Instructor: Deborah Ancona
with guest lectures by Prof. Fine, Prof. Crawley, Prof. de Weck and others.
TA: Anna Jaffe (ajaffe@mit.edu), for more information
Time: WF, 1-2:30
Units: 6-18

The VDS Leadership class will be videotaped and posted for review by all VDS global teams and leveraged as a strategy to both improve the tangible educational content that results from VDS and also clearly articulate the operations principles employed during the design, build and marketing of the Vision.

**Draft Syllabus (please note that some dates will change as VDS develops and that not all faculty have yet to confirm)**

15.960: Leading the Global Enterprise

Product Development, Business Strategy, Distributed Teams

Fall 2007

Overview of Goals

The aim of this class is to create globally minded, technically expert leaders who in the near-term can provide guidance for the MIT Vehicle Design Summit. Thus the tangible goals of the class are three-fold:

1. Optimize the working manifesto for a network of global teams while developing a framework for continued research and development in the VDS consortium. In this case, adapt X-Teams strategies to the 33 international teams to enable the global consortium to catalyze what we term an Energy Space Race;

2. Complete initial prototyping of a 200 MPGe vehicle that could be ready for market by 2009. In this case, lead the systems engineering efforts for the VDS Vision 200 such that it achieves its performance and safety requirements;

3. Craft the business-strategy, product-user interactions and Vision’s service model so as to maximize its impact as a product and enable the consortium to attract necessary investment. Specifically, evaluate and guide the introduction of the vehicle and economic service model into the selected market: India.

This course offers participants the opportunity to experience both a true systems engineering and a global consortium management environment while being advised by the top systems, engineering, and management professors. The course is an integral part of VDS, an initiative to leapfrog sustainable transportation technologies through collaborative design and engineering. The hyper-efficient vehicle being designed and eventually constructed is a passenger/commuter vehicle that will reach 200 mpg energy equivalence and a 20-fold reduction in life-cycle costs over a benchmark. Thirty-three university teams around the world have been tasked with designing individual subsystems and production aspects of the vehicle, for example suspension, energy storage, and disassembly.

Through this project, student participants will be exposed to a novel, adaptive structure for innovation called X-teams. X-teams are collaborative, interdisciplinary constructs that emphasize "externalization" in consort with leadership and teamwork as a core element of decision-making and operation. Project teams in this course will not only be set-up as X-teams to complete a selected task, but will also be creating X-teams at the participating universities worldwide. X-teams go through three phases in order to complete a task: Exploration, Exploitation, & Exportation."

Students will have the opportunity in this course to apply their own individual engineering skills to the systems integration of this vehicle. Additionally, participants will be actively engaged in the management and organization of the consortium that is designing and producing the car through close contact with a particular subsystem team of interest. The goals of this class include enabling participants:

1. To observe synergistic relationships among subsystems in creating a whole product,

2. To experience a true technical design environment,

3. To understand interdependencies in a complex system,

4. To go beyond a classroom exercise in addressing a major world problem,

5. To interface with industry and universities from around the world,

6. To develop the skills to work well across disciplines and cultures in a multi-tiered team environment.

Course Content

The VDS capstone course addresses a number of topics crucial to the success of the Vehicle Design Summit and any other entity hoping to succeed on a global stage. These include:

Systems Thinking

The strength of the top engineers of this century will lie in their ability to think in terms of systems. Mechanical engineers who design engines will need to not only be adept at optimizing the performance of the engine, but also take into consideration the interaction between the engine and all other mechanical parts of a car, the driver, the assembly of the engine, the disassembly of the engine, the impact the engine will have on the environment in which it operates, etc. The Vehicle Design Summit, while seemingly rejecting systems thinking by tasking participant teams with individual subsystems, is in fact pursuing this design strategy to reevaluate the interactions among these subsystems in the context of the whole vehicle. At the end of the class you will be able to answer:

· How does my engineering background fit into the context of a systems architecture?

· How do systems dynamics impact decision making from an organizational, product and individual level?

