MIS 301 - Midterm Vocab

Internet of Things (IoT)

A vision where low-cost sensors, processors, and communication are embedded into a wide array of products and our environment, allowing a vast network to collect data, analyze input, and automatically coordinate collective action.

IPO

the first time a firm makes shares available via a public stock exchange, also known as "going public."

Scale Advantages

Advantages related to size.

Distribution Channels

The path through which products or services get to customers.

Private

Buying up a publicly traded firm's shares. Usually done when a firm has suffered financially and when a turnaround strategy will first yield losses that would further erode share price.

information asymmetry

A decision situation where one party has more or better information than its counterparty.

viral marketing

Leveraging consumers to promote a product or service.

switching cost

The cost a consumer incurs when moving from one product to another. It can involve actual money spent (e.g., buying a new product) as well as investments in time, any data loss, and so forth.

strategic positioning

Performing different tasks than rivals, or the same tasks in a different way.

APIs

Programming hooks, or guidelines, published by firms that tell other programs how to get a service to perform a task such as send or receive data.

economies of scale

When costs can be spread across increasing units of production or in serving multiple customers. Businesses that have favorable _________ (like many Internet firms) are sometimes referred to as being highly scalable.

inventory turns

It is the number of times inventory is sold or used during a given period. A higher figure means that a firm is selling products quickly.

resource-based view of competitive advantage

The strategic thinking approach suggesting that if a firm is to maintain sustainable competitive advantage, it must control an exploitable resource, or set of resources, that have four critical characteristics. These resources must be (1) valuable, (2) rare, (3) imperfectly imitable, and (4) nonsubstitutable.

operational effectiveness

Performing the same tasks better than rivals perform them.

value chain

The set of activities through which a product or service is created and delivered to customers.

fast follower problem

Exists when savvy rivals watch a pioneer's efforts, learn from their successes and missteps, then enter the market quickly with a comparable or superior product at a lower cost before the first mover can dominate.

brand

The symbolic embodiment of all the information connected with a product or service.

affiliates

Third parties that promote a product or service, typically in exchange for a cut of any sales.

imitation-resistant value chain

A way of doing business that competitors struggle to replicate and that frequently involves technology in a key enabling role.

augmented-reality

A technology that superimposes content, such as images and animation, on top of real-world images.

dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM)

A technology that increases the transmission capacity (and hence speed) of fiber-optic cable. Transmissions using fiber are accomplished by transmitting light inside "glass" cables.

Porter's five forces

Also known as Industry and Competitive Analysis. A framework considering the interplay between (1) the intensity of rivalry among existing competitors, (2) the threat of new entrants, (3) the threat of substitute goods or services, (4) the bargaining power of buyers, and (5) the bargaining power of suppliers.

straddling

Attempts to occupy more than one position, while failing to match the benefits of a more efficient, singularly focused rival.

commodity

A basic good that can be interchanged with nearly identical offerings by others—think milk, coal, orange juice, or to a lesser extent, Windows PCs and Android phones.

sustainable competitive advantage

Financial performance that consistently outperforms industry averages.

price transparency

The degree to which complete information is available.

Non-Practicing Entities

Commonly known as patent trolls, these firms make money by acquiring and asserting patents, rather than bringing products and services to market.

network effects

Also known as Metcalfe's Law, or network externalities. When the value of a product or service increases as its number of users expands.

PDAs

Personal digital assistants, an early name for handheld mobile computing devices.

logistics

Coordinating and enabling the flow of goods, people, information, and other resources among locations.

contract manufacturing

Outsourcing production to third-party firms. Firms that use contract manufacturers don't own the plants or directly employ the workers who produce the requested goods.

point-of-sale (POS) system

Transaction processing systems that capture customer purchases. Cash registers and store checkout systems are examples of ______________. These systems are critical for capturing sales data and are usually linked to inventory systems to subtract out any sold items.

return on investment (ROI)

The amount earned from an expenditure.

greige

Goods to be further customized based on designer/manager collaboration.

