Mohan V. Tatikonda
Associate Professor of Operations and Technology Management
"My research addresses how organizations can most effectively design and introduce new products and services. This involves helping companies identify, develop and implement the right technologies and processes, and also how to most effectively leverage those technologies and processes once they are in place."
Mohan Tatikonda has spent a significant portion of his academic career studying the ways in which companies direct new product development and related processes. Working in intensive collaboration with leading companies such as GE, IBM, RCA, Motorola and Agfa, Tatikonda has investigated the product and service innovation process in a variety of industries.
"In each research study I conduct, I aim to design the research effort to simultaneously contribute to lasting theory and make an immediate practical contribution. It's important to me for my research to be meaningful to real companies – the kind of work that impacts company decision making right away," explains Tatikonda.
To that end, Tatikonda focuses on what he calls "project-level" research, which involves studying technology, innovation and improvement projects, and the processes around them. It's one of the aspects that makes his approach to research unique – along with the tendency for his projects to be interdisciplinary.
"I take an operations view of the world, which is all about how work gets done, but I collaborate with professors from a variety of disciplines – marketing, law, engineering and economics, for example – to bring new ideas to bear on the issue of managing technology, innovation and improvement," he says. "Interdisciplinary research is often much harder to do, but it offers exclusive opportunities to learn more – and it's both encouraged and rewarded here at The Kelley School of Business."
Tatikonda's current research endeavors include a project on technology transfer – investigating how companies work with other firms to acquire and incorporate new technology. He's also collaborating with three other Kelley professors from marketing, law and business ethics to study privacy and consumer acceptance issues related to RFID technology. Additionally, Tatikonda is working with industry partners and faculty colleagues from the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University on a study identifying best practices in Six Sigma projects and exploring the evolution and future of Six Sigma and related continuous improvement programs.