· What role do the synergies between policy, technology and culture play in the introduction of a new technology?

· How can supply and value-chains be leveraged to enable radical innovation?

· What do institutional acupuncture and aikido politics have to do with anything?

· How do I make subsystem design decisions using systems thinking?

Environmental Impact

The “triple bottom line” of last century’s corporate dogma: aesthetics, functionality, and cost, is being revised to include environmental impact, echoing a shift in public demand to favor sustainability as a design parameter. In this course, the once-externality concern of environmental impact will be considered at every step of the project. By the end of the course you will be able to answer:

· How can I take environmental impact into account in my specific engineering field?

· How do the life-cycle costs of a particular subsystem influence the whole life-cycle of the whole?

· What are the key leverage points to enabling radically improved environmental performance?

· How can cost drivers be leveraged in green design to your advantage?

· How can cutting edge technologies and emerging best practice be implemented in a new enterprise, in a global conglomerate with significant previous momentum?

· What are current metrics for analyzing environmental impacts, what are their flaws, and in what ways can they be improved?

Engineering Management:

As an engineering student, one is rarely asked to manage engineering projects. Yet, as a top engineer in the real world, much of one’s work involves organizing and coordinating the efforts of other engineers. This course will address aspects of technical communication and decision making crucial to the forward-motion of a design and engineering project. By the end of the course you will be able to answer:

· How can my engineering background be leveraged to help direct a larger project?

· What are my areas of strength as a leader, weaknesses?

· What does it take to negotiate with, inspire and advocate with a group of colleagues?

· How do individuals with different technical backgrounds work together to create a single design?

Global Collaboration & Decentralized Innovation

The Internet has enabled a number of truly democratic institutions, most prominently social networks and open-source software development. VDS is extending this model into the technical sphere, engaging a global, virtual, collaborative network to design the VDS Vision vehicle. This course will deal with issues related to the substantial communication overhead and specifics of public domain release. By the end of the course you will be able to answer:

· Where do I fit into the VDS global consortium?

· How can information be effectively organized for simple and instantaneous communication worldwide?

· How can we engage the public into an informal discussion about our design?

· What tools best enable collaborative, interdisciplinary engineering?

· Where is there room for radical improvement in terms of facilitated global development?

· What does public domain release mean, and how can the technology be best leveraged for future projects?

Team Structure & Organization

The success of this project will ultimately rest on our ability to organize effective teams. Even the best idea in the world cannot come to fruition if a faulty team is involved. The model for the teams in this project comes from Professor Ancona’s work on X-Teams. The members of this course will make up a core organizational group in addition to being parts of individual operational groups. The class will also bring in outside expertise to help guide the organization’s evolution. As every member of the class will play a key role in a new X-Team, by the end of the class you will be able to answer:

· How can a large horizontal management structure effectively make decisions?

· Why are the three stages of X-Teams critical throughout the development process?

· What unique strategies can X-Teams employ from a human or technical perspective?

· How does your X-Team differ from the global teams and why?

· How do Distributed Leadership Methods and X-Teams complement one another?

· What are the necessary components to create effective teams?

Tools with Global Applicability

Students enrolled in this course will become proficient in a number of tools used by the design teams.

· MATLAB is the primary engine for our parametric systems model, developed over the summer by the Systems Architecture team. This model will be used to make strategic design choices by evaluating relative contributions of every subsystem to the behavior of the vehicle as a whole.

· SolidWorks is our primary medium for computer-aided design. Every subsystem team is required to produced SolidWorks drawings and specifications of their subsystem before construction commences.

· An LCA tool will be used to enable environmental impact as a fourth design pillar along with aesthetics, functionality, and cost. This tool will be consulted over the summer to identify the base case, and again to make design decisions.

· Arena Solutions, WebEx, and TWikis.

· Product design and development decision making matrices.

· Rapid Prototyping Equipment, generously provided by sponsors, will be utilized to gauge manufacturability and identify challenges not evident on paper.

