Silverthread partners with organizations to provide an objective point of view that is backed by over 15 years of joint MIT Engineering and Harvard Business School research and development.

Academic Research

Organization Design for Distributed Innovation

Technical Debt and System Architecture: The Impact of Coupling on Defect-Related Activity

Visualizing and Measuring Enterprise Architecture: An Exploratory Biopharma Case

Visualizing and Measuring Software Portfolio Architectures: A Flexibility Analysis

Architecting Out Software Intellectual Property Lock-In: A Method to Advance the Efficacy of BBP

The Architecture of Platforms: A Unified View

Hidden Structure: Using Network Methods to Map System Architecture

The Impact of Component Modularity on Design Evolution: Evidence from the Software Industry

Evolution of the Firefox Codebase

How Maintainable is the Firefox Codebase?

System Design and the Cost of Architectural Complexity

In this book, Silverthread co-founder Carliss Baldwin (with Kim Clark) illustrates the means by which modularity helps innovation. She makes the case using many examples including a graphics controller, a motherboard, and a laptop computer. The book illustrates the means by which modularity in a system creates economic value and presents tools and techniques for thinking about and measuring modularity. Carliss persuasively argues that the modular design of the IBM/360 fundamentally transformed the field of computer architecture, and also transformed the structure and scale of the hardware and software industry by increasing the return on investment of R&D activities.

Books