RFID

Small chip-based tags that wirelessly emit a unique identifying code for the item that they are attached to.

vertical integration

When a single firm owns several layers in its value chain.

showrooming

The concept where customers browse at physical retailers, but purchase products from lower-cost online rivals.

operations

The organizational activities that are required to produce goods or services.

information system (IS)

An integrated solution that combines five components: hardware, software, data, procedures, and the people who interact with and are impacted by the system.

omnichannel

An approach to retail that offers consumers an integrated and complementary set of shop, sales, and return experiences (e.g., retail store, online, and sometimes even phone and catalog).

silicon wafer

A thin, circular slice of material used to create semiconductor devices.

volatile memory

Storage (such as RAM chips) that is wiped clean when power is cut off from a device.

flash memory

Nonvolatile, chip-based storage, often used in mobile phones, cameras, and MP3 players.

grid computing

A type of computing that uses special software to enable several computers to work together on a common problem, as if they were a massively parallel supercomputer.

cluster computing

Connecting server computers via software and networking so that their resources can be used to collectively solve computing tasks.

software as a service (SaaS)

A form of cloud computing where a firm subscribes to a third-party software and receives a service that is delivered online.

microcontrollers

Special-purpose computing devices that don't have an operating system and can't do as much as general purpose computers or smartphones. Most _______________, like those based on the popular open-source Arduino platform, contain a processor, memory and input/output (I/O) peripherals on a single chip.

server farm

A massive network of computer servers running software to coordinate their collective use. _____________ provide the infrastructure backbone to SaaS and hardware cloud efforts, as well as many large-scale Internet services.

latency

A term often used in computing that refers to delay, especially when discussing networking and data transfer speeds.

fabs

Semiconductor fabrication facilities; the multibillion-dollar plants used to manufacture semiconductors.

supercomputers

Computers that are among the fastest of any in the world at the time of their introduction.

semiconductor

A substance such as silicon dioxide used inside most computer chips that is capable of enabling as well as inhibiting the flow of electricity.

microprocessor

The part of the computer that executes the instructions of a computer program.

random-access memory (RAM)

The fast, chip-based volatile storage in a computing device.

Moore's Law

Chip performance per dollar doubles every eighteen months.

massively parallel

Computers designed with many microprocessors that work together, simultaneously, to solve problems.

multicore microprocessors

Microprocessors with two or more (typically lower power) calculating processor cores on the same piece of silicon.

optical fiber line

A high-speed glass or plastic-lined networking cable used in telecommunications.

HPC

A term for massively parallel computers specifically designed to deliver significantly more calculating power than conventional off-the-shelf computing technologies. The term is often used interchangeably with supercomputing.

nonvolatile memory

Storage that retains data even when powered down (such as flash memory, hard disc, or DVD storage).

price elasticity

The rate at which the demand for a product or service fluctuates with price change.

e-waste

Discarded, often obsolete technology

solid state electronics

Semiconductor-based devices. Often suffer fewer failures and require less energy than mechanical counterparts because they have no moving parts. RAM, flash memory, and microprocessors are solid state devices. Hard drives are not.

cloud computing

Replacing computing resources—either an organization's or individual's hardware or software—with services provided over the Internet.

KPIs

measurable values defined by a firm to demonstrate progress toward a given goal. Examples are quite broad and could include customer acquisition, cost reduction, or improvement in the ROI of online ad campaigns.

blockchain

A distributed and decentralized ledger that records and verifies transactions and ownership, making it difficult to tamper with or shut down.

bitcoin

An open source, decentralized payment system (sometimes controversially referred to as a digital, virtual, or cryptocurrency) that operates in a peer-to-peer environment, without bank or central authority.

cryptocurrencies

A digital asset where a secure form of mathematics (cryptography) is used to handle transactions, control the creation of additional units, and verify the transfer of assets.

virtual machine

A software-based representation of a physical computer, complete with operating system and any attendant software that are part of the model being instantiated. You can use a ______________ like a physical machine, and install software, create files, etc. ______________ can also be subject to viruses, security vulnerabilities, and other weaknesses of physical computing, although a cloud computing provider can take some measures to prevent attacks and provide backup and redundancy.

bursting

Shifting capacity to a cloud provider during periods of high demand. A firm that can take advantage of _____________ to scale its information systems should never see its resources overtaxed since it can always rely on its partner to pick up any slack, as needed.

liquidity problems

Problems that arise when organizations cannot easily convert assets to cash. Cash is considered the most liquid asset—that is, the most widely accepted with a value understood by all.

