Richard Janow
NJIT Physics Department                                                                  
Office: 423B Tiernan 
E-mail:  janow@njit.edu
Page: http://physics.njit.edu/~janow
Phone: 973 596-3549 
 

 Academic Interests:

  • Fundamental Limits on Organizations and Systems

  • Technology Strategy, Scenarios, Roadmaps

  •  Defense Science and Systems

  • Technological and Market Forecasting

  • Condensed Matter Theory, Surface Physics, Adsorption/Desorption

  • Information Technology, Computing and Communications

  • Geo-Spatial Information Systems

  • Home Networks

Education:   

  • A. B. in Physics, Columbia College, 1964

  • Ph. D. in Physics, The City University of New York, 1977

NJIT Position: 

  •  University Lecturer in Physics

Industry Positions: 

  • Bell Laboratories Technology Office ( Lucent Technologies, 1996-2001, Murray Hill N. J.): Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs' small Technology Strategy and Assessment team, reporting directly to Lucent’s Group Technology Officer.    Change agent for getting Lucent's products, R&D portfolio, and culture to address disruptive markets.  Roadmapped business units, developed short- and long-term technological forecasts. 

  • AT&T Bell Labs Consumer Lab (6/95 - 6/96, Murray Hill N. J.): Primary and secondary market research for AT&T’s consumer service & products businesses, balancing"willingness to pay" against technological exuberance.

  • Bell Laboratories' "Architecture Area" (AT&T, 1/91 - 6/95, Holmdel N. J.):  Broad-brush technology futures, market strategy, product planning, and technology assessment for AT&T's business and consumer services divisions.  The first at AT&T to communicate the vision of explosive future computing/communications growth and it's business impact on AT&T and it's customers.

  • Bell Laboratories Federal Systems  (AT&T, 1983 – 91, Whippany N. J.): Consulting to senior U. S. Army leadership on "star wars" missile and air defense (tactical, theater, and strategic.   Provided systems analyses, simulations, and technical assessments that impacted program funding by filtering infeasible approaches and by creating, analyzing, and recommending architectures.  Did research in algortihms, neurocomputing, nuclear survivable communications.

  • Vernon Graphics (1977 - 83, Elmsford N. Y.): Technical Director with CIO/CTO functions in a $10M  firm that pioneered integrated geo-spatial information systems and services for utilities and governments.  Supervised thirteen professionals.

 

Awarded Patents:                      uspto web site 

Management and Systems Research:

  • "A Fundamental Limit on Productivity in Organizations: Collaborative Entropy Costs", R.  Janow, 5/31/2008.  Draft to be submitted for publication.  Coordination costs due to collaboration are known to limit the productivity of knowledge workers. This work  shows that there is a fundamental upper limit on that productivity, attributable to a collaborative cost imposed by a form of "Shannon" entropy.  The proposed upper limit falls off logarithmically with size for large workgroups and entire organizations.  The impact is dramatic for organizations that become even modestly more collaborative as they grow in size and distribute their functions more widely. The implied size effect affects the competitive efficiency of firms and can be decisive over time in much the same way that a small bias in gambling odds results in the “house” almost inevitably bankrupting its patrons. The impact should be important in markets sensitive to intellectual labor costs and where short decision cycles are essential.

  • “Shannon Entropy and Productivity: Why Big Organizations Can Seem Stupid”, R. Janow.  J. Wash. D. C.  Acad. Sci., Vol. 90, No. 1 (Spring 2004).   The first application of Shannon-like entropy to derive quantitative expressions for a decision channel capacity limit; it falls off as organizations grow in accord with long-known observations about the impact of increased collaboration costs. Quantitative tools  are suggested (patent pending). 

  • "Shannon Entropy Applied to the Productivity of Organizations: Why Big Organizations Can Seem Stupid", R. Janow.   Proc. IEMC'2003 ("Managing Technologically Driven Organizations"), IEEE Catalog Number: 03CH37502C  ISBN: 0-7803-8151-3. Presented at the IEEE Engineering Management Society meeting in November 2003.  Short article and presentation charts similar to above.

Physics Research:

Computing Research:

  • "Reconfigurable Neural Net Chip with 32K Connections", H. P. Graf, R. Janow, D. Henderson, and R. Lee (1991). In R. P Lippmann, J. E. Mood, and D. S. Touretzky (eds.) Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Vol. 3, pp. 1032-1038. Morgan Kaufmann Pub. (San Mateo CA., 1991).
  • "A Neural Net Board System for Machine Vision Applications", H. P. Graf, R. Janow, C. R. Nohl, and J. Ben (1991). In Proc. International Joint Conf. on Neural Networks, pp. I.481-I.486. IJCNN Pub, (1991).
  • "Research in Neural Network Technology", B. Boser, H. P. Graf, R. Janow, R. T. Lee, D. Mayer, E. Sackinger. Final Report (CDRL A003) for Contract DASG60-88-C-0044, December 1990, UNCLASSIFIED, U. S. ARMY Strategic Defense Command.
  • "Research in Optical Computing Technology", G. W. Taylor, D. Mayer, R. Janow. Final Report (CDRL A003) for Contract DASG60-88-C-0044,  March 1990, UNCLASSIFIED. Optoelectronic integrated circuit research sponsored by the U. S. ARMY Strategic Defense Command.
  • "Parallel Processing of Battle Management Algorithms", R. Janow, D. Mayer, R. McPherson, F. Preston, N. Schlenker, R. Smith, and R. Tarjan. Final Report (CDRL A003) for Contract DASG60-88-C-0044, December 1989, UNCLASSIFIED. Parallel processing experiments and algorithmic research applied to optimization of sensor track assignments and weapon-target assignments. Sponsored by the U. S. Army Strategic Defense Command.

