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Joseph
M. Sussman
JR East Professor
Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering
and Engineering Systems
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts
May 29, 2007
Continuing
our tradition of several years, here is a recommended summer
ESD reading list. This year, we have a rich set of titles
from MIT ESD authors—four in number—and then
some additional titles that are in the ESD spirit, I believe.
 Jim
Utterback—Design-Inspired
Innovation
World Scientific Publishing Company, December 2006
Prof
Jim Utterback and several co-authors have written a book
which looks at the intersection between design and innovation,
and explores the novel ways in which designers are contributing
to the development of products and services. Its scope is
international, with emphasis on design activities in Boston,
England, Sweden, and Milan. Using a variety of cases and
cultural prisms, the book extends the traditional design
viewpoint and stretches the context of industrial design
to question—and answer—what design is really
all about. It gives readers tools for inspiration, and shows
how design can change language and even create human possibilities.
(Adapted from material provided by the publisher).
Dr.
Utterback is David J. McGrath jr (1959) Professor of Management
and Innovation and Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT.
 Tom
Allen—The
Organization and Architecture of Innovation: Managing the
Flow of Technology
Butterworth-Heinemann, October 2006
Co-authored
by Prof. Tom Allen and award-winning German architect Gunter
Henn of HENN Architekten, explores the combined use of two
management tools to make the innovation process most effective:
organizational structure and physical space. They present
research demonstrating how organizational structure and
physical space each affect communication among people in
this case, engineers, scientists, and others in technical
organizations and they illustrate how organizations can
transform both to increase the transfer of technical knowledge
and maximize the communication for inspiration that is central
to the innovation process. (Adapted from material provided
by the publisher).
Dr.
Allen is Margaret MacVicar Faculty Fellow, Howard W. Johnson
Professor of Management, Professor of Engineering Systems,
and a Co-Director of the Leaders
for Manufacturing and System
Design and Management Programs at MIT.
 Seth
Lloyd—Programming
the Universe
Knopf, March 2006
Is
the universe actually a giant quantum computer? According
to Dr. Lloyd, the answer is yes.
All interactions between particles in the universe, he explains,
convey not only energy but also information–in other
words, particles not only collide, they compute. What is
the entire universe computing, ultimately? “Its own
dynamical evolution,” he says. “As the computation
proceeds, reality unfolds.” (Adapted from material
provided by the publisher).
Dr.
Lloyd is Professor of Mechanical
Engineering and Engineering Systems at MIT.
 Donald
Rosenfield—Operations
Strategy: Competing in the 21st Century
McGraw-Hill/Irwin, May 2007
Co-authored
with Prof. Sara Beckman of University of California –
Berkeley, this book addresses the basic decisions leaders
of operations must address: vertical integration, capacity,
facilities, process technology, information technology,
sourcing, business process management, capabilities development
and supply chain integration. It integrates strategic considerations
with analytical models and provides a comprehensive view
of these critical decisions and the tools used to help make
them. The themes and conclusions offered by the authors
are based on recent research, particularly from LFM. (Adapted
from material provided by the publisher).
Dr.
Rosenfield is a senior lecturer at the Sloan
School of Management and Director of the LFM Fellows
Program at MIT.
 Warsh,
David—Knowledge
and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery
W. W. Norton, May 2006
David
Warsh used to write a fine column for the Boston Globe on
Sundays in the business page and I oftened wondered if he
was thinking of a book about economic history. I guess he
was and this is the book! He says it “is the story
of a single technical paper in economics” –
Paul Romer’s “Endogenous Technological Change”,
dealing with the “economics of knowledge” and
how knowledge leads to economic growth, but the book is
much more. It really builds the history of economic thought
in an impressive and interesting way starting with Adam
Smith!
A
lot of MIT folks in this—Samuelson, Solow, Krugman
and on and on. And some interesting ideas on modeling—here
is a quote from the flyleaf.
“The
construction of a model, or any theory for that matter (or
the writing of a novel, a short story or a play) consists
of snatching for the enormous and complex of facts called
reality a few simple, easily-managed key points which, when
put together in some cunning way, become for certain purposes
a substitute for reality itself.” Evsey Domar
Sounds
like ESD to me!
J. Sussman, May 26, 2007
 Nassim
Nicholas Taleb—The
Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Random
House, April 2007
Taleb
believes that the big money business and government spend
on prediction is useless and he chastises MBA- and Nobel
Prize-credentialed experts who earn their living from economic
forecasting. Taleb employs the metaphor of "the black
swan," whose discovery invalidated the theory that
all swans are white. Taleb explores the unpredicted event
in a range of phenomena, such as why a book becomes a best-seller
or how an entrepreneur becomes a billionaire and integrates
this with discussions on philosophers who have addressed
the meaning of the unexpected and confounding. (Adapted
from a review by the American Library Association).
Dr.
Taleb is on leave as the Dean’s Professor in the Sciences
of Uncertainty University of Massachusetts at Amherst, a
Fellow & Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the Courant
Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University
(since 1999), and affiliated faculty, Wharton School Financial
Institutions Center. Starting September 2007, he will be
a visiting professor at London Business School.
Colleagues—I
have the book and plan to read it this summer—very
well recommended by several of our systems colleagues at
the U. of Michigan – JS
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