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Weed-by-week schedule

Topic ideas

#

Date

Who

Topic

Readings before class

1

27-Aug

DGM

Course introduction

2

29-Aug

HRV

Selling information

Inforules: Chapters 1,
2 and 3

Software: Chapter 1, Sections 2.1 and 9.3

3

3-Sep

DGM

Hardware/software,
Moore's law

Software: Sections
2.2, 2.3

4

5-Sep

DGM

Software quality

Why Software is So
Bad

Software: Chapter 3

5

10-Sep

HRV

Economies of scale

Inforules: Chapter
7

Software: Sections 3.2 and 9.1, 9.2

6

12-Sep

HRV

IT and productivity

Software: Section 3.1

7

17-Sep

HRV

Auctions

8

19-Sep

Outside

Software development

Software: Section
4.1-3

9

24-Sep

DGM

10

26-Sep

Eric Allman of
Sendmail

Open source software

Software: Sections
4.2.4, 8.2-3

11

1-Oct

DGM

12

3-Oct

HRV

Switching costs

Inforules: Chapter
5,6

Software: Section 9.1.3

13

8-Oct

14

10-Oct

15

15-Oct

16

17-Oct

Jayarami Reddy of SUN

Standardization
processes (Java)

17

22-Oct

18

24-Oct

19

29-Oct

20

31-Oct

21

5-Nov

22

7-Nov

23

12-Nov

DEBATE

24

14-Nov

DEBATE

25

19-Nov

26

21-Nov

27

26-Nov

DEBATE

Online media

0

28-Nov

HOLIDAY

28

3-Dec

DEBATE

29

5-Dec

DEBATE

Title

Who?

Description

Economies of scale

HV

Many IT industries
exhibit significant economies of scale, which means, roughly, larger firms
have a competitive advantage.
What are the sources of this competitive advantage on the demand side,
and the supply side, and how do they influence industry structure and
corporate strategy?

Hardware and software
complementarity

DM

What are the scaling
laws for hardware underlying Moore's law? In any given implementation, how do
we trade off hardware vs. software? How does Moore's law underlie the
expansion of the software industry? What happens to the software industry if
Moore's law came to a halt?

Selling information

HV

Review of basic business
models for pricing and selling information goods.

IT and productivity

HV

What is productivity,
how can it be measured, and what is its role at the level of the economy, the
industry, the firm, and with business processes?

Auctions

HV

Computer based
communication has made it much easier and cheaper to conduct online auctions
and serveral successful businesses have been built around this model.  We will describe some of the theory
and practice of auction design.

On-Line media

Pau Grabowicz

What is happening with
oneline media?  What's the state
of the online advertising market?
Are there success stories?

Multimedia

Marc Davis

What are business
prospects in multimedia?  What can
we expect to see developing in
this area?

Open source software

Eric Allman of Sendmail

What are some
distinctive licensing terms and conditions? What does open source teach us
about software development in a commercial context? How can open source be
used as a competitive tool?

Software quality

DM

Why is software quality
perceived to be so low? Is this a correct perception?What is needed to fix
the problem: a different industry culture, different economic incentives,
more product liability lawyers? Or is perhaps the industry just immature?

Software development
methodolgies

Outside speaker

As software development
projects get more and more ambitious, how are processes and tools evolving to
meet this challenge? How can we get higher quality and more secure software?

Software distribution
options

DM

There is an expending
list of software distribution options, including network download, removable
media, application service provider, and Web services, as well as different
intermediate forms (native code, source code, scripting, and intermediate
forms of object code). What are the business implications of all these
options?

Peer-to-peer
architecture

DM

What are the business
opportunities and implications of the peer-to-peer distributed software model
as opposed to its more centralized options (client-server and Web services)?

Open systems

DM

What are the relative
merits of open vs proprietary systems, from different perspectives (customer,
supplier, policy, legal, etc)?

Switching costs

HV

Many technologies
exhibit significant switching costs, so that once they are adopted, it is
very hard to switch to an alternative.
What are the implications of switching costs for industry structure
and corporate strategy?

Options compensation

HV

Options compensation is
widely used in technology industries.
What are the theories and facts about options as incentive devices,
and what underlies the current controversy about the accounting treatment.

Security and privacy in
the marketplace

DM

Does the marketplace
provide sufficient incentives for security and privacy? If not, what can we
do about it?

Distributed system
management

DM

What are the sources of
value in delivering working software to the end user? What are the challenges
in dealing with distributed management of applications, and how do we deal
with them? Are Web services a panacia?

