Call for Papers and Pre-Announcements of the 2007 World Conference on Mass Customization & Personalization
Finally, more information about the MCPC 2007. The most important message of this long posting: Save your time and travel budget for Oct 7-12, 2007! At this time, the next World Conference on Mass Customization & Personalization (MCPC) will take place at MIT in Boston and HEC in Montreal – and it will become THE event of the MC event circuit.
We are in the moment in the heavy planning stage of the event here at MIT, but I want to share some more information here so that you can start thinking what YOU want to present on the MCPC!
The event: The biannual World Conference on Mass Customization & Personalization (MCPC) is the premier event for the Mass Customization community. Bridging academic research and management practice, the conference provides an interactive and interdisciplinary platform to share ideas about mass customization strategies and to discuss the latest technologies and enablers.
Download MCPC 2007 Flyer
In October 2007, the MCPC will include two parts:
Part 1, Oct 7-10, 2007: MCP Research & Innovation Conference. Hosted by the MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge/Boston (USA) with an interdisciplinary focus on the new advancements in the field.
The MCP Research & Innovation Conference is designed to engage academics, business leaders and consultants in fundamental debates through a set of plenary presentations, discussion panels, and paper presentations. In addition to the traditional functional conference streams of the MCPC conferences, we especially welcome submissions from managers and consultants reflecting upon the conference theme.
Part 2, Oct 11-12, 2007: MCP Business Seminar hosted by HEC (Haute Études Commerciales) Business School in Montreal (Canada), with a focus on applying mass customization & personalization in a retail setting.
The MCP Business Seminar wants to provide managers a practice-orientated, focused overview on mass customization applications and best practices. The 2007 topic is the application of customization & personalization in retail – leading to a total makeover of retail!
2007 Conference Theme: The objective of the MCPC 2007 is to extend the dialogue beyond today's boundaries and to explore the future of MCP. The theme "Extreme Customization" asks for leading-edge examples of customization, non-traditional and emerging new concepts of personalization. For the technology community, we attempt to identify critical research issues and technological challenges with a rigorous methodology.
Our manifesto is to shift the mass customization debate from a physical product perspective to a total life cycle experience. Mass customization should be more than just configuring a piece of hardware, but should be seen as the co-design of an entire system, including services, experiences and human satisfaction at the individual as well as at the community level.
Continuing the established MCPC tradition, we invite contributions from a wide range of specialists in the engineering and management community including architecture, industrial design, or visual arts, to participate in the larger debate of customization. Mass customization studios, a co-creation challenge, and several focused workshops will elevate the quality of exchange during the conference.
Questions for Discussion in the MCPC 2007. To start the discussion, here are some initial themes and related questions. We encourage participants and authors to engage in these questions and to bring forth their experiences from an interdisciplinary and cross-functional perspective.
System thinking and architectures
How can we design system architectures, extending the discussion of product families?
How can we define ecosystems for mass customization which span the entire product life cycle?
How does system thinking in MCP enable firms to search for new and underutilized opportunities?
What new kinds of capabilities do we need to produce, sell, and maintain MCP systems?
Business models for mass customization
How do we have to adapt, modify or expand established models in marketing and operations management to cover the new debate on mass customization? When do we need new models?
What are the different business models for mass customization? What are the contingency factors describing the preference for such a strategy?
Have we fully utilized postponement strategies for MCP?
Product versus service customization
What is mass customization of service? How is this different from product customization?
What are successful examples of service mass customization which go beyond the conventional, e.g., self-service kiosks?
What are the features of configuration toolkits for service customization?
What are efficient production systems for service customization?
Adaptability: feature or substitute
Adaptability, i.e. built-in flexibility embedded in a product, can both substitute customization delivered by flexible manufacturing or supplement the inherent flexibility of a customized product. How can we develop adaptable systems along the entire life cycle of a product-service-system?
How can we make products more adaptable ("hackable") so that users can adapt them?
What are the economies of adaptability? How to balance the trade-off between performance (cost) and adaptable capabilities?
How to design usable interfaces to utilize a product's adaptable features?
Individual versus community
What is the role of communities for mass customization?
Is personalization exclusive or non-exclusive of shared experiences?
How do online and offline communities effect customization (e.g., by setting trends, helping each other with the configuration, etc.)?
How do communities develop new mass customization offerings?
Emotion, experiences and happiness
Can you mass customize for emotions? How can we capture emotions in product-service-systems?
How does research on emotions help to build better products and services?
What is the premium customers are willing to pay for different experiences along the segments of the MCP product life cycle (e.g., willingness to pay for configuration, co-design, status, custom utility, adaptability, etc.)?
Does mass customization provide "happiness" to consumers (and what is happiness anyway)?
Choice, complexity and simplicity
What is meaningful customization? What are the rules for simplicity in MCP?
Do people want choice? How much is too much?
How can we support users to navigate a solution space?
How do we foster and utilize the creativity of users and customers?
Configuration system and rule sets
How can we change configurators from focusing on constraints and rules to fostering creativity and co-creation?
How can we expand user interfaces with more tangible and intuitive features?
How can we develop embedded configurators?
How can we substitute the pain of customization for the sales force by building integrated sales systems for customization, including the knowledge, tools, and attitudes for efficient customization?
Rapid manufacturing and personal fabricators
What is the state of innovative manufacturing concepts allowing flexibility with no cost penalty?
