From Disaster Relief to Freight Sustainability - Our Talks at EURO in Valencia, Spain

This summer I am again spending at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University where I am a Summer Fellow. I have been busy working on a project on perishable product supply chains from food to blood.

Last summer I was also at Harvard as a Summer Fellow but spent a considerable amount of time flying to conferences, including one I co-organized on the Dynamics of Disasters, which took place in Kalamata, Greece.

Since I will have a heavy set of speaking engagements this Fall and I also wanted to fully take advantage of my time at the incredible Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, I have had co-authors present our latest work at the EURO Conference in Valencia, Spain.

I am delighted to report that our three presentations, two on disaster relief, and one on sustainable freight, have now been presented!

These presentations can be downloaded in their entirety here.

The first paper above is in press in the new Dynamic of Disasters: Algorithmic Approaches and Applications volume that I co-edited with Professors Ilias Kotsireas and Panos M. Pardalos.  The published is Springer. The last paper above was published in the European Journal of Operational Research very recently and was co-authored with Professor Sara Saberi (also a former doctoral student of mine) and her colleague at WPI, Professor Joe Sarkis.  The second paper above has three generations of scholars as authors: besides myself - Professor Tina Wakolbinger and her doctoral student, Timo Gossler, in addition to our collaborator Professor Patrizia Daniele.

Below I have posted a few photos from the conference, thanks to my wonderful co-author from Italy, Professor Patrizia Daniele. What is truly special is that three of my former PhD students from the Isenberg School, Professor Jose M. Cruz of UCONN's School of Business, Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Professor Dmytro Matsypura of the University of Sydney in Australia, were all at the conference, and both Jose and Tina, as well as Patrizia, spoke on our joint research. They all continue as Supernetwork Center Associates and
it is fabulous to see how synergistic our research has been over the years and how beautifully the friendships established in our doctoral program have continued!

A big thank you to the organizers of the terrific EURO 2018 Conference in Valencia, Spain, for a fabulous conference for the exchange of the latest in scientific accomplishments n Operations Research and Analytics!

Green Spaces At and Near Harvard University

It's been a terrific week and I am enjoying being back at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University very much. Byerly Hall is where the Fellows, including the Summer Fellows, have their offices, and my office overlooks a fountain and a garden.

Since I am a tree hugger and it is now June it is wonderful to discover and to enjoy special places in Cambridge and Boston that are green! I continue to do research on sustainability and have also published on the design of sustainable supply chains for sustainable cities.

Besides the Cambridge Common, featured below,

I find the Harvard Business School, with its lovely collection of buildings, surrounded by beautiful landscaping and flowers a true gem.

A favorite discovery of mine, while taking a walk on Brattle Street, is the Mount Auburn Cemetery, which is a national landmark, and not only the burial place of numerous historical figures, but also an expanse of lovely gardens, fountains, and architecture. I saw a turkey, a bunny, and multiple chipmunks and was serenaded by birds during a walk there last week.

Another favorite green space is the public garden in Boston, which is an absolute delight.

And, after explorations and soaking in the beauty of green spaces as well as the fragrant air, it is always terrific to come back to Radcliffe where the painting below hangs outside my office.

Green spaces add so much to the quality of life in cities.

Sustainable Supply Chains to Save Our Planet Through Operations Research

This has not been a good day with President Trump announcing, as had been expected (but we were hoping otherwise), that the US is quitting the Paris Climate Pact. This puts US at odds with over 190 nations that had signed this pact. 

Frankly, I feel physically repulsed and ill by his decision, which is contrary to that of not only many world leaders but also top executives and even some of his very own advisors. I guess for some, breathing clean air and having their children breathe clean air, too; having clean water, and a diversity of species, and not dealing with more  turbulent weather, uncertainty, and possible food insecurity due to climate change, does not matter. This is so ironic, since the green economy can actually be a very successful economy and can generate jobs and is doing so (as the Chinese have even started to figure out). The costs of not slowing down climate change will be immense and are already upon us.

I do have some hope, however, in leaders from certain industries in the US as well as on the state levels (including California, New York, and Massachusetts) that progress will, nevertheless, be made to reduce pollution and emissions and to combat climate change.

