Alan D. MacCormack
There are 11 articles for this faculty member.
Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis
| Authors: | Alan D. MacCormack, John Rusnak, and Carliss Y. Baldwin |
|---|---|
| Published: | March 27, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | March 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Products are often said to "mirror" the architectures of the organization from which they come. Is there really a link between a product's architecture and the characteristics of the organization behind it? The coauthors of this working paper chose to analyze software products because of a unique opportunity to examine two different organizational modes for development, comparing open-source with proprietary "closed-source" software. The results have important implications for development organizations given the recent trend toward "open" approaches to innovation and the increased use of partnering in research and development projects.
The Impact of Component Modularity on Design Evolution: Evidence from the Software Industry
| Authors: | Alan MacCormack, John Rusnak, and Carliss Y. Baldwin |
|---|---|
| Published: | January 24, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
What factors should influence the design of a complex system? And what is the impact of choices on both product and organizational performance? These issues are of particular importance in the field of software given how software is developed: Rarely do software projects start from scratch. The authors analyzed the evolution of a commercial software product from first release to its current design, looking specifically at 6 major versions released at varying periods over a 15-year period. These results have important implications for managers, highlighting the impact of design decisions made today on both the evolution and the maintainability of a design in subsequent years.
Published in 2007
Best Practices of Global Innovators
| Q&A with: | Alan D. MacCormack |
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| Published: | November 26, 2007 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Corporate R&D labs used to be the key for companies to create competitive advantage. But in the 21st century, innovation is moving out of the lab and across the globe. That's why Harvard Business School professor Alan MacCormack and his research collaborators believe that a real source of competitive advantage is skill in managing innovation partnerships.
Innovation through Global Collaboration: A New Source of Competitive Advantage
| Authors: | Alan MacCormack, Theodore Forbath, Peter Brooks, and Patrick Kalaher |
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| Published: | August 31, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | July 2007, revised August 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Collaboration is becoming a new and important source of competitive advantage. No longer is the creation and pursuit of new ideas the bastion of large, central R&D departments within vertically integrated organizations. Instead, innovations are increasingly brought to the market by networks of firms, selected according to their comparative advantages, and operating in a coordinated manner. This paper reports on a study of the strategies and practices used by firms that achieve greater success in terms of business value in their collaborative innovation efforts.
Evolution Analysis of Large-Scale Software Systems Using Design Structure Matrices and Design Rule Theory
| Authors: | Matthew J. LaMantia, Yuanfang Cai, Alan D. MacCormack, and John Rusnak |
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| Published: | June 14, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | April 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Designers have long recognized the value of modularity. But because design principles are informal, successful application depends on the designers' intuition and experience. Intuition and experience, however, do not prevent a company such as Microsoft from constantly grappling with unanticipated challenges and delays in bringing software to market. Clearly, designers need a formal theory and models of modularity and software evolution that capture the essence of important but informal design principles and offer ways to describe, predict, and resolve issues. This paper evaluates the applicability of model and theory to real-world, large-scale software designs by studying the evolution of two complex software platforms through the lens of design structure matrices (DSMs) and the design rule theory advanced by Kim Clark and Carliss Baldwin.
Published in 2005
The World in Your Palm?
| Published: | February 14, 2005 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Cell phones are cameras, too. Music players are photo albums, too. PDAs browse the Internet, too. A Cyberposium panel looks at the limits of convergence.
Published in 2004
Exploring the Structure of Complex Software Designs: An Empirical Study of Open Source and Proprietary Code
| Authors: | Alan D. MacCormack, John Rusnak, and Carliss Y. Baldwin |
|---|---|
| Published: | July 5, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2004, revised March 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
How does a product's design mirror the organization that develops it, and how does such a dynamic occur? To track the evolution of one design over time, this exploratory study compared software designs developed via different modes of organization-open source versus proprietary development. As it turned out, the architecture of the product developed by a highly distributed team of developers (Linux) was more modular than another product of similar size developed by a co-located team of developers (Mozilla). The study helped reveal potential performance tradeoffs from architectures with different characteristics.
Mission to Mars: It Really Is Rocket Science
| Q&A with: | Alan D. MacCormack |
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| Published: | March 1, 2004 |
| Feature: | Lessons from the Classroom |
Do the successful Mars missions mean NASA again has the right stuff? Professor Alan MacCormack dissects the space agency’s "Faster, Better, Cheaper" program.
Published in 2003
Education, Technology, and Business: What’s the Catch?
| Published: | March 10, 2003 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
In a panel discussion on current and future business opportunities in the American education market, four entrepreneurs hashed out the pros and cons of entering this tricky sector. There are opportunities—for the daring and undaunted. HBS professor Alan MacCormack moderated this panel at the Conference on Social Enterprise held recently at Harvard Business School.
Published in 2002
The Secret of How Microsoft Stays on Top
| Q&A with: | Marco Iansiti and Alan D. MacCormack |
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| Published: | December 2, 2002 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Critics say Microsoft's incredible two-decade run at the top of the computer industry has less to do with innovation than it does with bully tactics. But new research from Harvard Business School professors Marco Iansiti and Alan MacCormack suggest a different reason: the company's ability to spot technological trends and exploit key software technologies.
Published in 2001
Why Evolutionary Software Development Works
| Published: | April 30, 2001 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
What is the best way to develop software? HBS professor Alan MacCormack discusses recent research proving the theory that the best approach is evolutionary. In this article from MIT Sloan Management Review, MacCormack and colleagues Marco Iansiti and Roberto Verganti uncover four practices that lead to successful Internet software development.
