SDM Explained: A Transcript

What follows is an organized list of my coursework as part of SDM. The concept of "Systems Design and Management" can be hard to encapsulate in a simple sentence, so this exhaustive list can give you a better feel for how I have been applying myself for the last year and a half. The high-level themes provide the best feel for the SDM approach: leadership, the business of technology, and large-scale systems analysis. My personal area of interest is in the integration of renewable energy, visible both in the explicitly energy-related classes as well as the courses in which I performed substantial project work on energy issues. (Energy-focused courses are noted in bold.)

• Technology Strategy
  • 15.965 Technology Strategy - Creating and capturing value
  • 15.969 User-Centered Innovation - Listening to lead users for product design
  • ESD.945 SLaM Praxis - How decisions are made, frameworks for competitive analysis
  • ESD.58 Disruptive Technologies - How technologies evolve
    • Project: market evaluation of 3rd generation solar cells
  • ESD.945 SLaM Lab - Applied technology strategy
    • Project: New market penetration for an energy efficiency firm
• Management
  • 15.381 The Human Side of Technology - leadership theory as applied to tech
  • ESD.930 Leadership - leadership frameworks and personal reflection
  • ESD.38 Enterprise Architecture - an engineering approach to organizational transformation
  • 15.514 Managerial Accounting - how to think about costs and income
  • ESD.763 Supply Chain Management - treating a supply chain as an optimizable design
  • 15.281 Advanced Leadership Communication - running effective teams
  • HBS1929 Business Marketing - how to manage a team for b2b sales
    • Project on how to sell to electrical utilities
• Energy
  • 15.366 Energy Ventures - Practical lab in how to launch an energy-industry startup
  • ESD.940 Wind Turbine Design - manufacturing, meteorology, and the NREL FAST suite
  • ESD.934 Engineering, Economics, and Regulation of the Power Sector - grid operations
    • Project: future outlook for demand response
  • ESD.865 Modeling Electric Power Systems - numerical optimization with GAMS
  • Thesis - Demand Response for Grid Balance with High Renewable Penetration
• System Engineering
  • ESD.33 System Engineering - analyzed the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative as a large-scale systems problem
  • ESD.34 System Architecture - applied architectural principles to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
  • ESD.36 Project Management - how to bring in a project on time and on budget, using system dynamics to avoid the traps
  • ESD.344 Real Options - mathematical tools for when and how to build flexibility into product design
• Misc
  • ESD.301 Statistics - Emphasis on hypothesis testing
  • 21F.415 Deutschland im Europäischen Kontext - Deutsche Literatur auf Deutsch
  • 6.083 Mobile Application Development - Wrote 5 deployable Android applications

This portfolio of classes has positioned me for a role in product management, project management, corporate strategy, or engineering management.

CareerLeader - This Much We Know

It's hard to provide recruiting support for SDM students. We have 5-7 years of experience and a rather novel degree which combines management with a hard-to-explain corner of engineering. On-campus recruiting and career fairs are targeted at more entry-level positions or (at Sloan) investment banking/management consulting. SDM-appropriate jobs are often not advertised; companies may not even realize that our expertise exists. One service offered by our career services department is the "CareerLeader" assessment. It is supposed to help you sharpen your focus and figure out what kind of job to look for. Having taken the test, I'm not sure it told me anything I didn't already know.

The results are near-tautological. One section asks the test-taker to perform a series of binary rankings: "Would you rather be recognized as brilliant or would you rather make a social contribution with your work?" After a near-comprehensive search of the trade space, we are presented (voila!) with a ranking of our preferences. In another section, we are asked to rank our interest in such areas as "managing technical projects." Indicating high interest in this area means that the summary will tell you "you are interested in managing technical projects!". Again, the insight is stunning. I am not sure what I expected out of this assessment, but I was hoping for some emergent insight into my interests rather than a regurgitation of my answers.

For what it's worth, here's what the test told me:

• You have a strong interest in Application of Technology. You take a systematic, engineering-like approach to solving problems and understanding systems and processes.
• You also have a notable level of interest in Theory Development and Conceptual Thinking. You enjoy solving business problems by taking a conceptual "big picture" approach, exploring abstract ideas and the "what ifs" of a business or industry, and considering broad economic and social trends.

This is pretty spot-on, if obvious. Furthermore, the test tells me that careers I should consider are:

• R&D Management
• Product Management
• Management of New Product Development
• Entrepreneurship

Again, it's just what I told the assessment but at least it's accurate.

Thanks to the hard-working SDM career office for trying on this one. I'd be interested in hearing from you if you extracted value from this assessment. Did it tell you something you didn't already know?

SDM Summer 2010 review

Another semester, another chunk of knowledge. Summer term is a bit accelerated at MIT since it tries to pack a full semester of content into fewer weeks. Classes meet for more hours each week and the workload per unit time is higher. Fortunately, the institute is air conditioned.