In addition, I have hope because of students and this generation as well as a community of academics and practitioners that has a passion for sustainability and saving our planet.

Our most recent work on supply chains and sustainability, we will be presenting at the MSOM meeting this month. There we will present the paper,  A Competitive Multiperiod Supply Chain Network Model with Freight Carriers and Green Technology Investment Option, which was co-authored by Professors Sara Saberi and Joe Sarkis of WPI, Professor Jose M. Cruz of UConn, and me. In this work, we construct a model with multiple manufacturers, retailers, and freight carriers who maximize the net present value (NPV) of their investments in ecologically friendly technology. Future production, inventory, transaction, and transportation costs savings are used to help fund investments. The environmental impact of production, inventory, transportation, and consumption of products in the supply chain network are all integrated. The tradeoff between the initial technology investment and its ecological footprint effect are considered for the supply chain planning period. This is a large-scale multiperiod game theory problem for  a supply chain of multiple echelons, which we provide theoretical results for an extensive numerical results with policy implications.

We have also published on design of sustainable supply chains:  Design of Sustainable Supply Chains for Sustainable Cities, Anna Nagurney,   Environment & Planning B 42(1): (2015) pp 40-57 and Sustainable Supply Chain Network Design: A Multicriteria Perspective, Anna Nagurney and Ladimer S. Nagurney, International Journal of Sustainable Engineering 3: (2010) pp 189-197.

Also, topics related to transportation have been a theme in our sustainability research:   Environmental Impact Assessment of Transportation Networks with Degradable Links in an Era of Climate Change, Anna Nagurney, Qiang Qiang, and Ladimer Nagurney, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation 4: (2010) pp 154-171 and  Environmental and Cost Synergy in Supply Chain Network Integration in Mergers and Acquisitions, Anna Nagurney and Trisha Woolley, in Sustainable Energy and Transportation Systems, Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making, Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, M. Ehrgott, B. Naujoks, T. Stewart, and J. Wallenius, Editors, Springer, Berlin, Germany (2010) pp 51-78.

Electronic recycling has also been a theme of several papers of ours, including:   When and for Whom would E-waste be a Treasure Trove? Insights from a Network Equilibrium Model of W-waste Flows, Tina Wakolbinger, Fuminori Toyasaki, Thomas Nowak, and Anna Nagurney, International Journal of Production Economics 154: (2014) pp 263–273.

Food, given the costs associated with waste, has obsessed us in our research, with an example being:  Competitive Food Supply Chain Networks with Application to Fresh Produce, Min Yu and Anna Nagurney, European Journal of Operational Research 224(2): (2013) pp 273-282.

Other sustainable supply chain research of ours has included work on fashion supply chains: Fashion Supply Chain Network Competition with Ecolabelling, Anna Nagurney, Min Yu, and Jonas Floden, in Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain Management: From Sourcing to Retailing, T.-M. Choi and T.C.E. Cheng, Editors, Springer (2015) pp 61-84 and Sustainable Fashion Supply Chain Management Under Oligopolistic Competition and Brand Differentiation, Anna Nagurney and Min Yu, International Journal of Production Economics, Special Section on Green Manufacturing and Distribution in the Fashion and Apparel Industries 135: (2012) pp 532-540.

Finally, in addition to several books that I have written on sustainability, with examples highlighted here,  we have also written on sustainability issues in healthcare in the papers: 
Securing the Sustainability of Global Medical Nuclear Supply Chains Through Economic Cost Recovery, Risk Management, and Optimization, Anna Nagurney, Ladimer S. Nagurney, and Dong Li, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation 9(6): (2015) pp 405-418 and Supply Chain Network Design of a Sustainable Blood Banking System, Anna Nagurney and Amir H. Masoumi, in Sustainable Supply Chains: Models, Methods and Public Policy Implications, T. Boone, V. Jayaraman, and R. Ganeshan, Editors, Springer, London, England (2012) pp 49-72.

We have also published on policies and energy and the environment with an example of that research being:  Spatially Differentiated Trade of Permits for Multipollutant Electric Power Supply Chains, Trisha Woolley, Anna Nagurney, and John Stranlund, in Optimization in the Energy Industry, J. Kallrath, P. Pardalos, S. Rebennack, and M. Scheidt, Editors, Springer, Berlin, Germany (2009) pp 277-296.

