Stefan Thomke

Harvard University | Harvard · Technology and Operations Management Unit

Why do certain product and service experiences seem to have that undeniable "wow" factor, while others disappoint customers? Perhaps there's no better place to turn to than the world of magic. Consider that leading magicians are constantly under pressure to come up with new "effects" that wow audiences. They have to innovate frequently and rely on...

There is a downside to businesses that focus heavily on standardization, optimization, and driving out variability: Such organizations leave themselves vulnerable to underinvesting in experimentation and variation, which are the lifeblood of innovation. Good experimentation helps firms better manage myriad sources of uncertainty (such as, does the...

In the midst of a crowded,chaotic city, 5,000 loosely organized, semiliterate workers make deliveries with astonishing precision.

Many companies approach product development as if it were manufacturing, trying to control costs and improve quality by applying zero-defect, efficiency-focused techniques. While this tactic can boost the performance of factories, it generally backfires with product development. The process of designing products is profoundly different from the pro...

Dassault Systemes, a leader in product lifecycle management software, has enjoyed a very profitable business model in 3D engineering design. In the past, it has successfully managed market disruptions and opportunities through acquisition and organic innovations. Its latest brands, 3DVIA, offers 3D models and life-like experiences to a new non-prof...

Without sacrificing quality, how does a company that prides itself on its outstanding engineering and the hand-modeled perfection of its designs integrate computer-aided design and computer-aided styling as facets of a commitment to accelerate the development process? This is the question Stefan Thomke poses in a case study that probes the relation...

Describes the Mumbai-based Dabbawala organization, which achieves very high service performance (6 Sigma equivalent or better) with a low-cost and very simple operating system. The case explores all aspects of their system (mission, information management, material flows, human resource system, processes, etc.) and the challenges that the Dabbawala...

This paper analyses the impact of the virtual tool 'crash simulation' on automotive Research and Development (R&D) over the last 35 years. The research carried out in this context identifies and investigates distinct phases, respectively stages of the potential of crash simulations based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) and the stages' impact on...

This paper analyzes the impact of the virtual tool 'crash simulation' on automotive R&D over the last 35 years. The research carried out in this context identifies and investigates distinct phases respectively stages of the potential of crash simulations based on the Finite Element Method and the stages' impact on automotive R&D in-depth. In a stud...

This text offers a new option for instructors interested in emphasizing a balance between products and services. Managing Product and Service Development is about the managerial aspects critical to conceiving, designing, and developing innovative products and services. The course exposes students to some of the best management practices, tools, an...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1995. Includes bibliographical references (p. [322]-331). by Stefan H. Thomke. Ph.D.

This paper examines how the inconsistency of organizational conditions affects people's willingness to engage in experimentation, a behavior integral to innovation. Because failures are inevitable in the experimentation process, we argue that conditions giving rise to psychological safety reduce fear of failure and promote experimentation. Based on...

At the heart of business today lies a dilemma: Our economy is increasingly dependent on services, yet our innovation processes remain oriented toward products. Indeed, we have well-tested, scientific methods for developing and refining manufactured goods, but many of them don't seem applicable to the world of services. In this article, Harvard Busi...

Every company's ability to innovate depends on a process of experimentation whereby new products and services are created and existing ones improved. But the cost of experimentation often limits innovation. New technologies—including computer modeling and simulation—promise to lift that constraint by changing the economics of experimentation. Never...

Although the resource-based view of the firm has been written about extensively, the process by which firm assets are accumulated has not been explored in detail. That is, we know little about the micro-level mechanisms by which assets are built, nor do we have sufficient empirical evidence why some assets are more difficult to imitate, trade, or s...

Product R&D at many companies is a major bottleneck. The difficulty is that fully understanding the needs of just a single customer can be an inexact and costly process - to say nothing of the needs of all customers or even groups of them. In the course of studying product innovation across many industries, authors Stefan Thomke and Eric von Hippel...

An important managerial problem in product design in the extent to which testing activities are carried out in parallel or in series. Parallel testing has the advantage of proceeding more rapidly than serial testing but does not take advantage of the potential for learning between tests, thus resulting in a larger number of tests. We model this tra...

The high cost of experimentation has long put a damper on companies' attempts to create great new products. But new technologies are making it easier than ever to con duct complex experiments quickly and cheaply. Companies can now take innovation to a whole new level, contends Stefan Thomke, if they're willing to rethink their R&D from the ground u...

A fundamental problem in managing product development is the optimal timing, frequency, and fidelity of sequential testing activities that are carried out to evaluate novel product concepts and designs. In this paper, we develop a mathematical model that treats testing as an activity that generates information about technical and customer-need rela...

Although the significance of the resource-based perspective to strategic thinking has been made clear and written about extensively, the detailed dynamics through which strategic assets are built and accumulated by firms is still unclear. Particularly the question of asset accumulation and interdependence raises interesting research questions: That...

A front-loading method on solving product development performance is developed which can be achieved using a number of different approaches, two of which are discussed. First, is the project-to-project knowledge transfer which leverages previous projects by transferring problem and solution-specific information to new projects. Secondly, the rapid...

Most senior managers want their product development teams to create break-throughs--new products that will allow their companies to grow rapidly and maintain high margins. But more often they get incremental improvements to existing products. That's partly because companies must compete in the short term. Searching for breakthroughs is expensive an...

Summary form only given. Some practitioners have initiated concentrated efforts to reengineer their development processes as to move (or “load”) their problem identification and solution backwards in time (to the “front” of the process). In this paper, we provide a conceptual model and some case evidence from development practice to describe the ba...

As product complexity and the rate of market change have dramatically increased over the last years, firms find it increasingly difficult to forecast product requirements in their development processes. This article redefines the problem from one of improving forecasting to one of increasing product development agility and thus reducing the need fo...

Experimentation, a form of problem-solving, is a fundamental innovation activity and accounts for a significant part of total innovation cost and time. In many fields, the economics of experimentation are being radically affected by the use of new and greatly improved versions of methods such as computer simulation, mass screening, and rapid protot...

As pressure to conduct research and development (R&D) faster and more efficiently has increased over the years, firms have embraced many novel technologies and approaches in an attempt to develop new capabilities that would give them an advantage over their competitors. While the connection between building and renewing capability and performance h...

The outputs of R&D, such as new research findings and new products and services, are generated with the aid of specialized problem-solving processes. These processes are somewhat arcane and have been largely ignored in studies of technical change. However, their improvement can significantly affect the kinds of research problems that can be address...

Shorter development lead times, other things being equal, contribute to competitive advantages in many of today's industries where market needs and available technologies are difficult to predict, rapidly changing or diversified and where novelty is highly valued in the market. In this paper, we focus on the identification and solving of developmen...

Shorter development lead times, other things being equal, contribute to competitive advantages in many of today's industries where market needs and available technologies are difficult to predict, rapidly changing or diversified, where novelty is highly valued in the market, and where competition through new products and technologies are intense. I...

In the development of novel products, managers can often choose among different design technologies. However, these technology choices are typically driven by their impact on product performance as opposed to how they would affect the product development process. Using empirical data from integrated circuit design, the author shows that the selecti...

Although flexibility and firm competitiveness have been linked by a considerable body of research, most efforts to advance our understanding of flexibility have been focused on manufacturing, the economics of firms, and competitive strategy. This paper examines the link between technology and flexibility during product design and its impact on deve...

Includes bibliographical references (p. 26-29).