My interest in OR/MS isn’t just because the last 6 chapters of our hardcover OM book are quantitative topics. It goes back to my days at the U. of Cincinnati, when I first received an MS in Operations Research (from the Math dept.), followed by a Ph.D in Quantitative Analysis (from the B School).The first text I wrote used that QA title , and the second was Intro. to Management Science. Then later, at George Mason U., I chaired the Decision Sciences Dept. And finally, one of my more recent books is called Managerial Decision Modeling . Now you can understand why so many CEOs in this country are confused about what OR/MS/QA/DS/MDM does for them! At least in OM, Finance, Accounting, etc., one term is used to explain what a manager does for a living.
All this is backdrop to my point today. INFORMS (as we see in OR/MS Today) is making a brave new rebranding move from OR/MS to Business Analytics. (The group’s previous marketing approach as “The Science of Better” obviously didn’t take off). And it just changed the name of its Spring meeting to INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and OR.
All of this may turn out to be good news for profs and colleges that are willing to risk rebranding their own dominions. IBM will spend serious money to encourage schools to add/modify courses to fit under this analytics wording. This is just one step it is taking to convince CEOs that they need the software.