Preparing a Graduate Commencement Speech -- From the Isenberg School of Management to the School of Business, Economics and Law in Sweden

Now is the time for college graduations and, in Massachusetts, over the past several days, we have been the scene for numerous ones -- from the UMass Amherst graduations to graduations in Boston and to even the Smith College graduation last weekend at which Arianna Huffington gave the commencement address. And Oprah Winfrey will be speaking at Harvard University's commencement on May 30.

Last, year, I was honored to give the commencement address at the Master's degree graduate commencement ceremony at the University of Gothenburg's School of Business, Economics and Law on June 14, 2013. My speech was on Life as a Network and it can be accessed here.

A writeup on the speech appeared in the UMass Amherst's In the Loop.

When I received an invitation a few months ago from Dean Maureen McKelvey of the University of Gothenburg to give this year's commencement speech, I immediately agreed.

Giving a commencement speech in the US is one thing -- giving a commencement speech in another country is a truly special experience.

I had the great experience of giving the commencement speech at the Isenberg School's undergraduate commencement in May 2003, which took place at the Mullins Center, so I can say that I have given such speeches on 2 continents.


This will be my fifth visit/stay in Gothenburg, since 2012, and,  as a Visiting Professor of Operations Management there, through its unique Visiting Professorship Programme, Gothenburg, Sweden has become my second home.

I will be delivering my commencement speech on June 12, 2013 in Gothenburg and my theme this year will be Leadership.

I will speak on what makes a great leader -- one of many themes that I have been writing about on this blog and will also bring personal experiences into the text.

I plan on emphasizing resiliency, creativity, communications, diversity, and integrity, and, as I did last year, I will share with you photos from the ceremony.

How the US Can Compete and Win in Global Supply Chains

I was delighted to read Thomas L. Friedman's Op-Ed column Made in the World in yesterday's New York Times that quoted Yossi Sheffi of MIT.

Sheffi was my host at MIT when I held an NSF Visiting Professorship for Women.

Yossi Sheffi is the author of Urban Transportation Networks in which many of the papers of my dissertation advisor, Stella Dafermos, are cited, and one of my papers as well, although it was published just shortly after I received my PhD from Brown. He has graciously made this book available for download.

Of course, he is also the author of The Resilient Enterprise, which focuses on supply chains and how to minimize and respond to disruptions. I refer to his books in various courses that I teach at the Isenberg School from my Transportation & Logistics course to the new Humanitarian Logistics and Healthcare course that I am presently teaching.

According to Friedman's column: But America can thrive in this world, explained Yossi Sheffi, the M.I.T. logistics expert, if it empowers “as many of our workers as possible to participate” in different links of these global supply chains — either imagining products, designing products, marketing products, orchestrating the supply chain for products, manufacturing high-end products and retailing products. If we get our share, we’ll do fine.

And here’s the good news: We have a huge natural advantage to compete in this kind of world, if we just get our act together.

One of my primary areas of research is supply chain networks, and I fully concur with Friedman's ending paragraph:

If only — if only — we could come together on a national strategy to enhance and expand all of our natural advantages: more immigration, most post-secondary education, better infrastructure, more government research, smart incentives for spurring millions of start-ups — and a long-term plan to really fix our long-term debt problems — nobody could touch us. We’re that close.

Our approach to supply chains focuses on the network system as described in my Supply Chain Network Economics: Dynamics of Prices, Flows, and Profits book.

Information on some of our latest research on supply chains, from medical nuclear ones to pharmaceutical and even fashion ones, can be accessed on the Virtual Center for Supernetworks website.

Provocative Headlines and Computer Algorithms

David Carr has a thought-provoking, entertaining article in The New York Times about headlines that search engine optimization (S.E.O.) seems to favor. In the article, he has some provocative headlines and some background as to how the new media seeks to capture readers' attention and how headlines of Internet stories move to the top of searches, which are the results of computer algorithms (something we as operations researchers or computer scientists know a lot about).

According to Arianna Huffington, the Editor of The Huffington Post:

“We do ironic headlines, smart headlines, and work hard to make very serious stories as interesting as we can.” “We pride ourselves on bringing in our community on which headlines work best.”

Some dumbing down of Internet article headlines is inevitable, since short, punchy, catchy phrases appear to "attract" the search engines' "attention," as do names of celebrities and those in power or whoever is "the flavor du jour." As David Carr muses: it leads to a sameness that can make all the information seem as if it were generated by the same traffic-loving robot.

We are living in an era of short-term gain, in which the creation of works that will last, be they in scholarship, science, literature, art, music, etc., are not as well-recognized (the same goes for the sustained effort required of such creations). To construct works of lasting value one needs persistent, consistent labor over time, and a deep focus and attention span. But, then again, many of the greats did not get their recognized due until they were long gone. Their rewards came from their internal need and drive to innovate and to use their imagination in novel ways.