An organization's ability to exploit extreme events - such as exceptional opportunities - depends on its capacity strategy. The venture capital industry illustrates the interplay of expensive capacity and negative externalities from high utilization. The cost of adding a venture capitalist...

When do short lead times warrant a cost premium? Decision makers generally agree that short lead times enhance competitiveness, but have struggled to quantify their benefits. Blackburn (2012) argued that the marginal value of time is low when demand is predictable and salvage values are high. De...

As the time between the decision about what to produce and the moment when demand is observed (the decision lead time) increases, the demand forecast becomes more uncertain. Uncertainty can increase gradually in decision lead time, or can increase as a dramatic change in median demand. Whether...

The special issue emerges at a time of intense debate concerning the role of manufacturing in the developed world. A general consensus that manufacturing strengthens the economy in which it is carried out and that innovation follows manufacturing combines with a recognition that manufacturing...

We develop a real-options model for optimizing production and sourcing choices under evolutionary supply-chain risk. We model lead time as an endogenous decision and calculate the cost differential required to compensate for the risk exposure coming from lead time. The shape of the resulting...

Empirically grounding analytics (EGA) is an area of research that emerges at the intersection of empirical and analytical research. By “empirically grounding,” we mean both the empirical justification of model assumptions and parameters and the empirical assessment of model results and...