I’m just finishing my last MBA assignment (essay) and I’m looking for any credible academic resource around marginal gains as spouted by Brailsford.

Obviously this this management education, so I’m not expecting peer reviewed excellence, but anything with a hint of respectability (HBR etc.) might be useful.

Can anyone point me at anything?

TIA

for starts the idea/concept is credited to Clive Woodward from the English Rugby team which he then took to team GB at the olympics. He probably got it from his days at Loughborough.

Not sure how much of this you’ll be able to see, and it’s not directly ‘marginal gains’, but it’s proper peer-reviewed science and interesting anyway:

Team and individual performance in the Tour de France

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1352-7592&volume=18&issue=7/8&articleid=17058712&show=html

Cheers Mike, that’ll help with the search for an original(ish) reference

From the linked article above. It may have been written by a McQuaid..!

“To test the hypotheses, a database including team characteristics and individual characteristics is constructed. This dataset consists of all cyclists who have finished the Tour in the years 2002 to 2005 (n=600). Further years were not included in the dataset, since several (official and popular) doping cases occurred from the years 2006 that would lead to biased results. This does not mean that there was less doping before 2006; it has just been less detected. ”

I’d say if you are looking for credible evidence I wouldn’t look anywhere close to professional cycling. these guys, though, seem to have done very well with a similar approach.

I’m sure you’ll get some good stuff from this one too…

other than their recent massive drops in international profits

I always just thought it was an evolution of Kaizen, in that if you’re trying to improve continually you’ll soon be at the point you’re only making small improvements but the cumulative effect is more significant

it does come from that, it’s a classic improvement technique however as the OP is doing an MBA he should probably do some more research himself rather than getting people to do it all for him, oh hang on it’s a management course….

Interested if you track anything down
You’ll have seen this http://www.teamsky.com/article/0,27290,17547_5792058,00.html
Someone else thinking in a business context http://leanmanufacturingcalgary.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/aggregation-of-marginal-gains-or.html
Sorry, thought I had something in my link bucket

Thanks again folks. It’s amazing how many consultant types seem to be pedalling it as something new and innovative 😕

Right, back to messrs Belbin and Porter with a bit of Schumpeter thrown in for good measure!

geoffj – Member – Quote
Thanks again folks. It’s amazing how many consultant types seem to be pedalling it as something new and innovative

If you have had any dealings with consultants you shouldn’t be surprised (and yes I am a Consultant)