Sustainability of our supply chains has never been more essential.

Super Exciting Operations Research Conferences This Summer

This promises to be a very exciting summer with multiple Operations Research conferences on the horizon. There are even others and I wish that my supernetwork team could present at all of them.

The first one at which we will have a paper is the MSOM 207 Conference at the UNC Kenan-Flager Business School, which should be a lovely venue. MSOM stands for Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. The conference will take place June 20-21 and the full program is now online.

At the MSOM conference,  we will be presenting our latest research on sustainability: A Competitive Multiperiod Supply Chain Network Model with Freight Carriers and Green Technology Investment Option. Dr. Sara Saberi of the Foisie School of Business at WPI will present this paper, which is co-authored with  Professor Jose M. Cruz of UConn's School of Business, Professor Joe Sarkis, the Head of Sara's Department and also one of the most highly cited researchers in 2016, and me. We had the pleasure of hosting Professor Sarkis at the Isenberg School of Management through the UMass Amherst INFORMS Speakers Series. He gave a fabulous talk on greening the supply chain.  Sara received her PhD in Management Science from the Isenberg School in 2016 and Jose did so in 2004.  I was honored to chair their doctoral dissertation committees.

Shortly thereafter, I will be off to Europe, first to speak at the EURO HOpe Conference, which is organized by the EURO Group on Humanitarian Logistics and the Vienna University of Economics and Business, with Professor Tina Wakolbinger, also an Isenberg PhD alumna in Management Science, class of 2007. At this conference, I will present the paper, A Generalized Nash Equilibrium Network Model for Post-Disaster Humanitarian Relief, which I co-authored with Emilio Alvarez Flores and Professor  Ceren Soylu, and which was published in Transportation Research E 95: (2016), pp 1-18. Emilio graduated with honors from the Isenberg School in 2016.

Then it will be time to travel to Greece, where I have co-organized the 3rd Dynamics of Disasters conference with my super colleagues: Professors Ilias S. Kotsireas of the Wilfrid University in Canada, Panos M. Pardalos of the University of Florida, and Fuad Aleskerov of the National Reearch University Higher School of Economics in Russia. We are putting the final touches on the program but you can see the exciting talk topics here.


At this conference, we will have the pleasure of presenting the paper, A Variational Equilibrium
 Framework for Humanitarian Organizations in Disaster Relief: Effective Product Delivery Under Competition for Financial Funds. This paper is joint work with Professor Patrizia Daniele of the University of Catania in Italy, my long-time collaborator and also member of the Supernetwork Center team, Emilio Alvarez Flores, and Patrizia's student, Valeria Caruso. It will be fabulous to see these collaborators at an exotic venue. I will also deliver the paper,  A Multitiered Supply Chain Network Equilibrium Model for Disaster Relief with Capacitated Freight Service Provision.

Then it will be back to Massachusetts and before you know it, it will be time to go to the IFORS Conference in Quebec City, Canada.

 There we will have two papers for presentation.  The first paper, A Game Theory Model for Freight Service Provision Security Investments for High-Value Cargo, is co-authored with Shivani Shukla, who recently successfully defended her PhD in Management Science at the Isenberg School, Professor Sara Saberi, mentioned above, and also Professor Ladimer S. Nagurney, who will present the paper. The second paper is on our recent work on blood supply chains with Professor Amir H. Masoumi of Manhattan College and Professor Min Yu of the University of Portland in Oregon. They also were my former PhD students at the Isenberg School of Management and it is wonderful to continue our collaborations on perishable product supply chains and healthcare!

 For those, interested, you can find the titles and abstracts of my former PhD students' (more recent ones) doctoral dissertations on the Supernetwork Center site. 

Greening the Supply Chain: Insights From One of the World's Leading Scientific Minds - Professor Joe Sarkis

Today we were honored and delighted to have Professor Joe Sarkis, the head of the Department of Management within Worcester Polytechnic Institute's (WPI) Foisie School of Business, deliver the lecture, "Supplier Collaboration and Development for Greening Supply Chains," as part of our UMass Amherst INFORMS Speaker Series. The series is organized by the UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter so a special thanks to the chapter President, Pritha Dutta, a doctoral student in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management, for handling the logistics and for designing the nice poster below.

