Marco Iansiti

According to this groundbreaking new book, technology integration - the process of choosing among a rich palette of technologies in order to make a product work seamlessly and reliably - is a critical element in launching successful new products. The result of a six-year study of more than fifty companies - including major players like Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Netscape, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, and Toshiba - in the software and computer industries, this book vividly illustrates the scope and complexity of high-tech new product development and the challenges of translating the knowledge generated by research into real - and competitive - products. It takes readers through the process of technology integration at the managerial and strategic levels; reveals the significant evolution in the structure of research and development in the modern corporation; and uncovers some striking similarities in how both large, science-based, capital-intensive hardware manufacturers and smaller, leaner software firms develop technology integration capabilities. Iansiti demonstrates convincingly that the ability to leverage new science and technology effectively is not due just to the quality of the work performed in the lab or to the ability to transfer and develop individual technologies. It is also inextricably linked to the ability of the firm to conceptualize how to use a multitude of emerging technological possibilities to define a product that makes business sense.

"In industry after industry, data, analytics, and AI-driven processes are transforming the nature of work. While we often still treat AI as the domain of a specific skill, business function, or sector, we have entered a new era in which AI is challenging the very concept of the firm. AI-centric organizations exhibit a new operating architecture, redefining how they create, capture, share, and deliver value. Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani show how reinventing the firm around data, analytics, and AI removes traditional constraints on scale, scope, and learning that have constrained business growth for hundreds of years. From Airbnb to Ant Financial, Microsoft to Amazon, research shows how AI-driven processes are vastly more scalable than traditional processes, drive massive scope increase, enabling companies to straddle industry boundaries, and enable powerful opportunities for learning--to drive ever more accurate, complex, and sophisticated predictions. When traditional operating constraints are removed, strategy becomes a whole new game, one whose rules and likely outcomes this book will make clear. Iansiti and Lakhani: Present a framework for rethinking business and operating models Explain how "collisions" between AI-driven/digital and traditional/analog firms are reshaping competition and altering the structure of our economy Show how these collisions force traditional companies to change their operating models to drive scale, scope, and learning Explain the risks involved in operating model transformation and how to overcome them Describe the new challenges and responsibilities for the leaders of these firms Packed with examples--including the most powerful and innovative global, AI-driven competitors--and based on research in hundreds of firms across many sectors, this is the essential guide for rethinking how your firm competes and operates in the era of AI"--

"In The Keystone Advantage, Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien offer a new lens for understanding how these ubiquitous and complex business networks behave and explore the implications for strategy formulation, innovation, and operations management. Iansiti and Levien argue that biological ecosystems provide a powerful analogy to the functioning of business networks. Just as "keystone species" in nature play central roles in their ecosystems, companies such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, and Li & Fung deploy "keystone strategies" to actively shape and regulate the workings of their business ecosystems - dramatically improving their own performance in the process. Iansiti and Levien argue that the best keystones simplify the challenge of connecting a very large and distributed network of companies to their customers and provide "platforms" that other firms can leverage to increase productivity, enhance stability, and spur innovation." "Drawing from more than ten years of research and practical experience across a range of industries, the authors identify three specific roles that firms play within business ecosystems: keystone, dominator, and niche. The book lays out a framework any firm can use to assess the characteristics of its own ecosystem, reevaluate its technology and operations strategy, and formulate specific tactics for gaining sustainable competitive advantage." "The Keystone Advantage will help leaders, managers, and policy makers to understand, analyze, and successfully execute strategy in today's networked environment."--BOOK JACKET.

This paper synthesizes a broad base of research performed across a broad variety of industrial sectors over the last ten years to show that the capability to integrate new technology with existing firm assets and capabilities is crucial to performance during periods of rapid technological change. In doing so, it challenges some accepted work on the management of innovation that argues for organizational separation in times of discontinuous technological change. The evidence includes extensive field-work performed at more than 200 companies in several different sectors of the computer industry: these included semiconductors, computer processor systems, computer systems (workstations and servers), internet software platforms, and electronic commerce applications. Over all, our analysis shows that organizations that mounted integrated responses to technological change obtained critical advantages in the productivity of their organizations, in the quality and performance of their products, and in their ability toachieve strong, sustained responses to market and technology changes. The paper goes on to discuss the implications of these findings, and describes several structures and approaches for organizing integrated responses to technological change. These approaches are then described in some detail through some case studies drawn from a variety of companies including Walgreens, Cisco Systems, Merrill Lynch, and Charles Schwab. Rather than by passing traditional structures through independent ventures, these organizations effectively "used" technological and market threats to force the adaptation of their existing organizations, leveraging deep rooted capabilities while mastering the dynamics of profoundly different business environments.