Savvy Avi

Service companies use branches, phone, kiosks and web as direct channels to customers. In recent years service companies added a new channel - the smart phone application. Smart phones differ from PCs in screen size, ease of typing and input, connection speed and use context. Keeping these changes in mind, mobile apps shouldn’t be a replica of their online counterparts. One difference is that the mobile app has to be leaner. Another difference is that mobile apps should have unique features, such as location based features, taking advantage of mobile capabilities. As a case study, I compared the online website and mobile app of Citibank ’s card services. As shown below the mobile app has fewer pages (17 vs. 84) and has fewer levels (4 deep vs. 6 deep). Companies rushed to create iPhone and android apps often not doing it “right”. Mobile operation system defragmentation and rapid market changes make doing it right all the more challenging. That may be the reason why Citibank’s iPhon...

Dan Ariely a behavioral economist from Duke mentions System Design and Management in his new book “The Upside of Irrationality”. In his book, a sequel to the New York Times bestseller “Predictably Irrational”, Ariely intertwines research with personal stories including stories of his time as a “lowly assistant professor at MIT”. The story begins with “here is a story of a time when I lost my own temper” and describes a dispute between Ariely and a revered professor of finance, a former dean of Sloan, code named Paul, over a scheduling conflict of SDM classes. SDM students are described as curious and, reportedly, Ariely enjoyed teaching them. This story is just an anecdote used as a preface to a chapter on fleeting emotions followed by impulsive acts. Ariely and his fellow behavioral economists construct amusing research to expose how we humans continuously fail to behave rationally. In these experiments subjects fold origami frogs, build Lego robots, put their hand in close to b...

Jay Forrester , the founder of System Dynamics, a man regarded by many as a legend, was a guest lecturer in SDM ’s System Design class. At 92, Forrester is still relentless at finding the true implications of public policies through system dynamic simulations and working to correct policy. His work in the 70’s and onwards on the limits to growth led him to believe that people are consuming and growing beyond the world’s capacity and that disastrous consequences will follow. The implication of this belief is harsh; humanity should stop striving for growth and instead maintain a net growth of zero. Most extreme opinions are a product of dichotomous “black and white” thinking. This case is entirely different. Extensive research, innovation and his boldness to face an unpleasant revelation created this extreme view. Forester realizes that it is futile to lobby for such changes. Policy makers cannot radically change the direction of policy without a strong support of constituents. T...

eMbrace venture which I am a part of started as a project in Product Design and Development class. It is mentioned in the last SDM pulse in an article by the class's professor Qi Van Eikema Hommes: “one team in this year’s class started out with a technology—an RFID tracking device—rather than a need. Team members wanted to design a web-based system to track everything from documents to parts and information. In class, the students were urged to find out why the world would want their system. Using techniques learned in class, they interviewed and observed people, ultimately identifying a need among parents who sometimes lose their young children in busy areas. The team felt that these parents would like anyone who finds their child to be able to contact them quickly. Based on this need, the students developed an attractive RFID bracelet for kids and a companion web-based tracking system. The team is now exploring the possibility of collaborating with Verizon to produce such a sy...

Molded after the popular Sloan experimental courses (e-Lab g-Lab) SLAM lab (System Leadership and Management) is a course offered only to SDMs. Students consult Cambridge technology firms with strategic decision making. The course, offered in fall, has a summer preparation course adequately called pre-SLAM lab. During the summer course, the class is presented with cases about MIT spinoffs: E Ink, A123 Systems, Ember. All the cases have been written by Harvard Business School. I think I have spotted a pattern: MIT incubates companies and HBS writes case studies about them. Professor Michael Davies, who teaches the class, is the most charismatic lecturer I have had so far at MIT. Pre-SLAM class is always entertaining but when class ends I am not always sure what I’ve learned. One lesson I did pick up is that even very smart people can make stupid decisions. People are ‘prisoners’ of their own history and tend to bias strategic decision with emotional ‘reasoning’. I have seen it in poli...

As a blog writer I am interested in viewing who, if at all, is reading my blogs. I installed a tracker. I use tracemyip.org but Google analytics and probably many other sites provide similar services. So now I know a lot about you. I don’t know your identity but what I can tell is your approximate location, through IP address, the links or search words you used to get into my blog and even your browser, OS and screen resolution. I was surprised to find out that in several months I had a few hundred readers. In a typical day I have two or three readers one of which is a first timer. 70% of the readers come through SDM, which for me means more of my blogs should be SDM related. Other readers either come from Google search with searches related to my latest post title (“up on the bridge”, “performance based bonuses”, “credit defaults” are some examples), from LinkedIn or from looking me up directly (probably family and friends). The last category of entries to my blog is crawlers; the we...

Performance based bonuses (PBB) is an effective management tool but quite often it causes unintentional effects. PBB are supposed to improve productivity by compensating employees according to their contribution to productivity. However organizations are complex systems and it is impossible to measure an employee’s contribution accurately. Companies are forced to use performance models that are a simplification of reality. As a result, employees are focused on maximizing performance under the model which not completely aligned with the benefit of the company. In banking, for example, the bonus models underemphasized risk, causing a worldwide catastrophe. Leaving the financial crisis aside, there are other common pitfalls. It is simple to construct performance-based contribution for sales representatives. The more they sell the more they earn – simple. It is much harder to construct a model for back-end functions, say an IS developer. This is where it gets messy. Measurement by schedul...