Vision

To create the premier interdisciplinary research center at MIT for the enduring and effective study of social, business & economic systems, the dynamics of strategy & value, and the implications of emerging technological & organizational innovations.

Rationale

The CSSI would enable key MIT faculty and peers to combine forces, scaling-up and leveraging their individual research, education, and extracurricular activities to mutual benefit. By drawing together several traditional groups within MIT Sloan, connecting deeply with the rest of MIT and key peer institutions, and fostering promising emerging research thrusts, the CSSI would accelerate:

Understanding of overarching & critical research questions;
Recruiting top faculty & unusual student talent;
Raising disproportionate research sponsorship;
Crafting great tangible & intangible faculty support infrastructure;
Orchestrating best-of-class cross-sectional & longitudinal research projects; and
Pioneering premier theoretical & empirical socio-technological research thrusts.

Traditionally, prolific faculty are also the most over-burdened, sought after for committees, serving on boards, consulting with industry, supervising theses, teaching new classes, and pursuing research collaborations. Within a well-run center, such faculty could join forces around their common interests and scale-up pursuit of desirable high-leverage activities. Furthermore, a unifying center would encourage cross-connections and collaborations, ideally allowing faculty to embrace a more varied research agenda in concert than they could alone. Beyond these benefits, faculty would continue to determine their own research agendas and professional foci.

Potential Macro Research Thrusts

Several existing and newly emerging research thrusts might join forces under the CSSI umbrella, including potentially, but not limited to:

Systems Dynamics
Technology Strategy
Organizational Architecture & Internal Economics
Emerging Technological Innovations & Industries
Intellectual Assets & Valuing Intangibles
Venture Lifecycle Dynamics in Finance, HR, Marketing, & Strategy
Industry Lifecycle Dynamics
Visualizing Complexity in Information, Organization, & Ideation
Visioning & Forecasting Methods

Implementation Requisites

To deliver the sought-for benefits, the CSSI needs:

Attractive Overall Vision – A unifying and compelling overall vision – for example, alignment towards “Systems Strategy & Innovation” – something general enough to embrace many faculty and interests, and aligned with MIT Sloan’s Technology Business mission, but suitably differentiated from peer centers and initiatives;
Formidable Founding Faculty – A top-quality founding group of MIT faculty & affiliates who appreciate one another’s research interests, who can cooperate with minimum ego-wrestling and maximum positive feedback, and who desire both tighter collaborations and enhancing their individual research endeavors;
Compelling Research Agenda – An initial core of complementary and even mutually-reinforcing research initiatives, ideally an early batch of research projects which are likely to bear rich results – early success stories which will bolster the reputation of the center, help flesh out the research infrastructure, and ease the raising of research sponsorship and recruitment of future collaborators;
Proper Financial Footing – Substantial seed financing from donors, agencies, and foundations, to fuel the startup orchestration costs and to pay properly for the quantity and quality of researcher and administrative talent required to run things extraordinarily well. Ideally, the CSSI would tap individual and corporate donors for capital investment and endowment, traditional NSF and governmental sources for research, aided by seed and challenge grants from key foundations.
Extreme Operational Competence – Very strong executive and operational talent to support faculty action, all organized with incentives to minimize bureaucracy and maximize productive effectiveness. The CSSI would be fundamentally about leveraging faculty research and educational interests; success, therefore, hinges on identifying and attracting the unusually competent operational talent to provide truly stellar support.