operating income

Income you generate through your operations. Sales through daily business operations minus related expenses. Net income is overall "profit" but can include things such as income from investments, expenses related to financing costs or taxes, or one-time income or expenses such as a gain from a sales or a corporate fine.

collaborative filtering

A classification of software that monitors trends among customers and uses this data to personalize an individual customer's experience.

white label

A fully supported product or service that's made by one company but sold by another. The term was popular by branded appliances, like Sears Kenmore, which were often designed and manufactured by established firms such as Maytag and General Electric. The term is now used in all sorts of products and services, including ______________ apps offered by GrubHub/LevelUp, which power branded apps at the salad firm Sweetgreen, or Amazon's Alexa Custom Assistant, used to produce custom voice assistants for Fiat Chrysler.

fulfillment costs

Include receiving and packaging costs, in addition to shipping costs.

deep learning

A type of machine learning that uses multiple layers of interconnections among data to identify patterns and improve predicted results. ______________ most often uses a set of techniques known as neural networks and is popularly applied in tasks like speech recognition, image recognition, and computer vision.

instance

A software-based copy using a pre-defined model of the object being created.

dynamic pricing

Pricing that shifts over time, usually based on conditions that change demand (e.g., charging more for scarce items).

two-sided network effect

Products or services that get more valuable as two distinct categories of participants expand (e.g., buyers and sellers).

serverless

A cloud computing model that allows a software developer to create systems without having to think about servers, and often without needing to think about specific software products like databases. Amazon's Lambda and Google's Cloud Firestore are example of serverless products, where a software developer simply writes code to execute on Amazon or Google's computers, without worrying about allocating servers, installing operating systems, or buying additional software products (or, in the case of Cloud Firestore, databases) to support the effort. The cloud vendor does all of this behind the scenes, leaving the developer free to focus just on programming the application.

channel conflict

Exists when a firm's potential partners see that firm as a threat. This threat could come because it offers competing products or services via alternative channels or because the firm works closely with especially threatening competitors.

account payable

Money owed for products and services purchased on credit.

DMCA

U.S. law protecting copyrighted works from unauthorized digital distribution.

data warehouse

A set of databases designed to support decision-making in an organization.

A/B test

A randomized group of experiments used to collect data and compare performance among two options studied. ______________ is often used in refining the design of technology products, and ____________ are particularly easy to run over the Internet on a firm's website. Amazon, Google, and Facebook are among the firms that aggressively leverage hundreds of ____________ a year in order to improve their product offerings.

cookie

A line of identifying text, assigned and retrieved by a given Web server and stored by your browser.

cash conversion cycle

Period between distributing cash and collecting funds associated with a given operation (e.g., sales).

digital divide

Term referring to the difference in access to technologies such as computing, wireless, and broadband Internet among wealthy and poor communities. Poor communities with less access often face less opportunity for everything from home schooling to easy access to online public resources.

hybrid clouds

Cloud computing architectures that combine on-premises infrastructure with public cloud services, such as those provided by AWS or Microsoft Azure.

flash sales

Offering deep discounts of a limited quantity of inventory. _____________ often run for a fixed period or until inventory is completely depleted. Players include Gilt Groupe and Amazon's Zulily in fashion, and One Kings Lane in home décor.

noSQL

A term used for non-tabular databases that are structured differently than relational tables.

goodwill

An accounting term for an intangible asset above and beyond the operations value of the firm. ______________ can include the perceived value of the company's brand name, customer base, and loyalty, positive employee relations, as well as proprietary technology and patents.

technology stack

All of the technology products and services used to build and run one single information technology solution.

fork

When developers start with a copy of a project's program source code, but modify it, creating a distinct and separate product from the original base.

SQL

Structured Query Language—the industry-standard language used to create and manipulate databases.

thin devices

________________ have very little computing power in the device itself, and instead perform the bulk of computing and storage over the network, "in the cloud." Smart speakers and television streaming sticks are all examples of thin clients.

IRL

In Real Life—online acronym for interactions outside of pre-produced videos, podcasts, etc.

affiliate marketing program

Marketing practice where a firm rewards partners (affiliates) who bring in new business, often with a percentage of any resulting sales.

cross-side exchange benefit

When an increase in the number of users on one side of the market (console owners, for example) creates a rise in the other side (software developers).

oligopoly

A market dominated by a small number of powerful sellers.