The talk was even announced on the UMass Amherst homepage today.

And, interestingly, and coincidentally, if you look closely at the above homepage snapshot you will also see on the left under "News" the article on Seven UMass Amherst Researchers Named among 'World's Leading Scientific Minds.' In this 2016 Thomson Reuters survey of highly cited scientists is also our speaker today, Professor Joe Sarkis, and he is listed in the Engineering category so do check it out. He is renowned for his work on sustainability and supply chains and today he attracted an audience from the Isenberg School of Management, the College of Engineering, the Department of Environmental Conservation, among others. Just look at his Google Scholar citations.

He motivated his presentation by noting a 2016 McKinsey report on Supply Chain Management and emphasizing the importance of greening the supply chain to industry with the "leading edge of thought" should also be the "leading edge of practice." "We should be doing good," he said, and emphasized the gold mine of research in this area and that showed throughout his presentation as did his passion and energy. He has collaborated with researchers from China, from Egypt, and other countries and, I do admit I am now also working on a paper with him and with two of my former doctoral students, Dr. Sara Saberi who just started as an Assistant Professor at the Foisie Schoo of Business, and Dr. Jose Cruz, from the School of Business at the University of Connecticut, whose work was also mentioned in Sarkis' presentation.

He emphasized levels of problems and different methodologies and theories to tackle them - from global problems, such as global warming, to regional problems of deforestation and acid rain, to more local problems of pesticides and waste.

Of course, he had to mention that there are many different definitions of environmental sustainability (and he even authored a paper on this) and recognized the importance of ISO 14000, life cycle analysis (LCA), and carbon and water footprints. When it comes to supply chains it is essential to "close the loop" and deal not only with forward and reverse supply chains separately. He remarked that energy research is also important for supply chain management and stated that teaching informs his research and vice versa. I so agree with the latter statement and continue to be inspired by questions that my students raise.

It was wonderful to have my Isenberg School colleague, Professor Marta Calas, in the audience since she is working with a doctoral student on sustainability and the fashion brand Eileen Fisher. We have published several papers on fashion and sustainability with my former doctoral student, and now Assistant Professor at the University of Portland, Dr. Min Yu.

The relevance of theory, methodologies, and applications were emphasized and he also discussed whether carrots or sticks should be using for green supply chain management.

I very much liked what he said about different boundaries, including temporal ones, and associated decision-making. He also discussed the different types of flows that are relevant and since we work on networks, optimization, game theory, as well as sustainability I liked the flows of material, service, information, and financial ones noted very much. Also, I appreciated him mentioning different industries from food to the textile industry. On the latter, he is working with a collaborator in Egypt. Afterwards, a doctoral student and UMass Amherst INFORMS Student Chapter officer, Ekin Koker,  brought up the automotive industry and sustainability.

Professor Sarkis spoke on his work on "supplier development" and the sharing of knowledge to help suppliers become greener and also about investment in greener technologies.

The theme of different "levels" also resonated, from the individual, to the organizational, the enterprise level, all the way to the circular economy. Also, how leadership in greening the supply chain affects motivation and employees.

When I asked him which paper he was most proud of, he mentioned his paper in Science, with co-authors from China and Italy, "Measuring China's Circular Economy." He also noted his paper with Zhu in the Journal of Operations Management, since it contains theory, methodology, and application and such papers tend to be highly cited. The history behind his Science paper was also fascinating, but you should ask him this.

The audience clearly had a great experience and benefited a lot from the presentation.

After the energizing and very inspiring talk, I took Professor Sarkis, two of his doctoral students from WPI that had joined us, and three doctoral students from UMass Amherst, Pritha Dutta, Deniz Besik, and Rodrgo Mercado,  to lunch at the University Club and the wonderful conversations continued. As Professor Sarkis said at lunch, there is no better life than being a Full Professor at a university!

