Events

Nicholas M Donofrio inaugurates ISB- IBM Research Workshop

"Innovation is a culture, not a department," said Nicholas M Donofrio, IBM Executive Vice President, Innovation and Technology, USA, at the inaugural session of the ISB – IBM 2nd Operations Research and Data Analytics Workshop, held on February 7, 2007. The workshop, organized by the Centre for Global Logistics and Manufacturing Strategies (GLAMS) at the ISB, aimed to create synergy between the academia and the practitioners and share expertise on the R & D issues in respective domains. The first event in this series was hosted at IIT Delhi, last January.

In his welcome address, Daniel M Dias, Director, IBM India Research Laboratory, disclosed the purpose of the workshop, "To share information, develop collaboration and relationships and identify new and emerging areas in the service sciences, where we can collaborate further."

Professor MR Rao, Dean ISB, introduced the ISB vision and milestones covered, highlighting on the importance of research at the ISB. "We facilitate inter-disciplinary research among the Centres of Excellence here at the ISB, all of which thrive on innovation."

A special lecture on ‘Expanding the Innovation Horizon’ by Donofrio, charged the atmosphere inside the packed Max Lecture Theatre, at the ISB. "Innovation in the 21st century is different form what it was in the 20th.Everyone in the 21st century can be an innovator. There is no more the ‘one big thing’ to happen but a thousand of big things waiting to unfurl," Donofrio said. Listing the main drivers of change in the new era as- network ubiquity, open standards and new business changes, he stressed on the need for a "state of openness and horizontally integrated operations."

Still striving to find an appropriate definition for the word ‘innovation’, the man with 42 years of IBM experience behind him, said that the quote close to his heart was, "Innovation resides at the integration of invention and insight leading to creation of social and economic value." He further explained about the changing nature of innovation and the need to be "open, collaborative multidisciplinary and global."

"We need to push the innovation envelope and the bottom line is that collaboration sparks innovation," he explained.

Donofrio spoke about the emergence of the service sector and how innovation is the key to the service sector productivity and quality improvement. "We need to treat service sciences with more discipline. Thus the new interdisciplinary academic field, ‘Service Science Management and Engineering’ (SSME) is a way to collaborate with the industry, academia and government and drive services innovations in the 21st century. IBM is looking for ISB to partner in this journey," he said. SSME , a new academic discipline, aims to bring together ongoing work in the fields of operation research, computer science, social, cognitive and legal sciences, management sciences and business strategy in order to develop skills required in a service–led economy. IBM signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the ISB on the same day, to develop first-of –its-kind, cutting-edge research on SSME in India.

The Vote of Thanks was presented by Professor N Viswanadham, Executive Director, GLAMS. Incidentally Professor Viswanadham has recently been selected to receive the prestigious 2006 IBM Faculty Award for his innovative research work in supply chain. Winner of the highly competitive worldwide award, Viswanadham is proud recipient of USD 20,000, as donation to the ISB.