Defense Systems Architecture & Technology Assessment Studies:

  • "A First-Principles Model for Estimating Atmospheric Nuclear Weapons Effects on Command, Control, and Communication - I ", Rich Janow.  A simple, first principles analytically solvable model of nuclear weapons, UNCLASSIFIED.
  • "Theater Missile Defense, Final Phase: An Assessment of BM/C3 Aspects of TMDAS Phase-I", AT&T Bell Laboratories, R. Janow, R. McPherson, D. Mayer. Final Report for Contract MDA903-87-C-0020,  April 25,1988, CONFIDENTIAL/NATO.  A critical assessment of the BM/C3 (real-time computing and communications) architectures proposed by five multi-national aerospace consortia for short to medium range missile and air defense in Europe.  See also Final Briefing dated April 1988.
  • "Response Option Study-2: Final Report". AT&T Bell Laboratories, R. Janow, W. Jordan, M. G. Hodgins, N. Sharko, R. Dietz, et al. Final Report for Contract MDA903-86-C-0214, 1987, SECRET/NOFORN.   A pioneering systems analysis, architecture simulation, and battle management/C3 (information systems) architecture and design study applied to ground-based, limited capability defense systems similar to the current Administration's deployment choices against post-Cold-War threats.
  • "ATM (Anti-Tactical Missile) Independent Assessment: Final Report", AT&T Bell Laboratories, R. Janow, D. Mayer, P. Pappas, J. F. Stevenson, et al. Final Report for Contract DAAH01-84-C-A213, , July 15,1986, S/NF/WN/RD.  Study of theater missile defense (e. g. Patriot or follow-on systems defending against short range missiles such as SCUDs, SS-21/23s).  Responsible for system architecture, battle management, and communications.
  • "Response Option Study: Final Report", 3 Vols. AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany N. J.,   Final Report for Contract MDA-903-85-C-0204, , January 30, 1986, S/NF/RD.  Comprehensive 3 year assessment of "Star Wars" defense technology and systems.  Responsible for BM/C3 and system integration.

  Forecasting, Technology Strategy and Assessment, Marketing: 

  • "Experience Curve Methods for Technological and Economic Forecasting", R. Janow, in preparation. Theory and practice for using experience curves to provide multi-year forecasts of technology competition and market prices, with correspondences to traditional economics.

  • "Next-Generation Product Technology Roadmapping", R. Janow, T. Kappel, V. Nichols, July 6, 2000. A  template and facilitation guide for project managers who need to roadmap software product R&D. It introduces new strategy, partnering and complementor roadmaps that incorporate insights due to Varian & Shapiro ("Information Rules") and Hax & Wilde (Delta Strategy).

  • "xDSL Access Concentrator Market Analysis", R. Janow, May 25, 2001. A forecast of market size and target prices.  Results show an unsustainable, maturing market that foreshadowed the telecommunication "bubble".   Lucent executive distribution.

  • "Modem Access Concentrator Experience Curve Analysis and Target Price Forecast", R. Janow, May 30, 2001. A companion analysis to the above, with similar conclusions 

  • "Is Layer 3 WAN Ethernet switching a disruptive technology?", R. Janow, September 11, 2000.  Experience curve analysis showing potential disruption of router markets. Lucent executive distribution.

  • "Target prices for WAN routers competing with ATM - Update ", R. Janow, April 13, 2000. An experience curve analysis that forecast market price evolution for WAN routers, showing the current growth rate in market volume to be unsustainable. Lucent distribution.

  • "Network Access Technical Assessment" and "Network Interconnection Technical Assessment", R. Janow and R. Albright, August/September 1999. Submission to the FCC Technical Advisory Board.

  • "Cisco's Strategic Intent", R. Janow and D. Saheba, July 30, 1999. An analysis of Cisco Systems' strategy and lock-in potential using the Delta Model (Hax and Wilde). 

  • "What Experience Curves Are Signaling: ATM and IP Impact on Lucent 5ESS Evolution", R. Janow, 4/8/99 and 4/28/99.  Analyses presented to the Lucent 5ESS Circuit Switch Technology Board and roadmap organization.  Showed that data switches decisively defeat circuit switches in price/performance, foreshadowing the implosion of circuit switch markets.  Helped motivate Lucent's attempted move to converged data/voice products.

  • "DNS PacketStar IP Switch Target Costing", Clifton, Fulton, Janow, L'Esperance, 12/10/1998. Presentation to the Lucent CTO Council reporting competitive prospects in the WAN router market, based on experience curve analysis and reverse engineering.

  • "Technology Enablers and Impacts on Next Generation Business Solutions", R. Janow, June 1995. Second edition of the 1992 white paper.

  • "Plan 2000 Technology Confluence Assessment", R. Janow, March 1993. A roadmap presenting timelines for converging information technologies and applications. 

  • "Technology Enablers for the AT&T Knowledge Network". R. Janow, March 1992. A white paper that introduced convergence to AT&T executives and clients for the first time, with significant company-wide and customer impact.

Home Networks Futures and Standards:

  • "Home Interactive Systems: Architectures, Integration, Evolution", R. Janow, April 28, 1994 (60 pages + 58 figures + Executive Summary). AT&T internal circulation. Vision of an emergent industry that induced AT&T to create a new business unit.  Roadmapped the integrated communication- and computing-intensive home of what was then the future along with a multi-year strategy for gaining competitive advantage.
  • "Proposed Standards for Home Network Operating Systems", R. Janow, August 18-19 1997 (30 pages + figures). Visionary standards contribution accepted by the TIA TR41.5 Working Group on Residential Gateways and Home Multimedia Architecture.