The food was great and the conversation even better - amazing how some universities are incentivizing researchers to publish in good journals especially those outside the United States. Of course, we also exchanged notes on recent academic hires, the job market, etc. Interestingly, both the Dean of the Foisie School of Business and the Dean of the Isenberg School, Dr. Mark A. Fuller  (I admit I served on the search committee for the latter), are in the Information Systems field.

Many thanks to Professor Joe Sarkis for coming to the University of Massachusetts Amherst today. You are welcome back any time! Thanks to Pritha Dutta for capturing the "Bon Voyage"in the photo below.

News from the Supernetwork Center at the Isenberg School of Management

It has been an amazing start to the Fall semester and I am delighted to share with you the latest news of the activities at the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the Isenberg School of Management.

The Fall 2016 edition of the Center's newsletter, which is published in three editions annually is now out and it is the 40th newsletter that we have produced, which is quite a milestone. It can be downloaded, in pdf format here.

All issues of The Supernetwork Sentinel can be viewed on this page.

The Center was established in 2001 and this year we are marking its 15th anniversary.

In this newsletter, you can find information on our new, edited book: Dynamics of Disasters: Key Concepts, Models, Algorithms, and Insights, which I co-edited with Professor Illias S. Kotsireas of Wilfrid University in Canada and Professor Panos M. Pardalos of the University of Florida. The volume, to be published soon by Springer International Publishing Switzerland, consists of a preface and 18 refereed book chapters. Also, the newsletter contains a section on how the Supernetwork Center research is making a difference and highlights some of our research on topics ranging from supply chains and sustainability to cybersecurity as well as humanitarian logistics and disaster relief.

As always, this issue also contains information on various professional activities of Center Associates and accolades received as well as recent publications.

Travel Route Choice Behavior - Green Way or the Congested Way

Moving to a new country, if only for a period of several months, is always very exciting for me and, since I arrived in Oxford, England almost 3 weeks ago to assume my Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College at Oxford University, I have had many wonderful experiences. I have enjoyed meeting other Fellows, doctoral students, staff members as well as colleagues from different universities at a conference and have been captivated by the beauty of the architecture as well as the gardens in this historic university town.

It has been so pleasant getting used to a new apartment, finding places to shop, and, would you believe, that I have not ridden in a car since the driver brought me from Heathrow London to Oxford almost three weeks ago and neither have I turned on the TV. Life here is just too interesting and there is so much to explore. The support provided by All Souls College with wonderful meals, fellowship, access to libraries, colloquia, and seminars at Oxford University, and its facilities, plus an office that overlooks a garden and fountain, have also given a great lift to my research work.

But, of course, I have to get to and from my office, which I do every day, including weekends that I am at Oxford.


The second day that I was in Oxford I purchased a monthly bus pass because I thought I might use the bus regularly and I do after evening college events.

However, I do love to walk, and, given the sumptuous meals (today, for  example, we had exquisite salmon, many salads, delicious carrots with nuts, and summer pudding filled with berries for lunch, for example) at All Souls College, one needs to exercise.


Now, which route should I choose to get to and from work as well as which mode of transportation. I am not renting a car and neither will I be biking in  although a wife of a deceased Visiting Fellow donated a bike for our use. I carry a brief case with papers and always an umbrella and riding a bike would be too cumbersome.


The first several days I walked the congested way on Iffley Road and then Henley Road and then noticed that I would cough. Also, there has been widespread coverage of pollutants in various cities, based on a study of the World Health Organization (WHO), including in Europe, especially with all the diesel vehicles, which, honesty, I could "feel." To walk the congested way took me thirty minutes.

Then I discovered the green way, which is via Meadow Lane, past a playground and elementary school, and past fields, and also Oxford University sports facilities such as a pool and track. This route takes me about 45 minutes but is preferable to me since I always get some great thinking done and arrive at my destination so refreshed and inspired - great exercise for mind and body and I have met several walkers along this way.

I have done a lot of research on travel choice behavior and multicriteria decision-making, weighting, for example, cost, time, and emissions generated.


Below are links to two of my papers on multicriteria travel decision-making.


Traffic Network Equilibrium and the Environment: A Multicriteria Decision-Making Perspective,
Anna Nagurney, June Dong, and Patricia L. Mokhtarian, in Computational Methods in Decision-Making, Economics and Finance, E. Kontoghiorges, B. Rustem, and S. Siokos, Editors, Kluwer Academic Publishers (2002) pp 501-523.


