Operations Research is dead
[Tuesday, April 27, 2010 | 8:22 PM | 0 comments ]

those are the words of Russell Ackoff who, according to wikipedia, is "an American organizational theorist, consultant, and Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Ackoff is a pioneer in the field of operations research, systems thinking and management science."

about three decades ago, ackoff -- then an operations researcher himself -- wrote a pair of papers titled "The Future of Operational Research is Past" and "Resurrecting the Future of Operational Research". (for those who are curious about minutiae, the acronym OR translates to Operations Research in the US but into Operational Research in Europe, probably for historical reasons.) these articles were published in successive issues of the Journal of Operational Research Society.

ackoff makes several damning indictments of the field of OR. it is not my intent to defend OR. it could be argued the fact that OR survives thirty years after those papers were written is defense enough. nevertheless, there are several points that ackoff makes that ought to be of interest to this audience. practitioners of OR may recognize that some of the criticism he offers is valid to this day.

the two papers are worth reading in their entirety. given that you're reading this blog, i suspect that you may not be inclined to read something quite as heavy as a pair of journal papers. in my opinion, ackoff's paper is better nibbled on and chewed carefully rather than swallowed whole. to make it easier for you, i plan to produce excerpts from those papers and comment on each of them. each entry in this series is intended to highlight an aspect of ackoff's pronouncement of the death of OR or an element of his recommendation for its resurrection. stay tuned ...

back to the roots
[Saturday, April 10, 2010 | 7:32 PM | 1 comments ]

for those unfamiliar with pune (or poona as it was known before the anglicized version was dropped), it is a city in western india that has, over the last decade or so, quietly established itself alongside bangalore and hyderabad as a hotspot for tech activity. it is the home of PuneTech.com a site that "brings together in one place all information about interesting software technology in Pune - the companies, the tech user groups and organizations, the people, and the technologies, the news and the events."

last year, amit paranajape, a friend, former colleague, and co-founder of PuneTech.com encouraged me to write a piece about "optimization" for publication in PuneTech. for reasons that may have something to do with the fact that i've made a living for a couple of decades as a practitioner of that dark art known as optimization, he felt that i was best qualified to write about the subject for an audience that was technically savvy but not necessarily aware of the application of optimization. it took me a while to overcome my initial reluctance: is there really an audience for this? after all, even my daughter feigns disgust every time i bring up the topic of what i do. after some thought, i accepted the challenge as long as i could take a slightly unusual approach to a "technical" topic: i decided to personalize it by rooting it in a personal-professional experience. i could then branch off into a variety of different aspects of that experience, some technical, some not so much.

what followed was a series of postings that began with "Optimization: A case study". in this entry, i recounted the details of one of my first engagements as a professional. it was an experience that was rich with potential for learning, perhaps made more so by the combination of boundless enthusiasm and naivete that are hallmarks of a young man who is has been recently unleashed on the real world.

i followed this with a series of articles, each of which was intended to expand on a particular aspect of the learning experience.

in the first of the follow-up articles titled "Architecture of a decision-support system", i shared my ideas on how one ought to think about decision-support systems. the ideas i present there are not exactly earth-shattering. instead, they are born from the many scars that i bear from the times when i let my technical training get ahead of the needs for decision-making in the real world.

in the next piece titled "Optimization and Organizational Readiness for Change", i reflected on the pitfalls of diving head-first into implementing a technology-based solution without ensuring that the seeds are being planted into fertile, receptive soil.

in the last of the pieces titled "Optimization: A Technical Overview", i touched upon the areas of study that have contributed to the body of knowledge and software that are the tools of my trade.

i'm sure there is much more to write about. i hope that the discussions that this entry will spawn will generate fresh insights.

why a blog?
[Tuesday, February 23, 2010 | 10:59 PM | 0 comments ]

when i first started toying with the idea of having a functioning website for my fledgling company, i had this vague notion that a blog would be an integral part of it. i wasn't entirely sure why -- i had no experience with blogs back then -- but i was convinced of the idea.


upon further reflection, i realized that my instinctive decision to blog was well-founded. a functioning blog embodies a couple of things that i strongly believe in:
  1. the act of writing down one's ideas is immensely powerful. the idea of putting things down on paper (or a screen) forces one to think through one's ideas carefully and critically. it exposes any gaps in the premise, any inconsistencies in the logic, any loose ends in the train of thought; in short, it forces us to rid our thinking of the intellectual sloppiness that one can carry around in our heads.
  2. publishing is an obvious (though not always necessary) follow-on to writing. because of my professional network, i can publish my thoughts to an audience that can be counted on to be knowledgeable, thoughtful, expressive, and constructive. i expect my ideas to be rejected, challenged, supported, and built upon. i hope that the output of the collective will amount to something more than what any one of the participants could have achieved.
this blog is expected to work in a variety of ways:
  • it will serve as a sand-box in which i will play around with ideas that may have crossed my mind during the course of my professional engagements.
  • i hope that the people in my professional network will engage actively in the discussions my ideas initiate.
  • i intend to invite more active participation by encouraging the more adventurous and forthcoming members of this network to chip in with ideas of their own.
  • besides being a breeding ground for new ideas, this blog will also serve as a repository for interesting ideas published elsewhere as long as they are accompanied by thoughtful commentary on those ideas. i'm sure there is a lot that we can learn from works published elsewhere. this may take the form of interesting books and articles that one comes across. this may even take the form of recent events (as long as there is a bigger point to be made -- i'm sure that there are better forums for raw news).
i'm sure that the possibilities for a blog like this are endless. i'm sure my thoughts on this blog will grow and change over time. for now, this is what i think it is.

i must admit that there is no dearth of blogs written by people with backgrounds like mine. many of my former colleagues have blogs of their own. each of them brings their own personal touch to their contributions. i hope my blog will add a new dimension into this mix. it is my intent to help make this a greenhouse for new ideas. i realize that this is a lofty goal. i know i have taken a step in the right direction if i can point to one good idea that is born here ...