities. Topics covered include production control, risk pooling, quality management, process design, and revenue management. Also included are case studies, guest lectures, and simulation games which demonstrate central concepts.

    Subjects:
    Logistics
    Keywords:
    Production management
    Resource Type:
    Courseware
     
  • Courseware 
    Introduction to Manufacturing Systems

    Introduction to Manufacturing Systems

    This course provides ways to analyze manufacturing systems in terms of material flow and storage, information flow, capacities, and times and durations of events. Fundamental topics include probability, inventory and queuing models, optimization, and linear and dynamic systems. Factory planning and scheduling topics include flow planning, bottleneck characterization, buffer and batch-size analysis, and dynamic behavior of production systems.

    Subjects:
    Logistics and Industrial and Systems Engineering
    Keywords:
    Manufacturing processes Production planning Production engineering
    Resource Type:
    Courseware