Course Structure

Classes will be highly interactive and after the first several classes will focus almost exclusively on X-team activities. In addition, students will be expected to reach out to other organizations in order to learn about best practices at other organizations. Students will also be responsible for building a supportive team culture that gets results.

The course will have two 1 to 1 1/2 hour lecture each week in addition to a 3 hour lab time. The lecture slots will be used for presentations by professors and industry leaders with expertise in relevant fields. Contingent upon whether you join the class as seminar or 12+ unit course, you will also be expected to join the labs. Labs will involve 1-3 hours of collective interaction with the VDS global teams, team specific faculty advisors and group development work.

Over IAP, students with availability will be invited to join the VDS Global Consortium to assemble the first prototype of the VDS Vision. Throughout the term, students will also be invited to present their work to the VDS global consortium during design reviews, through content development on our internal forum and through in-person communications.

Individuals and Teams will be responsible for accurately documenting the whole design process, with periodic submissions for review. The students will turn in weekly submissions, documenting all the work that has been done for the week, and laying out a plan for the following week. They will also be responsible for assessing how well the team met the goals for the week. Specific assignments are outlined by week in the syllabus and will be honed as each team develops and clearly defines to operating agenda.

The class will have an midway design review meant for practice toward the final presentation, and a formal update to everyone of each team’s status. This will include technical information as well as an update on team functionality.

The class will give a Final Design Review, which will constitute part of the final design review for the Vehicle Design Summit. This will be webcast across the world with all the individual teams also working toward the Final Design Review.

Readings:

Excerpts from Clock Speed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage by Charles H. Fine, Basic Books, 1998.

Excerpts from The Machine that Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production by James Womack, Daniel Jones and Daniel Roos, Free Press, 1990.

Excerpts from Product Design and Development by Karl Ulrich and Steven Eppinger, McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2008.

Excerpts from X-teams: how to build teams that lead, innovate, and succeed by Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman, Harvard Business School Press, 2007.

VDS management documents, team technical work and industry review.

Course Evaluation:

Unless specifically requested, the class will be run Pass / Fail. Grades will be computed by weighting your scores on each component of the class as follows:

1. Class and Team Participation 30%

Since this is an experiential class focused on leadership, we aim to enable everyone to exceed all expectations. This includes unique strategies to bring first-hand information to the group, innovative strategies to inspire colleagues, and catalyze breakthrough ideas. Of course, participation also includes doing the readings and speaking up in class. In addition participation involves being an active X-team member; contributing to the various team assignments and tasks, and helping the team to develop a supportive and performance-enhancing culture.

2. Interim Team Assignment 30%

Midway through the class, each team will be asked to do an interim assessment and progress report. Each team will report on their exploration activities and plans for transition to exploitation. In addition, team members will report on how well their team is operating and what can be done to enhance effectiveness in creating an innovative, useful product.

3. Weekly Product Development Updates 10%

Each week, every team will present an update on their work to the VDS global consortium. This work is critical because it will serve as your primary strategy to act as leaders (unless you develop a more effective one, which will win you bonus points). The form of these deliverables will vary.

4. Final Team Assignment 30%

On the last day of class team members will present their respective VDS ‘products’ as well as a roadmap for implementation that best enables the VDS Consortium to succeed. You will also present the steps they went through as a team and what they learned. Mapping your work as example of how the global teams might most effectively function is critical to the long-term success of VDS.

*Please note that within the context of VDS, we define failure as death, the creation of super-fund sites or economic depression. This is a low-risk, high return game and we invite you to bring everything you have. In line, success for us is world peace, global sustainability and an end to global weirding. We are not joking, and most honored to have you.
Week 1: Overview of Class, Introduction to VDS to Date
The aim of the first week is to get everyone situated both within VDS and the class, as well as accent the fact that while this is technically an educational experience, VDS is also a very real and living entity that is supporting hundreds of minds, directing research and poised to have a serious impact on how people learn, do business and move. Within this context, we will work during the first few meetings to clarify expectations and ensure that everyone is set to go.

