David Lei

Southern Methodist University | SMU · Department of Strategy & Entrepreneurship

While scores of strategic management books have been written, many books fail to take into consideration the influences that shape and constrain managers' ability to formulate and execute well-thought out strategies. Demystifying Your Business Strategy acknowledges and harnesses those influences, providing practitioners with a helpful new approach...

Collaborative innovation with customers or users is increasingly important for the development of new products and services. In this paper we provide a review of the literature, placing emphasis on how firms engage in collaborative innovation with individual and business customers. Our review develops a synthesized conceptual framework from three e...

The rate of technological change and the stage of the industry's life cycle are two important factors in any industry. How firms compete in their industry depends upon the business strategy they choose. Consolidators, Concept Drivers, Concept Learners and Pioneers are four strategic modes that enable firms to sustain their competitiveness. Each mod...

As trade-driven growth and prosperity redefine both the Chinese economy and the global competitive landscape, U.S. policy makers increasingly must ponder whether the Chinese leadership will seek new options and capabilities to protect its far-reaching oceanic lifelines. As imported oil and raw minerals power the Chinese juggernaut, much of these fl...

U.S. firms are outsourcing more and more of their core manufacturing activities to companies in lower-cost countries such as China. However, U.S. policymakers and businesspeople often do not fully understand the complex relationship among outsourcing, corporate sources of competitive advantage, and U.S.-Chinese geo-economic and strategic relations....

Formulating an effective business strategy for a firm is a complex task. How best to compete in an industry is one of the major determinants that influence managers' choices of business strategy. The life cycle stages of the industry and the rate of technological change are two drivers that have significant impact on industry evolution. We develop...

Advances in computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) technology have generated a significant increase in the potential economies of scope that firms can use to build strategic flexibility through faster speed and greater product variety. Economic investment in CIM technology by itself will not produce sustainable competitive advantage, since other c...

A s we approach the 21st century, corpora-tions can no longer assume that their previous business models and methods of organizing will build or sustain their sources of competitive advantage. Increasingly, com-panies are using designs such as continuous transformation, virtual teams, and cellular organizations to define how they will revamp their...

This study focuses on the relationship between strategic alliances and organizational learning. Building cooperative advantage requires partners to realize that the dynamics of collaboration and learning are likely to evolve over distinct stages of alliance evolution. Although alliance relationships will require different sets of managerial skills...

Traditional approaches to studying competitive advantage, while valuable, are not adequate to explain how firms can operate effectively in turbulent and often chaotic environments. A resource or skill-based view focusing on development and application of core competences is offered to supplement the traditional approaches. We present a model of the...

This paper explains how investments in flexible, advanced manufacturing technologies (AMT) have special properties that can transform organization design and the economic bases of strategic flexibility. Investments in AMT that provide significant economies of scope (i.e. low-volume/low-cost manufacturing) produce strategic options that allow the fi...

Executive Overview Many firms invest in the physical tooling, computer hardware, and control software of flexible manufacturing without understanding how these systems require a redefining of information flows, knowledge use and organization structure. Smooth implementation and growing competence in applying advanced manufacturing and information t...

A conceptual framework examining the relationship between corporate restructuring and outsourcing of key value-adding activities to external suppliers and partners is presented. The model proposes that the restructuring process serves as a catalyst to a series of complex changes within the firm that make outsourcing an attractive alternative to int...

Recent advances in product design and manufacturing technologies allow for high levels of product variety at low cost, leading to economies of scope. Economies of scope allow for multiple product operations without the cost penalty of traditional economy-of-scale-based technology. Examines the implications of flexible manufacturing for marketing st...

Contends that being a learning organization involves more than a willingness to try new strategies. Successful companies map out strategies on the basis of customer needs, market activities, and what the competition is doing. Not all strategies will work, but companies can learn from failures and become stronger in the long term. The best companies...

This study explores the relationship between corporate diversification and strategic planning in large multiproduct firms by focusing on the strategic, organizational and performance characteristics associated with each avenue to diversification. High levels of horizontal sharing among Strategic Business Units (SBUs), together with a sophisticated...

This paper develops an organizational learning-based perspective to examine the impact of CIM and FMS technologies on business strategy and organizational structure. Firms seeking to build competitive advantage through advances in information and manufacturing technologies need to engage in double-loop, generative learning in which experimentation,...

This article focuses on the relationship between different types of organization-based knowledge and its application to utilizing various forms of advanced manufacturing technology. Explicit knowledge is transparent in the sense that any firm with a comparable skill and technology base can understand and apply it in a fast and similar manner. Tacit...

This paper focuses on the relationship between learning, skill acquisition, and strategic alliances to build competitive advantage. In particular, we focus on how senior management can structure their alliances as learning platforms to assimilate new technologies and skills to revitalize their core operations and to find new uses for existing skill...

This article develops a conceptual model by which to examine the relationship between effective implementation of CIM technology with different levels and characteristics of organizational learning. Although a large number of firms have invested enormous sums into CIM and other advanced manufacturing technologies recently, many have not been able t...

This article examines the growing phenomenon of firms that rely on a global strategy of building strategic alliances to fill out their product lines and to enter new markets. By relying extensively on licensing, joint ventures, and consortia to secure access to new markets and low cost production, many companies have formed long-standing technology...

Standing ''at the head of the class'' in today's global economy are the rapid learners-organizations that have transformed themselves in the face of technological change, fragmented markets, and fierce competition. These organizations exemplify what is know as ''generative learning,'' a style that differs markedly from the adaptive learning habits...

Time is a resource that all companies have. Using it to compete in the global market is now an essential strategy.

The Peters and Waterman framework of eight management principles, focused largely on organisational design issues, is used to examine differences between 19 “excellent” and 50 “non-excellent” firms. Data from large United States manufacturers show that the “excellent” companies earn higher returns on capital, have less variable returns and are more...

The transformation of US manufacturing, led by computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) systems, has already begun to take root. This article examines the potential benefits to firms which understand and can exploit CIM technology to its fullest extent. Because CIM simultaneously provides high product variety with low costs, conventional assumptions...

This paper focuses on the growing need to closely coordinate and link up manufacturing activities with information systems and networks. Computer-integrated manufacturing is helping an increasing number of firms produce higher variety goods in smaller lot sizes. A 4-cell matrix of degree of product complexity and production lot size is formed to st...

Describes global and multidomestic strategies (STs) employed by companies and argues that the reward system (RS) represents a powerful means of implementing an organization's ST. Two types of RSs (hierarchy-based and performance-based) are discussed. The integration of global STs with RSs is addressed. The strategic roles of management development...

The past twenty years have witnessed the development of new technologies, operating philosophies, and management styles which have fundamentally changed the way manufacturing systems are designed, how they work, and what they can do. Digital electronic information technologies have made possible the creation of smart machines and integrated knowled...

Changes in technology, manufacturing, and marketing within an industry may necessitate a shift in the way an organization achieves competitive advantage on a global basis. Forewarned is forearmed.

European companies will no longer take a back seat to Japanese and U.S. firms. To compete, U.S. companies must take strong steps to increase their European presence.

This article analyses the strategic dimensions of global competition. As U.S. companies enter the fight for global markets, a broader definition of corporate strategy as it relates to developing competitive advantage is needed to provide managers with superior tools to improve their strategic thinking. Corporate-level strategy involves both a ‘fore...