The thesis explores a puzzle in technological capability development: many firms in China follow the "normal" way of technological capability development suggested by the existing literature but have not made much progress, while some firms that deviate from the "normal"…

Computers have dramatically changed the nature of structural engineering practice by shifting work from process-oriented tasks, such as performing hand calculations and drafting, to structural modeling and interpretation of computer results. To perform these new functions, engineers need to have…

The purpose of this paper is to introduce patent litigation as a leading indicator of market
growth. We model the intensity of patent litigation and the market growth for the
personal computer and cellular phone market in the US. By…

(cont.) to the verifier., We consider an implementation of a weakened notion of zero-knowledge (weak ZK) where the simulator is also allowed to depend on the distinguisher as well, so this type of ZK entails exhibiting an efficient simulator for…

by Stephen V. Glynn [and] Thomas G. Pelland., Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2000., Includes bibliographical references (p. 134-135).

Intelligent agents in the physical world must work from incomplete information due to partial knowledge and limited resources. An agent copes with these limitations by applying rules of conjecture to make reasonable assumptions about what is known. Circumscription, proposed by…

There are many situations in which a very detailed low-level description encodes, through a hierarchical organization, a recognizable higher-order pattern. The macro-molecular structural conformations of proteins exhibit higher order regularities whose recognition is complicated by many factors. ARIADNE searches for…

Many systems have been developed for constructing decision trees from collections of examples. Although the decision trees generated by these methods are accurate and efficient, they often suffer the disadvantage of excessive complexity that can render them incomprehensible to experts.…

Organizations must establish processes for managing knowledge across boundaries because of the specialized and task-dependent forms of knowledge required to deliver products and services. To address this challenge an integrative framework is developed that identifies and integrates the value of…

The first two chapters of this thesis investigate a possibly fundamental aspect of technological progress. If knowledge accumulates as technology progresses, then successive generations of innovators may face an increasing educational burden, forcing them to spend longer periods in education…