The Stage-Gate® model describes how a firm should structure its product development process using a sophisticated system of project phases and milestones. The model is based on 60 case studies on efficient product innovation processes. The product development process is seen as one of the key factors that determine the success of new products. The case...

Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian professor of Sociology, was best known for popularising views on the effect of the new communication technologies of television and radio on a society's culture. He saw culture as a derivative of technological change rather than an independent factor. He introduced the public to such terms as the 'global village' and...

In the mid 1970's, Marvin Weisbord, an organisational design consultant, created his six boxes model as a diagnostics tool of organisational effectiveness. He identified six key areas in which 'things must go right' and be internally consistent for an organisation to be successful. The result of the diagnosis is a prioritised list of ready to be...

The Canadian academic, Henry Mintzberg, distinguished six coordination mechanisms from organisational design literature. Any group of individuals that needs to accomplish a complex task faces two opposing requirements: the division of labour of the task into subtasks to support specialisation, and the coordination of these subtasks to accomplish the overall...