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This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

Rather than organize as traditional firms, many of today’s companies organize as platforms that sit at the nexus of multiple exchange and production relationships. This chapter considers a most basic question of organization in platform contexts: the choice of boundaries. Herein, I investigate how classical economic theories of firm boundaries apply to platform-based organization and empirically study how executives made boundary choices in response to changing market and technical challenges in the early mobile computing industry (the predecessor to today’s smartphones). Rather than a strict or unavoidable tradeoff between “openness-versus-control,” most successful platform owners chose their boundaries in a way to simultaneously open-up to outside developers while maintaining coordination across the entire system.

The paper provides an overview of research published in the innovation and operations management (IOM) literature on 15 methods for cost management in new product development, and it provides a comparison to an earlier review of the management accounting (MA) literature (Wouters & Morales, 2014).

This structured literature search covers papers published in 23 journals in IOM in the period 1990–2014.

The search yielded a sample of 208 unique papers with 275 results (one paper could refer to multiple cost management methods). The top 3 methods are modular design, component commonality, and product platforms, with 115 results (42%) together. In the MA literature, these three methods accounted for 29%, but target costing was the most researched cost management method by far (26%). Simulation is the most frequently used research method in the IOM literature, whereas this was averagely used in the MA literature; qualitative studies were the most frequently used research method in the MA literature, whereas this was averagely used in the IOM literature. We found a lot of papers presenting practical approaches or decision models as a further development of a particular cost management method, which is a clear difference from the MA literature.

This review focused on the same cost management methods, and future research could also consider other cost management methods which are likely to be more important in the IOM literature compared to the MA literature. Future research could also investigate innovative cost management practices in more detail through longitudinal case studies.

This review of research on methods for cost management published outside the MA literature provides an overview for MA researchers. It highlights key differences between both literatures in their research of the same cost management methods.

Multiteam systems (MTSs) have been employed across numerous organizations and occupations (e.g., healthcare, emergency disaster response, business, and military) to achieve complex goals over time. As MTSs are inherently different than team level and organizational level theories, this chapter highlights the defining features of these dynamic systems through a temporal lens. Thus, the main purpose of our chapter is to address the challenges and issues concerning MTSs over time in order to provide a future agenda to guide researchers and practitioners.

To explore temporality throughout this chapter, we leverage two key MTSs frameworks along with contributions from the literature to produce a review, which demonstrates the extent of MTS theoretical and practical findings. After reviewing the definitional components of MTSs, we highlight various compositional, linkage, and developmental attributes that operate within a system. We then expand upon these attributes to consider the structural features of the system that enhance boundaries between component teams (i.e., differentiation) and may disrupt the system over time (i.e., dynamism).

After reviewing and integrating current MTS literature, we provide a new conceptual framework for MTSs and their temporal complexities. We offer several methodologies that managers and researchers can employ to assess these complex systems and suggest practical recommendations and areas for future research as we continue to study MTSs.

Our original conceptual framework considers MTSs through a dynamic lens developing over time and suggests the need for future research to build upon this perspective.

In this paper, we seek to understand how changes in product architecture affect the innovation performance of firms in a complex product ecosystem. The canonical view in the literature is that changes in the technological dependencies between components, which define a product’s architecture, undermine the innovation efforts of incumbent firms because their product development efforts are built around existing architectures. We extend this prevailing view in arguing that component dependencies and changes in them affect firm innovation efforts via two principal mechanisms. First, component dependencies expand or constrain the choice set of firm component innovation efforts. From the perspective of any one component in a complex product (which we label the focal component), an increase in the flow of design information to the focal component from other (non-focal) components simultaneously increases the constraint on focal component firms in their choice of profitable R&D projects while decreasing the constraint on non-focal component firms. Second, asymmetries in component dependencies can confer disproportionate influence on some component firms in setting and dictating the trajectory of progress in the overall system. Increases in such asymmetric influence allow component firms to expand their innovation output. Using historical patenting data in the personal computer ecosystem, we develop fine-grained measures of interdependence between component technologies and changes in them over time. We find strong support for the empirical implications of our theory.

Although the practice of multiteam systems (MTSs) has been around for decades, the science of these systems has only just begun. Within the past decade and a half, although much remains to be investigated, substantial progress has been made in breaking the surface of this research. The current volume provides a review of MTS case studies and the current chapter provides a synopsis of this research. The goal of this chapter is to identify how MTSs are operating under real-world conditions in order to bridge MTS science and practice.

In this chapter, the authors provide a case analysis of the presented MTSs in the current volume in order to identify issues innate to MTSs. An approach based on the SWOT analysis technique was utilized to identify strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities of the identified MTSs. In addition, six lessons learned were extracted from a content analysis of the successes and failures of these MTSs.

Although MTSs may be unique to the environment in which they operate, there are several features which seem to be inherent to all. Strengths include possessing the ability to manage complex tasks and unexpected events, being flexible in nature, and integrating communication across levels. In opposition, weaknesses include the use of nontraditional communication patterns, challenges stemming from unit diversity and resources, and the lack of common training. Lessons learned from identified MTSs include (1) utilize effective communication; (2) establish shared mental models; (3) identify roles and responsibilities; (4) convey accountability and ownership; (5) consider the ramp-up period; and (6) train individuals in an MTS at multiple levels. Opportunities and threats to MTSs are also discussed in this chapter.

This chapter offers several contributions to the state of the field in regard to MTSs. The current chapter provides a detailed content analysis of several real-world MTSs. Characteristics inherent to MTSs are identified and discussed, and lessons learned are extracted. Traditionally, science and practice has focused on the presentation of lab-based MTSs; the current volume breaks new ground by identifying how MTSs operate “in the wild.” This chapter provides a summation of this volume and offers lessons learned for MTS researchers and those working within MTSs.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

Meetings can serve the important role of facilitating communication and coordination for systems of teams known as “multiteam systems” (MTSs) that work interdependently to achieve grand societal challenges. Given that MTSs often appear in complex, ambiguous, urgent, and multifaceted task contexts, the MTSs require effective, and efficient but thorough, communication within and between teams in order to achieve shared goals. However, the extant literature regarding the science of meetings has left much to be explored in regard to the inter- and intrateam influences and impacts. This chapter considers the significance of meetings and their practical value in facilitating MTS processes and performance by leveraging what is known thus far regarding MTS structural attributes, their value, their challenges, and opportunities, integrating this foundation with the broader science of meetings. Building on this rationale, the authors move toward empirically and theoretically derived considerations for how meetings may best be designed, facilitated and utilized for MTS effectiveness, as guided by our current understanding of critical MTS attributes.