ESD.763 covered supply chain logistics from a very high level. I didn't walk out of this class feeling like I could design and run a supply chain on my own, but I now feel that I have a solid grounding in the issues and the fundamentals. We started with some good mathematical grounding in Markov chains and queue theory. Then we covered a rich set of cases to see how these theories are applied in the real world. Learning about 7-11 Japan was mind-blowing. Hourly resupply with shifting stock throughout the day? Insane. This class only ran for the first half of the semester; having its workload disappear just as other classes ramped up was scheduling genius. I appreciated that Professor Martinez-de-Albeniz would challenge poorly-thought-out answers with harsh and well-deserved reality.

15.514 Financial and Managerial Accounting should have been painful. Who wants to spend three evenings per week learning about accounting in the summer? It turned out to be much more engaging than I thought it would be. I viewed the class as "defense against the dark arts." I never plan to do any accounting myself, but I feel that I should now be able to spot and understand a severe irregularity if someone tries to sneak it by me. Professor Scott Keating was committed to both our understanding and keeping the material as engaging as it realistically can be.

ESD.33 Systems Engineering reminded me of my employee training on the "Design V" back at Ford. This was mostly familiar material, and it suffers a bit by being so loose and heuristic-based. It's necessary material but I don't see a systematic way to teach it. This class, however, was responsible for my favorite project of the summer: an examination of the electrical grid in Hawaii. (Separate article on this to come.)

ESD.945 SLaM Lab Praxis was the first formal "leadership" training we have yet had. In this class we covered decision making, setting strategic directions, how to disagree productively, and how to respond to changes in the external environment. This was good material and Professor Michael Davies delivers it with passion. There is a good chance that I will be taking the followup class this Fall.

And now, three weeks off for some backpacking/kayaking/thesis-writing.

Disrupting Photons

Technology-watchers have been predicting that cell phone cameras will replace single-function cameras since the first featurephones were released. The serious photographers who write on the subject have now embraced the digital SLR over chemical film, but still laugh at the idea that the tiny optics of a phonecam could ever subsume a dedicated device. Today, I saw evidence that the laughing is over and that phone manufacturers have moved on to the next phase in the tech transfer attitude chain. ("first they mock you, then they fight you, then you win")

There is a billboard just outside Logan airport which says "If it has a ringtone, it's not a camera." This is obviously a defensive move from a threatened incumbent. I am writing this from MIT's Killian Court where hundreds of tourists pour forth from buses each day to photograph each other in front of the great dome. An informal survey shows that about half are using cellphone cameras. Personally, I take more pictures with my blurry iPhone 3GS camera than with my fancy Canon s90 or my rugged Pentax w80. The iPhone 4's camera is even better and will probably represent even more of my picture-taking when I purchase its successor. The idea of a cell camera replacing a single-purpose device is already here for the majority of consumers and is just around the corner for everybody but the most serious artiste.

My tech strategy classes last semester covered many such turning points. We have seen the signs and they are all here. I am imagining the New England lake-ice industry with a billboard in 1920 saying "If it came from a machine, it isn't ice." Sailboat makers could claim "If it has propellers, it isn't a ship." Gas lighting manufacturers might try, "If there is no flame, there is no illumination." This campaign comes off just as desperate, and just as doomed.

User-Centered Doneness

Spring break* is over, we're halfway done with the semester, and my time in SDM is already 1/8 completed. If I'm 8x more knowledgeable next May, I'll be unstoppable. (Sadly, diminishing returns means that this is unlikely.)

I'm already done with one class, "User-Centered Design in the Internet Age" taught by Eric von Hippel. It consists mostly of ideas you could get by reading Slashdot for a few years, but backed by academic rigor instead of uninformed speculation. It's good to see that open platforms, user-driven innovation, and free sharing do have a place in a world of hard-headed analysis, ROI, and NPV. Open source: it's not just for ideologs anymore. (I liked that von hippel believes his own talk: he released his book creative commons!)

It was good to see corporate/military types who thought that open source is for unwashed hippie hackers realize that the spirit of open innovation could work for them. But if I had to improve the content of the class, I would suggest that we look more at where the user-centered approach fails and why. These techniques are great in some places, disastrous in others, and hard to quantify elsewhere. How deep should an organization go?

(*Honduras, if you're wondering. Scuba diving, mayan ruins, and refried beans.)

Among My People

One of my first sources of worry about the SDM program was "Opportunity Sets". Not their existence, but their name. The kind of individual who would name a "problem set" an "opportunity set" seemed to me infected by the worst elements of contemporary managerese doublespeak. When I took a break from the corporate world for the academic, I thought I was leaving "learnings" and "incent" behind. Did this mean that I would be surrounded by suit-wearing phonies who actually believed in their golf-themed Successories posters?

Turns out that it's not a problem. My colleagues are My People, engineers and scientists with a leadership-oriented bent. They are honestly interested in solving real technical problems. They have accomplishments from aerospace, civil engineering, IT, consumer electronics, the military, and even the food industry. They have all seen Star Wars. (Except one. We're working on him.)

That said, we all learn the most from people who are different from us. It's comfortable to be surrounded by people Like Me, but I may have to stretch myself a bit to try new things. Does this mean that I may end up in the Sales Club? Stay tuned.

But no Successories posters, please.