Motivated by a $2.2 billion inventory write-off by Cisco Systems, we investigate how duplicate orders can lead a manufacturer to err in estimating the demand rate and customers' sensitivity to delay, and to make faulty decisions about capacity investment. We consider a manufacturer that sells...

Motivated by a $2.2 billion inventory write-off by Cisco Systems, we investigate how duplicate orders can lead a manufacturer to err in estimating the demand rate and customers' sensitivity to delay, and to make faulty decisions about capacity investment. We consider a manufacturer that sells...

Consider a firm that is developing a highly innovative product. Producing the product requires that an upstream supplier invest in production capacity well in advance. Because the product is ill-defined at the time when the supplier initiates his capacity investment, the firms are unable to...