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- 25 April 2010: Progress in Probability Management
- 8 March 2009: Searching for Answers to Life’s Persistent Questions
- 6 March 2009: INFORMS 1.5
- 27 February 2009: Orthogonal Skills
- 18 February 2009: The Science of Better Search
- 13 February 2009: Living in Interesting Times
- 4 February 2009: Remembering the Master of All Trades
- 30 January 2009: Less is More
- 16 January 2009: Certifiably Analytic
- 9 January 2009: Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy, they First Call Risk-Protected
Certifiably Analytic
In an article on how business schools are responding to globalization, Robert Dolan, the profitability management guru, recounts his introduction to the chasm between theory and practice:
[Dolan…] tells a funny story about when he, a freshly minted PhD in Operations Research, was assigned to teach a course in marketing at the Chicago School of Business.
He didn’t know much about marketing , so he decided he would visit the offices of Proctor & Gamble to find out what it was all about: “I put on my suit and was making my way out of the campus when the dean spotted me and asked me where I was going, all dressed up.
When I told him I was going to Proctor & Gamble to learn about marketing, he asked me, ‘Do they have any Nobel Laureates in Proctor & Gamble?’ When I said ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, ‘Well, we’ve got dozens of Nobel Laureates. So you just stay right here’”.
I thought of Dolan’s (apocryphal?) dean while chatting about possibility of professional certification in OR with 
colleagues. Though certification is often viewed as a mechanism to help consumers distinguish quality practitioners from the riff-raff, in my view it could meet entirely different goals:
1. Bridge the yawning gap between technique-centered OR programs and the impact-oriented dictates of practice: As I recently observed while bemoaning the lack of good Management Science texts, the academic bent that favors rigor over utility inevitably creeps into pedagogy. Irrespective of the mainstreaming of OR, this sub-optimality is unlikely to change.
2. Position OR to “own” the strengthening brand of Advanced Analytics: An analyst certification that allows (among other things) applicants from other backgrounds to enter the profession could make OR the de facto credentialing authority in a crowded and contested field.
3. Certification could revitalize the OR ecosystem: A new practice-oriented market for course materials, coaching apparatus and examination aids would be needed. The primary beneficiary of such a development would most likely be forward-looking academics.