Large High-tech Companies Research Articles

Protecting IP in Collaborative Research

OVERVIEW:The number of collaborative research agreements is increasing rapidly. Large high-tech companies are engaging smaller ones, Federal laboratories, universities, international firms, and competitors in ways not dreamed of just five years ago. Central to these collaborations is the need to share proprietary intellectual property (IP) to meet the collaboration's objectives, and to jointly create new IP. Firms face a number of predictable pitfalls as they work to achieve these objectives. However, these pitfalls can be overcome through an open discussion of risk and the linking of agreements to the marketplace and the technical intents of each party.

What Can Be Learned from CMMi Failures?

The software crisis has been around since 1968 when NATO first identified the problematic nature of software development. In recognition of the need to manage the process of software development many methodologies have been proposed over the years. A recent contribution to this rich set of rigorous software development methodologies is the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMi) methodology. While the minimal previous research on CMMi has extolled it, learning how to implement CMMi successfully requires leaning also from its failures. And yet, despite apparent anecdotes, little is known on this topic possibly because of the reluctance of many companies to wash their dirty linen in public. Based on a set of in-depth interviews accompanied with survey verification, this study examines the assessed effectiveness and efficiency of CMMi as implemented in several projects in a large high tech company in which only low levels of CMMi maturity were reached. In an exploratory manner this study shows the need to differentiate between the quality of the software product developed through CMMi and the quality of the process involved. The study also shows that whether the product is an off the shelf product or a customized one has a direct bearing of the quality of the product developed under CMMi methodology and the process itself. In particular, we discuss why some projects reach only a low maturity level of CMMi even though the organization as a whole might typically reach high maturity levels.

Renewal strategies in large high-tech companies: The European approach

The problem with large complex firms is that they are usually oriented towards short-term profits and operating efficiency and this undermines longterm competitiveness. This article presents two different ways of making more radical changes in larger complex firms through internal development. Two examples of product development are discussed, one in a creative company, the other in a more conservative and risk-avoiding company. A framework for successful behaviour is developed and some conclusions are drawn about how to get firms to pay more attention to the long-term and how product-intensive firms should be controlled.