REMINDER: M&SOM Journal Inaugural Seminar on Practice Problems
It is our great pleasure to write this message to all of you to announce a new initiative of the M&SOM journal. As many of you may remember, one of the new departments Georgia Perakis established in the journal as EIC has been the Practice Platform. This department is not a traditional department as it has the goal to connect the academic world in operations to practitioners in a multitude of ways. The Department Editors include Pavithra Harsha from IBM, Jérémie Gallien from LBS and Ananth Raman from HBS.
There are two initiatives this new department has been working on:
(i) First the M&SOM Practice Based Research Competition that takes place every two years, with the goal to motivate, help develop and reward high-quality OM research papers with significant practical relevance, and to publish these papers (hopefully fast) in the M&SOM Journal. The next edition of this competition, with a submission deadline in September 2022, will be announced soon.
(ii) Second a new initiative of the Practice Platform is the M&SOM Journal Seminar on Practice Problems. The goal of this initiative is to bring the voice of practitioners closer to the Operations community. This will be done through a seminar organized by the OM Practice Platform of the journal. The goal of this initiative will be to inspire and facilitate new and exciting operations management research which is relevant and impactful to practice. It will feature invited practitioner presenters who are eager to influence future research in our field by sharing with our community (i) deep contextual knowledge of an industry practice area within the journal's purview; and (ii) some perspective on important and unmet operations related challenges that merit either immediate attention currently lacking or which will require attention in the near future.
The inaugural M&SOM Journal Seminar on Practice Problems will take place on Wednesday May 4, 11:30-12:30pm EDT. Below is more information on this inaugural seminar:
The architecture for procurement of global health products: Key research questions emerging from practice
Authors: Aurelia Nguyen (Managing Director, COVAX Facility), Brenda Waning (Chief, Global Drug Facility for TB), Prashant Yadav (CGD & INSEAD)
Abstract: In markets with constrained supply (e.g., pandemic health products) low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are often priced out or put at the end of the supply queue. Similarly, in markets for health products with small demand in individual countries (e.g., TB medicines), individual country purchasing does not lead to uninterrupted, sustainable high-quality supply. Aggregating demand through pooled procurement is one mechanism which has been utilized for overcoming these two types of market shortcomings. There is evidence on the impact of joint/pooled procurement on reduction in unit prices, improving confidence in quality of products, reduction in purchasing related transaction costs, reduction in the risk of corruption in the procurement process, systematizing incentives for innovation, and expediting new product introduction. However, the incentives for participation in such pools vary between smaller and larger countries. Negotiating bilateral deals outside the pool may sometimes benefit a large country, but it hurts the overall system equilibrium. Stability of procurement pool's membership also depends on the pool's definition of success, along with the pool's technical efficiency.
This panel discussion will focus on what role can robust analytical research play in understanding and solving such challenges? It will also share resources for researchers to get additional contextual knowledge about the policy environment and provide pointers to relevant sources of data.
The zoom information is
https://zoom.us/j/98118349378?pwd=UEtPNTdrTHBtTGU3QXl2L3ZKaFNnZz09Meeting ID: 981 1834 9378
Passcode: 388010
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Meeting ID: 981 1834 9378
For those who will not be able to make it to the live seminar please do not sweat. The M&SOM Journal homepage will post the seminar recording through the INFORMS YouTube Channel. M&SOM Journal members will be able to view it later at their convenience if they cannot make it live. Furthermore, the journal will allow for up to a month any comments or questions related to the seminar from the audience (live or not). These will be posted and then monitored by the Practice Platform department editors.
We are all sure we will learn a lot from this effort as this will be the inaugural seminar we are launching. For any questions please feel free to contact any of us. It is exciting to see this effort take off!
Best
The OM Practice Platform Editors:
Pavithra Harsha <
pharsha@us.ibm.com>, Jérémie Gallien <
jgallien@london.edu>, Ananth Raman <
araman@hbs.edu>,
and the M&SOM Journal EIC
Georgia Perakis
georgiap@mit.edu------------------------------
Georgia Perakis
William F. Pounds Professor
EIC M&SOM Journal
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA
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