Lectures:
September 5th: Prof. Ancona will provide a one-hour introduction to the course, which will be followed by a half-hour of VDS to-date.
Deliverable for the 10th: 1-2 page memo on which aspects of your leadership style you would most like to develop during the VDS class.

Readings: X-Teams chapter 1 (Anconca); VDS Tasking Document (on stellar)

September 7th: Anna Jaffe and Jonathan Krones will present on:

· Motivators that drive VDS (mission, vision, your role)

· VDS collaboration framework

· Your global teams, including their work to date

· The VDS Vision 200 as a product

· Definition of risk and leverage within VDS

· Incentives: beyond becoming a leader, what will you learn, do?

Deliverable: 1 page memo describing what kind of team you might most want to join within the context of VDS.


Week 2: Distributed Global Teams as Enabled by X-Teams

This week we will review the Distributed Leadership Model as foundation for VDS. This is the basis for many of the courses and workshops that are run at Sloan and will be fundamental to the strategies we develop to lead our 33 distributed global teams. Readings related to the model will be handed out at the end of class.
With the DLM in hand, we will examine X-Teams as a strategy to organize and enable any team and in particular distributed teams working to develop a product. The aim of this overview is to provide you with background enough to develop the project focus you will work with throughout the course and prepare you to assess the relevance and priority of actions. In class, you will have a chance to brainstorm product ideas that will enhance the program. You will put ideas of products up around the room and class members will form teams around shared interests. Then teams will begin team building.

Lectures:
September 12th: Prof. Ancona on the Distributed Leadership Model.
Read: “X-teams” chapters 2, 3, 4
September 14th: Prof. Ancona on X-Teams.

Task: Interview three to five people who can hone your product definition.
VDS Deliverable: Systems Architecture Team presents 1 hr overview of summer work (taped and uploaded).

Group Deliverables:
1. Working groups informally established.
2. Individual assignments determined and global teams organized.
3. Preliminary X-Teams implementation strategy honed.

Week 3: VDS Stakeholders, X-Teams Exploration
With solid background in leadership and team development, you will be introduced to India as an emerging market, with emphasis placed on the impact developments in the automotive industry will have in the near and long-term in supporting a clean, prosperous, valuable nation. The first lecture will focus on India as context and include strategies for road mapping from a technological, cultural and legislative standpoint as tool for radical innovation.
With an understanding of how our context enables us to leverage the work accomplished within VDS, we will focus on product development and design, with emphasis on user interactions, human need and service provision. VDS has worked with Design Continuum and Draper Labs to develop our design review process, but the specific strategies we employ to bring the work of our global teams into line with the findings our our scenario, context and services groups has yet to be established and is of critical import. This topic will evolve into one of the x-team products. You will learn to employ the VIP method and compare it to a number of other strategies. Dr. Crawley will focus on the domain of the architecture and design of complex systems.

Lectures:
September 19th: Prof. Fine on context and road mapping in India.
September 21st: Prof. Crawley on the topic of product design.
September 21st part 2: TUDelft presentation on VIP method.
Readings: Excerpts from Clock Speed (Fine), Product Design and Development (Ulrich and Eppinger)
Deliverables will be tuned once project areas have been established. Potential outcomes at this point include:
1. Technical, cultural, legislative roadmaps in skeleton form from groups.
2. Operations guidelines for consortium.
3. Preliminary business case.
4. Systems-integration methodology

5. User-interactions that might inform the business model.

Week 4: Life Cycle Implications, X-Teams Exploration
The primary aim of VDS is to enrich the human experience by introducing an innovation paradigm that enables humanity to radically reduce its footprint on the planet. On this account, VDS is driven by a stated goal to demonstrate a 95% reduction in overall life-cycle costs across the board (including embodied energy, materials, toxicity, and social fragmentation) while decreasing congestion by at least half. To do this, our core leadership team must be fluent in strategies to achieve these ends and support our global team in benchmarking its progress. We will evaluate Argonne National Lab's GREET model, MEPSS Italian model, Toyota's Eco-VAS and the SimaPro tools.
Understanding a products impact from cradle-to-grave requires significant interaction with all stakeholders involved in the materials selection, processing, assembly, use and re-use phases. To enable participants to gather the requisite data and expertise, we will examine the exploration phase of an x-team's activities and apply this new found expertise to determine what role life-cycle will play from a business, technical and philosophical perspective.