Key Operations & Processes

Systematic Research Process, Operations & Infrastructure – Rather than having each faculty or individual researcher run all aspects of their empirical research process – e.g. the recruitment and training of research assistants – a well-run social science research operation would provide basic infrastructure and systematic processes, precisely what is needed to support the multiple research agendas of a broad disciplinary spectrum of business school faculty, especially the serious and sophisticated cross-sectional & longitudinal studies.
Systematic Sponsorship & Partnership Management – Rather than relying upon faculty to solely craft proposals or to manage sponsor relations, a well-run partnership operation both organizes effective sponsor liaison and helps prepare research proposals.
Systematic Course Development & PR Process & Infrastructure – Rather than having each faculty solely craft class material or handle the logistics of course arrangement, the center supports executive and custom course infrastructure, promote research ideas broadly, and is responsible for publicity and ensuring ideas have real-world impact.
Systematic Events & Activities Process & Infrastructure – Rather than having faculty distracted with the logistics and details of powerful but distractive extracurricular action, the center provides extracurricular support, rallies student and alumni action, orchestrates gatherings to complement academic offerings, research symposia, sponsor updates, and other things noteworthy.

Proposed Organizational Structure

Faculty Co-Directors – Strategic & Academic oversight & leadership;
Affiliated Researchers – MIT-wide & peer school faculty collaborators;
Governance, Advisors, Affiliates – Sponsor and partner oversight & influence bodies;
Executive Director – Overall strategic & Operational execution & leadership;
Research Director – Orchestration of research operations;
Partnership Director – Sponsor relations, crafting research proposals, liaison with partners;
Academic Director – Course development and execution, special media packages, PR relationships;
Activities Director – Special events management, support for key student extracurricular activities with suitable resources & infrastructure.

Core Center Resources

Systematic Research Operations Engine – A common, well-run, highly tuned investigative infrastructure with processes enabling and bolstering the myriad professional research and publications agenda of affiliated researchers, recruiting, survey preparation, follow-up management, data tracking, and more.
Simulation & Visualization Lab – Both virtual and real commons space with the best available simulation, analysis, visualization, & presentation tools and key support staff who are experts in the myriad relevant toolsuites.
Digital Data & Citation Repository – A unified, well-maintained digital file cabinet containing the collectively referenced and cited papers and informational source material for all faculty and center studies, classes, and materials.
Learning Cafe – an Engagement & Interaction Venue – A top-quality venue, a sophisticated physical location for high-quality events & activities in support of CSSI goals, e.g. doctoral seminars, interactive class sessions, receptions for Executive Education, student-alumni soirees, MIT Sloan reaching out to the rest of MIT, and more.

Ideas on Leveraging Student Researchers

UROC – Undergraduate Research Opportunities Cadre, team UROPs combining several student to focus on one common project.
GROC – Graduate Research Opportunities Cadre, team of graduate student researchers focusing on one common project
Team Theses – Formalizing and systematizing ways for students to collaborate on more systemic projects where each delve deeply into an aspect, but benefit from the commonalities of focus.
Encouraging Special Projects – Encouraging more students to work on larger scale projects using the formal vehicle of special projects credit.

Possible Specific Research Foci

Incentives & Boundaries
Outsourcing & Appropriability
Implementation Dynamics
Distributed Collaboration
Firm Competency Spectrum
Learning Curve Dynamics from Individual through Industry
Value Creation & Capture
Organizational Orchestration
Dynamics of Sustainable Change
Organizational Deep Structure & the Leverage Hierarchy
Public-Private Interfaces
Organizational Change & Transformation Processes
Industry Standards Dynamics
Diffusion Dynamics
Internalizing Externalities
Innovation Clockspeeds
Communication & Reputation Networks
Research Lab Strategy
Technology Transfer Strategy
Portfolio Management
Exponential Technologies
Routinizing Innovation
Productivity Levers
Fast Iteration & Development Portfolio Dynamics
Causal Cascades & Unintended Consequences
Real Options & Combination Trees
Repeated Games & Internal Strategy
Competency Elites
Strategy Dynamics
Emerging Technology Strategy
Combinatorial Ideation
Intellectual Ideation Infrastructure
Orchestrating Serendipity
Strategy Lattices & Axes of Abstraction
Experimental Anthropology & Predictive Microcosms
Scenario & Future Envisioneering