Innovating Service With Chip Bell
One of my favorite Halloween memories was decorating the annual giant pumpkin with my son when he was young. As a toddler, he was primarily an observer as he watched me sculpt the face of the pumpkin...
Mark Greevan
China’s dominance in manufacturing has made it the factory for the world. The subsequent economic growth enriched an ever-expanding middle class, and the country’s retail industry has quickly adapted...
Angus Robertson
Often, there’s a razor-thin margin between success and failure. Not long ago, Gillette—which dominated the $3.5 billion market for razors and accessories for longer than a century—was challenged by a...
Rachel Gordon
First published Nov. 5, 2021, on MIT CSAIL News.
At just 1 year old, a baby is more dexterous than a robot. Sure, machines can do more than just pick up and put down objects, but we’re not...
Matt Fieldman
In September 2021, I was fortunate to attend the FABTECH conference in Chicago, a sprawling trade show with what must have been billions of dollars of manufacturing equipment on display: robots,...
Julia Canale
Believe it or not, the technology that brought you Bitcoin is beginning to make waves in the food manufacturing industry. This technology, called blockchain, is a digital ledger maintained across...
John Colmers
This story was originally published by Knowable Magazine.
The way the United States typically finances hospitals isn’t working. The coronavirus laid this bare, along with many other long-standing...
Christine Schaefer
When the City of Germantown, Tennessee, was named a Baldrige Award recipient in 2019, the small suburb of Memphis (just 20 square miles in size) became only the fourth city to earn the...
Alena Komaromi
Negotiators are often told they should eschew competitive negotiations, where parties fight for what’s on the table. They should instead increase the size of the pie and seek win-win scenarios. But...
Adam Zewe
In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention produced a simple chart to illustrate how measures like mask wearing and social distancing could “flatten...
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Although laser-based 3D printing techniques have revolutionized the production of metal parts by greatly expanding design complexity, the laser beams traditionally used in metal printing have...
Rob Lowe
Much like many industries, the manufacturing sector has been completely upended by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, unlike many sectors, manufacturing was already in the midst of a consistent cycle of...
Zach Winn
More and more people are doing their shopping from home these days, and whether they’re ordering groceries, home office equipment, or Covid-19 tests, they increasingly expect their deliveries to be...
Dirk Dusharme @ Quality Digest
For most of 2021, roughly 4 percent of the retail workforce has quit every month; in June alone 632,000 workers quit their retail job. Even though retail workers are quitting at a record pace, more...
Karla Jo Helms
Disruptors are defined by several characteristics. They see beyond the existing status quo and challenge it by visualizing improvement and the outcome of that solution. Innovators do not provoke...
Sachin Waiker
Know who invented the first digital camera? It was Kodak—or more accurately, an engineer at the historic camera company who conceived the technology and built a prototype in 1975. But corporate...
Adam Zewe
MIT researchers have developed a new method to 3D print mechanisms that detect how force is being applied to an object. The structures are made from a single piece of material, so they can be rapidly...
Gleb Tsipursky
Fear of losing their innovative edge pushes many leaders to reject hybrid and virtual work arrangements. Yet extensive research shows that hybrid and remote teams can gain an innovation advantage and...
Kylie Foy
First published Oct. 4, 2021, on MIT News.
When it comes to games such as chess or Go, artificial intelligence (AI) programs have far surpassed the best players in the world. These “superhuman” AIs...
William A. Levinson
Luddism is, as depicted by Henry Ford, “...the theory that there is only so much work in the world to do and it must be strung out.”1 This dysfunctional paradigm is shared today by otherwise highly...
