The use of global suppliers has increased considerably over the last three decades. Operations management theory establishes that global sourcing requires more units of inventory, but since these units are often procured at a lower cost from global suppliers the capital invested in inventory and...

Problem definition: Fast recovery from sourcing interruptions is a key objective for global supply chains and for business continuity professionals. In this paper, we study the impact of different supply chain strategies—supplier diversification and the use of long-term relationships—on the...

The transportation sector’s carbon footprint and dependence on oil are of deep concern to policy makers in many countries. Use of all-electric drive-trains is arguably the most realistic medium-term solution to address these concerns. However, motorist anxiety induced by an electric...

A systematic approach to innovating business models can help identify new business models that encourage sustainable use of products and services, or facilitate wider adoption of new environmentally friendly technologies. This article provides a brief summary of a conceptual framework (fully...

The case is about a new type of contact center – the virtual contact center – that employs a geographically dispersed workforce in the cloud. Founded in 2000, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, LiveOps’ ‘home-shore’ business model combines a dual innovation: (1) it allows agents to work when...

The authors study threshold discounting, or the practice of offering a discounted-price service if at least a pre-specified number of customers signal interest in it, as pioneered by Groupon. We model a capacity-constrained firm, a random-sized population of strategic customers, a desirable hot...

Outsourcing of equipment repair and restoration is commonly practiced by firms across many industries. The operational performance of the equipment is determined by joint decisions of both the firm and the service provider. Although some decisions are verifiable (and thus directly contractible),...

This paper provides the first large-scale empirical evidence of the association between specific properties of internet domain names and website performance. We analyze over one million internet domain names, linking their phonological and morphological attributes to the realized demand for...

This paper provides a novel explanation for the use of supply chain intermediaries such as Li & Fung Ltd.. We find that even in the absence of the well-known transactional and informational advantages of mediation, intermediaries improve supply chain performance. In particular, intermediaries...

We study the economics of sharing demand information between a dual sourcing firm and its network of retailers. Our analysis demonstrates that employing Advance Purchase Discount (APD) contracts in these supply chains removes significant impediments to information sharing. Essentially, these...