Where is mass customization manufacturing located (distributed versus centralized)?
Is rapid manufacturing here (to stay)? Is rapid prototyping becoming obsolete?
Are there alternative approaches for efficient flexible manufacturing?
Contradictions in mass customization
What is the relationship of simplicity to complexity in MCP?
What is the tipping point between standardization and customization?
What is the range between user innovation and custom configuration? When, and to which extent, do users customize and manufacture in their own domain and with their own means?
What is the relation of constraints in manufacturing (switching costs) to constraints coming from the entire environment (e.g., health and safety, branding, IP …)?
Are all customers suited for mass customization? Is mass customization suited for any business?
Profits, benefits, and value
What is the benefit and value of MCP? How does this benefit translate to value for individual stakeholders (customers, manufacturer, or retailers)? How can we capture this value from the perspective of an entire system?
How do we measure the value of personalization and customization?
Education & capabilities for MCP
How do we educate students in mass customization? How do we integrate mass customization thinking in established curricula (in a meaningful way)? (See also the call for teaching case studies below.)
How do we build the qualifications and capabilities demanded for mass customization in companies?
How can managers (and educators) unlearn conventional thinking when implementing mass customization?
Mass customization in practice
This track is open for submission of acting managers and entrepreneurs from mass customization and personalization businesses. We ask for presentations which do not focus on presenting just your company or business idea, but on sharing your experiences and success factors of executing mass customization.
Presentation proposals for this track should follow the general guidelines for submission (extended proposal introducing your mass customization offering, the focus of your talk, and some of the key results you plan to present). Proposals should be submitted with the online submission system.
Mass Customization Case Studies (Teaching)
The MCPC 2007 will be followed by a special session in Montreal focused on case studies for mass customization. The idea is to develop material to teach mass customization better.
We invite submissions of case studies dealing with mass customization and personalization. Cases must be original work based on real events, people, and organizations. They must be accompanied by a teaching note and not have been previously published or accepted for publication. The presentation of the cases will be held in Montreal on October 12, 2007. Authors of the best cases will be invited to submit their work to a special issue of the International Journal of Mass Customization or a special issue of the International Journal of Case Studies in Management. Cases should be submitted with the online submission system and authors must follow the MCPC paper submission process and deadlines.
Special Sessions & Themes
Today, there are examples and applications of MCP in all industries and sectors. The MCPC 2007 does not focus on one particular industry, but wants to provide a platform to exchange ideas beyond disciplines and industry borders. We are however especially interested in applications and examples in the following fields where we recently see a lot of interesting momentum in MCP:
- Mass customization, personalization and user innovation in architecture, housing and construction
- Automotive Customization 3.0: Bridging pimped rides with option lists
- Mass customization of services, e.g., in the financial and hospitality industries
- Mass customization of health services & products (pharma-cogenetics)
- Extreme customizing: What can we learn from extreme, leading edge examples of customization and personalization?
Paper Submission Process
We invite you to submit your best work on mass customization and related areas, addressing one or more of the questions asked before. All papers have to be written in English language. We prefer papers which are empirically grounded and go beyond pure conceptual contributions. We are open to a diverse set of quantitative and qualitative methods of empirical research. We especially seek papers which follow the idea of "engaged scholarship", i.e. which are relevant to both practice and research.You can submit two types of papers (Page limits include references and figures):
Full papers: max. 25 pages (12pt font, double line spacing). Only full papers will be considered for the conference's Best Paper Award.
Extended abstracts for work in progress (about 4-8 pages), but including also comments on the research question, the methodology, data and empirical methods used (if applicable), and a discussion of the results.The conference proceedings will contain short abstracts of all accepted papers. Authors of accepted papers can decide if they submit a (revised) version of their full paper for publication in the full-text proceedings of the conference, or just a summary version which does not compromise publication of the paper in top journals.
A number of highly respected academic journals expressed already their interest in featuring special issues with selected conference papers after the conference. We will try to facilitate this process for appropriate submissions.
To submit a paper (practitioners: presentation proposal), there will be an online submission system for this conference on the conference web site. Please wait with paper submissions until this system in installed and in place. Do not submit papers per e-mail directly to the conference chairs. All papers will be double-blind reviewed.
Important dates
March 19, 2007: Deadline for submissions
June 1, 2007: Final notification of accepted contributions
Aug. 1, 2007: Author registration deadline
Oct 7-9, 2007: MCP Research & Innovation Conference at MIT
Oct 11-12, 2007: Business Seminar in Montreal, Quebec
Note: ALL presenters and participants, including presenters from companies, have to register for the conference and pay the full registration fee (about 450 USD, 50% discount for students with student ID). There are no exceptions.
MCPC 2007 Program Committee – MIT Research Conference
Conference Chair: William Mitchell, MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Conference Program Co-Chairs: Frank Piller, TUM Business School, Technische Universität München, and Mitchell Tseng, Advanced Manufacturing Institute, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
Conference Coordinator: Ryan Chin, MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MCPC 2007 Program Committee – HEC Montreal Business Seminar
Conference Chair: Jacques Nantel, HEC (Haute Études Commerciales) Business School, Montreal (Canada)
Conference Coordinators: Sylvain Sénécal and Jean-Francois Ouellet, HEC Business School, Montreal
More information:
- Download MCPC 2007 Flyer
- Past conferences: MCPC 2005 (Hong Kong) and MCPC 2003 (Munich)
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