Crossing the chasm with beacon products in the portable music player industry

Firms competing in new product categories face great technical and market uncertainty as they try to move from early adopters to mainstream markets (83, 93 and 111). While the management literature identified several factors that may contribute to adoption, the role of specific product models has been understudied. To address this gap, we studied portable digital music players (MP3 players) from 1987–2006 and tested the role of specific product models in market takeoff, convergence and product category evolution. We introduced the concept of beacon product, defined as a specific product model that has great appeal to customers and sends a strong signal about what they want.     

From Experience: Linking Projects to Strategy

There is a dramatic rise in the use of project management as organizations shift to provide customer-driven results and systems solutions. Some implementations of project management have been successful, whereas others are spectacular failures. A common occurrence in many organizations is too many projects being attempted by too few people with no apparent link to strategy or organizational goals. Research and experience indicate that the support of upper management is critical to project success. This article reviews actions that upper managers can take to create an environment for more successful projects in their organizations. Specifically, the authors discuss practices for upper manager teamwork and offer a complete model for selecting projects that support a strategic emphasis. The article includes experiences from within Hewlett-Packard Company. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.     

The Destination Marketing Organization as an intelligent agent: Evaluating engagement in knowledge management practices

DMOs have been increasingly called upon to adopt the role of knowledge management, becoming intelligent agents with the capacity to gather, assess, and disseminate information among internal and external stakeholders. While knowledge management has remained a prominent topic in the literature, its application within the field of tourism management has been limited. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to ascertain to what extent DMOs have engaged in knowledge management practices through a nation-wide survey of 30 Canadian DMOs. The results demonstrate that, while DMOs have made progress toward becoming intelligent agents, there remains a long way to go.     

Experience and Learning with Improved Technologies: Evidence from Improved Biomass Cookstoves in Ethiopia

Environmental and Resource Economics - This paper provides field experiment-based evidence that user experience and learning can increase the attractiveness of an important new cooking technology...