Lectures:
September 26th: Prof. Ancona: X-Teams Exploration
Read: “X-teams” chapters 5 and 6
September 28th part 1: Prof. Field: Life Cycle Assessment, Materials Selection, Systems Optimization.
September 28th part 2: Polimi di Milano to present on service model and design via LCA (30 minutes)
Deliverables from VDS: LCA presentations by global teams (15 minutes each, taped and uploaded)
Tutorial: SimaPro and GREET modeling.
Deliverables:
1. LCA of Prius
2. Updated operations strategy reflecting exploration strategy by team.
3. Memo on key leverage points re: materials selection

Week 5: Changeability in Product Design, X-Teams Exploitation
Many engineering systems of the past were designed with only immediate use in mind as well as in relative isolation from broader considerations of context and uncertainty. Research in changeability acknowledges that systems need to change over time, such as growing in terms of capacity, infusing of new technologies or adaptation to shifting customer needs and regulations. Changeability research traces the evolution and change over time of existing technical systems, formalizes patterns of change propagation and develops methods and tools for finding where and how to embed flexibility in design and how to value such flexibility, e.g. as real options (ESD website, de Weck).

During this week, teams will learn to leverage the information gathered during the exploration phase to make traction towards the goal of developing their product. Key characteristics of the X-Teams exploitation phase will be examined and implemented within the context of each team’s work.

Lectures:
October 3rd, 2007: Prof. de Weck on changeability in product design
October 5th, 2007: Prof. Ancona on Exploitation in X-Teams
Field Trip to Design Continuum for design charrette.
Deliverables:
1. Strategy to exploit information gathered team by team.
2. 1 page memo on impact of changeability from consumer, manufacturing, service-case.

Week 6: Detail Design and Exportation of Findings

The focus of this week will be on systems architecture and engineering within the context of all information gathered to this point. In particular, we will examine the critical role exportation plays throughout the design process in enabling systems co-optimization.

Lectures:
October 10th: Prof. de Weck on Systems Integration and Systems Co-Optimization

Decision making matrix with justifications within the context of R&D cost, quality of design, systems integration, and end result.

October 12th: Prof. Ancona on Exportation in X-Teams

Read: “X-teams” chapters 8 and 9.

Week 7: Design for Manufacturability and Mid-term review

The topic for the seventh week is reality: both in the context of an update on your work to date and introduction to the topic of manufacturability, which will drive much of our product development process after we return from the break provided by SIP.

October 17th: Prof. Roos* on Lean Manufacturing

October 19th: Prof. Ancona on Project Reviews.

30 minute presentation by each team. In class your team will discuss what is going well and what is going poorly in your team. How can you change to be more effective? You will need to think about how to write your interim report and prepare an oral presentation for Thursday. Also, you will need to think about how to move from exploration to exploitation activity. This is the time to shift from exploring the terrain to focusing on one product idea. Teams will present on:

1. What did you do during exploration?

2. What have you learned about your product, the market, the organization, key stakeholders, yourselves, and the cultural and political landscape during exploration.

3. How has your product idea shifted as a result of exploration?

4. What is your current thinking about what your ‘product’ will be?

5. How well have you worked as an X-Team? What did your self-report data say? What have you learned about X-Teams? What can be done to improve team function?

6. What is your plan for exploitation?

Grades are based on content, presentation, use of readings, and how well you worked at following the X-team framework. In addition, each team should write up a brief (5-page limit) summary of its answers to the questions listed above to be handed in to Professor Ancona. The written report should include a section on how well the course is going and how it can be improved.

