The ongoing INFORMS Election has two candidates for President-Elect: One is an experienced academic and one is an experienced practitioner from the corporate world. Recently, I have seen troubling public postings from people who support the academic candidate. They advocate supporting him because they feel that attention and resources devoted to the practice of OR/MS will reduce the attention and resources available for academic OR.
This line of reasoning is fundamentally flawed. The allocation of attention and resources to academia versus practice is not zero-sum. Supporting practice does not mean undermining academia: Innovations and advances in the practice of our field improve our academic research, helping us to solve the right problems and address the issues that really concern decision makers, whether in corporate or government settings. Practice advances also improve our teaching, making sure we train the next generation of leaders based on what actually works in the real world. Finally, as a practical matter, INFORMS only grows as an organization if we grow our membership. Looking at where those members will come from, it is obvious that there is much more potential for growth among practitioners than among academics. If we succeed in this effort, the resources available to academics will grow, and the field will achieve its promise as a font of wisdom about how to solve problems and make decisions with scientific and technical rigor.
It is important for the President-Elect to understand and support these points during their tenure on the Board. This is why I voted for Stefan Karisch. The INFORMS election is open for the rest of September. If you have not voted yet, please join me.
Don N. Kleinmuntz PhD
Principal, Kleinmuntz Associates LLC
INFORMS Fellow (2007)
Former President, INFORMS (2009)
Former faculty member: The University of Texas at Austin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Southern California, University of Notre Dame
Founder and former CEO, Strata Decision Technology