Instructional
management systems

Fred Beshears of
Berkeley ETS

What are the tradeoffs
between choosing a coodinated solution vs. local autonomy and innovation.
Illustrates in one concrete case how content suppliers, software suppliers,
and end users respond to the need for commonality.

Industrial organization
and software architecture

DM

What is the
relationship? Which is cause and which is effect? In practice what are the
mechanisms by which software archtiectures involving multiple firms are
determined?

Architectural control

DM

How does a firm gain
control over a software arcitecture, and what advantages and challenges arise
from that control? How should government policies interfere, if at all?

Telecom

Greg Duncan

How did we get into
this mess, and what are future prospects for the industry.

Politics in
standardization

Jayarami Reddy of SUN

What really happens in
standardization? How do firms game the system, how does standardization fit
in corporate strategy, how can standardization be used as a competitive tool?

Infrastructure and
application complementarity

DM

What is infrastructure,
why is it important? How does the market handle the complementarity of
infrastructure and applications?

Disruptive technologies

Steve Blumenfeld of AOL

Disruptive technologies
and why they are important to organizations, but also why they are
disruptive. How does a firm launch new products and services with partners?

Software industry
structure

DM

What are the
implications in moving industry structure from from stovepipes to layering;
from product to service?

Components

Clemens Syzperski of
Microsoft

Software industrial
revolution: Why hasn’t the industrial revolution of software happened?
Will it in the future?

Components: from
hardware and software to systems

DM

What is a component?
How do hardware and software components differ? Why are components rarely
thought of in systems, and should they?

Web services

DM

What are the technical,
quality, and legal issues surrounding Web services? What about trust and
liability?

Investing in software

DM

What types of software
are best pursued by a large firm, by a small boutique firm, by venture
capture funding? What is the relationship between mechanisms for investment
and success, and how does this depend on the type of software?

Document engineering

Bob Glusko

How to reorganize the
flow of information in an organization.
Planning, practice, and productivity.

Strategic standards
setting

HV

Standards setting is
critically important in technology industries.  How does it affect the economic forces
at work, and what sorts of strategies are used?

Managing patent
portfolios

Peter Detkin of the
Intel

How do patent
portfolios fit into corporate strategy, and how does this differ across
startups, small and large firms, hardware and software? What are the merits
of defensive and offensive strategies against competitors?

Trade secrets, patents,
and copyrights

DM

In what ways are
intellectual property law failing to keep up with changing technologies?
Similarly the business models of content and intellectual property suppliers?
What should be done about this?

Research and the future

DM

What kinds of research
can a firm support, and why? What is tech transfer? What will be the impact
of future developments in information appliances, pervasive computing,
mobility, etc?

Dealing with piracy

DM

The content and
software markets have taken very different directions to dealing with piracy.
If a good is subject to piracy, what are the tradeoffs between policy, law
enforcement, and business models?

Software and protected
speech

DM

Resolved: software
should be protected speech under the first amendment

Antitrust in software

Carl Shapiro

What are the issues in
the Microsoft case, and how could or should they be resolved?

Privacy

Allessandro Acquisti

Privacy is both a
social policy problem and a business problem.  What policies and practices are
necessary and appropriate?

Service providers

DM

Telecom has
traditionally depended on a service provider (supplier-customer
intermediary), but this is only now becoming prominent in software. What are
the advantages and disadvantages to supplier and customer, how does this
affect pricing strategies, etc.?

TCPA

Debate

What are the tradeoffs
between the interests of content suppliers and platofrm suppliers? What are
the implications for technology and content suppliers, and for makers of open
platforms and for information applicances?

Platofrms

Debate

Should the owner of a
platform for new applications (in this case wireless cell phones) have the
right to control what applications run on that platform? Another example is
unbundled digital subscriber loop. What are the downsides, and what are the
possible problems if access is opened up?

Copy protection

Debate

Resolved: Copy
protection and watermarking technologies are effective if protected by
anticircumvention laws, and there is no need for content suppliers to alter
their business models

Telecommunications

Debate

Resolved: The
telecommunications infrastructure in the U.S. is in serious trouble and needs
a government bailout.

Architectural control

Debate

Resolved: Architectural
control is a market dominating strategy, and thus must be closely regulated
by the government.

Options compensation

Debate

Resolved: Accounting
rules should be changed so that options are expensed.

Internet domains

Debate

Resolved: The top level
domain space should be dramatically expanded.

Number portabiility

Debate

Resolved: Number
portability should be mandated by the government.