Carliss Y. Baldwin
There are 12 articles for this faculty member.
Measuring and Understanding Hierarchy as an Architectural Element in Industry Sectors
| Authors: | Jianxi Luo, Daniel E. Whitney, Carliss Y. Baldwin, and Christopher L. Magee |
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| Published: | August 27, 2009 |
| Paper Release Date: | June 2009 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
In an industry setting, classic supply chains display strict hierarchy, whereas clusters of firms have linkages going in many different directions. Previous theory has often assumed the existence of the hierarchical relationships among firms, and empirical industry studies tend to focus on a single-layer industry, or a two-layer structure comprising buyers and suppliers. And yet, some industries have a multilayer structure with a multistep supply chain. Others comprise a cluster of complementary firms producing different parts of a large system. HBS professor Carliss Y. Baldwin and colleagues use network analysis to study multilayer industries both empirically (in the case of Japan) and theoretically and to explore how industries are organized at the sector level in an attempt to reveal the underlying rules that determine how industry architectures form and change.
Published in 2008
The Sciences of Design: Observations on an Emerging Field
| Authors: | Sandeep Purao, Carliss Y. Baldwin, Alan Hevner, Veda C. Storey, Jan Pries-Heje, Brian Smith, and Ying Zhu |
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| Published: | November 26, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | October 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
This paper examines the sciences of design as an emerging field of study that cuts across disciplinary boundaries. The paper summarizes and synthesizes the positions, reflections, opportunities, and challenges expressed at the first doctoral consortium to explore the topic, held in 2008. It thus provides a useful agenda for clarifying and articulating important strands of this nascent field.
The Architecture of Platforms: A Unified View
| Authors: | Carliss Y. Baldwin and C. Jason Woodard |
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| Published: | October 10, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2008 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
Product and system designers have long exploited opportunities to create families of complex artifacts by developing and recombining modular components. An especially common design pattern is associated with the concept of a platform, which Baldwin and Woodard define as a set of stable components that supports variety and evolvability in a system by constraining linkages among the other components. In this paper, the authors shed light on the relationships between platforms and the systems in which they are embedded to better understand and explain firms and industries where platforms play an important role.
Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational Architectures: A Test of the Mirroring Hypothesis
| Authors: | Alan D. MacCormack, John Rusnak, and Carliss Y. Baldwin |
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| 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 |
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| 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.
Competition in Modular Clusters
| Authors: | Carliss Y. Baldwin and C. Jason Woodard |
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| Published: | January 17, 2008 |
| Paper Release Date: | December 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The last 20 years have witnessed the rise of disaggregated "clusters," "networks," or "ecosystems" of firms in a number of industries, including computers, telecommunications, and pharmaceuticals. In these clusters, different firms design and produce the various components of a complex artifact (such as the processor, peripherals, and software of a computer system), and different firms specialize in the various stages of a complex production process. This paper considers the pricing behavior and profitability of these so-called modular clusters. Baldwin and Woodard isolate the offsetting price effects in a model, and show how they might operate in large as well as in small clusters.
Published in 2007
Modularity, Transactions, and the Boundaries of Firms: A Synthesis
| Author: | Carliss Y. Baldwin |
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| Published: | September 18, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | September 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
For the last 30 years economists have used the concepts of "transaction," "transaction cost," and "contract" to illuminate a wide range of phenomena, including vertical integration; the design of employment, debt, and equity contracts; and the structure of industries. These concepts are now deeply embedded in the fields of economics, sociology, business, and law. Theories explain how to choose between different forms of transactional governance. But why does a transaction occur where it does? Without this answer, the forces driving the location of transactions in a system of production remain largely unexplored. This paper explains the location of transactions (and contracts) in a system of production. It also presents a theory of technological change that predicts changes in the location of transactions and therefore in the structure of industries.
From Manufacturing to Design: An Essay on the Work of Kim B. Clark
| Authors: | Sylvain Lenfle and Carliss Y. Baldwin |
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| Published: | April 12, 2007 |
| Paper Release Date: | March 2007 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
The interdisciplinary research of economist Kim Clark, former dean of Harvard Business School and now President of Brigham Young University-Idaho, occupies a unique place in management scholarship for three reasons. First, he tended to focus on little known and under-appreciated management groups such as manufacturing managers, product development managers, and product and process architects. Thus, he directly positioned himself outside the "traditional" management disciplines of strategy, finance, marketing, and organizational behavior. Second, he swam against the academic tide by recognizing the power of comparative and longitudinal field studies. Third, he sought frameworks beyond his own field in design theory, the engineering sciences, and finance. This paper reviews his research contributions over almost thirty years.
Published in 2006
Architectural Innovation and Dynamic Competition: The Smaller "Footprint" Strategy
| Authors: | Carliss Y. Baldwin and Kim B. Clark |
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| Published: | September 28, 2006 |
| Paper Release Date: | August 2006 |
| Feature: | Working Papers |
To study dynamic competition, Baldwin and Clark build upon a design principle in computer architecture known as Amdahl's Law. The authors show that firms can study the underlying cause-and-effect relationships in a complex architecture in order to identify "bottlenecks." Firms may then redesign the interfaces of key components to make them more modular. They can then outsource more activities without sacrificing performance or cost. As a result, firms can offer competitive products or services, while investing less, and so enjoy an "invested capital advantage" over competitors. Baldwin and Clark explain how the strategy works and then model its impact on competition through successive stages of industry evolution.
How Kayak Users Built a New Industry
| Q&A with: | Carliss Y. Baldwin |
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| Published: | July 24, 2006 |
| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
Customers have produced some of the most important innovations in industries ranging from oil refining to scientific instruments. But how do user innovations take place? How do they get to market? Professor Carliss Baldwin discusses research into the rodeo kayak industry to understand the world of user innovation.
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 |
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| 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.
Published in 2000
More Than the Sum of Its Parts: The Impact of Modularity on the Computer Industry
| Published: | September 25, 2000 |
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| Feature: | Research & Ideas |
The "power of modularity," write HBS Dean Kim Clark and Professor Carliss Baldwin in their new book, rescued the computer industry from a problem of nightmarish proportions and made possible remarkable levels of innovation and growth in a relatively short period of time.