Week 8: Sloan Innovation Period – October 22-26th

Sloan students will participate in SIP while non-sloan students will work with VDS Org to hone their project work and coordinate with the work of the global teams. SIP participants will prepare a half-hour presentation on lessons learned for the 31^st.

Week 9: Value-Chains and Exportation Phase II

Prof. Fine will focus on the technology supply chains within the context of VDS. He examines how to assess the present—and especially the future—profitability and strategic leverage among the various sectors in the supply chain; how to design the supply chain (i.e., determine the boundaries and identity of the organization) based on strategic and logistical assessments; and how to assemble the capability to realize the chosen organizational boundaries and manage within and across those boundaries.

Within the context of developing stakeholder relationships, we will revisit the three phases of X-Teams life and understand how each develops your position of influence. You will be presented with a range of negotiating skills and be asked to participate in an in-class role play that will involve members of our global design teams and sponsor network for collective benefit.

October 31^st: Prof. Charlie Fine on Value-Chain Optimizations

Deliverable: From the perspective of greatest impact on global industry, functionality of product, service and experience and business case, we will hone the VDS roadmaps and also begin to develop the ideal supply / value-chain strategy based on information gathered to date about our environment and design.

November 2^nd: Prof. Ancona on Exploration Influence

Read: Building a Strong Power Base and Using Influence Wisely by Whetten and Cameron. Be sure to read carefully the section “Transforming Power into Influence” pp. 270-277. In class we will do a role play using influence skills.

Week 9: Systems Dynamics and Demand-Response

The aim of VDS is to inspire lasting and far-reaching change. This brings with it an incredible amount of responsibility and the necessity that we poses a finely tuned ability to understand the nuances of the systems in which we work. To cultivate this expertise, Prof. Sterman will discuss topics of systems thinking and organizational learning, computer simulation of corporate strategy, and the theory of nonlinear dynamics. We will consider the dynamics of organizational change and the implementation of sustainable improvement programs to experimental studies assessing public understanding of global climate change. This topic will continue to be developed in a series of independent meetings, pending scheduling success.

With a preliminary systems-level understanding in hand, we will take the topic of policies for socio-economic development within the context of VDS as key area to develop systems models. Prof. Moavenzadeh will share his insight into the institutional structures required to develop a viable science and technology infrastructure that could serve the human resource development strategy of newly industrialized nations.

November 7^th: Prof. Sterman* on Systems Dynamics

November 9^th: Prof. Fred Moavenzadeh* on Demand-Response Management

Week 10: Preparation for Global Design Review in Leuven, Belgium

Because VDS is a globally distributed initiative, we rely on a number of in-person design reviews to enable clear communications channels and rapid progress. The third in a series, the design review held in Belgium will provide the VDS class with the opportunity to share their work formally with the VDS global community. We will leverage this opportunity to hone exportation strategies as X-Teams.

November 14^th: Prof. Ancona on Exportation as a Design Driver

November 16^th: Design Review Presentations

Week 11: Service-Model as Business Case

The stated goal of VDS is to cut congestion by half and parking requirements per vehicle by six from industrial levels. To do this, we will rely on a carefully crafted business plan that keeps he Vision in motion. As second driver, economic conditions in India require a return on investment to speed time to market for this technology. To provide insight on the topic of care-sharing and multi-modal use, Robin Chase will be invited to join our discussion. The co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, a company that makes it almost as easy to rent a car as it is to get cash from an ATM machine, she has expertise in branding, strategy and entrepreneurship. Through GoLoco, she is also developing an understanding of what it takes to turn an idea into a movement and achieve real mobility.

November 21st: Prof. Ancona on Exploitation Phase II

November 23^rd: Guest Lecturer Robin Chase*, Founder of ZipCar

Week 12: Open-Source Collaborative Development

Intellectual property is a challenging topic within the context of VDS, and something we will examine with all of the cards on hand. Specifically, we will try to answer the questions: what are platform technologies and which