Multicriteria Network Equilibrium Modeling with Variable Weights for Decision-Making in the Information Age with Applications to Telecommuting and Teleshopping,
Anna Nagurney, June Dong, and Patricia Mokhtarian, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control 26: (2002) pp 1629-1650.


This topic is part of a broader theme on sustainable transportation that I wrote a book on:

When the book was published in 1999 I received a nice letter from Vice President Al Gore, which hangs framed in my office at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst.


Now I believe that this work may benefit from another extension, and that is the inclusion of a criterion on health impact of your route choice. Not only do we in our choices of mode and route affect the environment, but we are also affected by it. And breathing diesel fumes and particulate matter is not good for living beings.


And, today,  I had the most unexpected, delightful conversation on the Braess paradox with Dr. Eric Panzer, who is  Fellow at All Souls College at Oxford and is a mathematician, and also with Professor Wolfgang Ernst, a law scholar. Both are Germans and Eric had even heard of the Braess paradox. We had tea together after the delicious lunch.

Responsible Business: Insights from Executives and Academics

The Responsible Business Forum at the Said Business School at Oxford University in England has been a great success and I had the pleasure of hearing multiple executives as well as academics and students speak on and discuss a new paradigm for business in contrast to the doctrine of Milton Friedman, which stated that the purpose of business is to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of society.

The presentations and panels took place in the Nelson Mandela Lecture Theatre, a very appropriate setting.

There was also time to meet and chat during breaks in the schedule, which was very intense and incredibly informative.

Executives came from such top companies as Unilever, Mars, which was a co-sponsor of the forum, Al-Sanabel, Danone, and Novo Nordisk, among others.

There were panels by business leaders, financiers, policy makers, and thought leaders, and I enjoyed speaking with Dr. Aleen Westerhof, who is the Coordinator of the European Economic Summit.

The case studies were very interesting to me and what I noticed was that many of these involved food, which is a topic that I have done research on and continue to research, in the context of supply chains. For example, Danone deals with 150,000 dairy farmers and Mars is assisting cocoa farmers and changing their lives for the better. Both companies emphasize mutuality when it comes to stakeholders and empowering those that they do business with. Time and time again, the importance of taking the long view was emphasized. Also having regulations redesigned so the short-term for-profit schema is expanded.  The "tyranny of the horizon" was noted with climate change, for example, and I heard of supply value cycles as opposed to supply value chains since resources such as water and energy must be preserved. I was so impressed by Goran Ando, the Chairman of the pharmaceutical company, Novo Nordisk, saying that their manufacturing plants in Denmark were converted to renewable energy and, given that biotechnology is a big consumer of energy, this had a big impact on the bottom line and also is of benefit to the environment. Plans are to scale this to other plants.


Panelists and speakers addressed such major issues as: What is the purpose of business and how can we adopt new supply chains within brands to develop novel ecosystems of businesses, NGOs, governments, and universities to go beyond just financial measures of business performance and to include social and human capital. Time and time again, it was said that "it's not just about profits." I was very impressed by Itzik Zivan, CEO of Al-Sanabel in Israel, whose firm employs many women who are Bedouins to prepare nutritious food for school children. The women are empowered and the children benefit from wholesome, delicious foods in the schools, and Al-Sanabel earns a profit.  Al -Sanabek is a social enterprise and Zivan stated that their business model has the following features which others can emulate:


1. A genuine need in the market (3000,000 meals for children) on a regular basis;


2.  Market failure - the previous supply chain was broken - many children, especially Bedouin children would not eat the food provided in schools before;


3. Relative advantage- the Bedouin women who are employed to prepare the food make a decent salary and there has been no turnover!


A key issue in terms of responsible business was how to establish trust with suppliers since it takes a long time to build trust and trust is fragile. I also enjoyed hearing "Doing Well by Doing Good," which reminded me of one of my favourite INFORMS slogans: "Doing Good with Good O.R. (Operations Research). Business is also about emancipating people, it was said.


Executives noted their passion and how much they love their jobs and their clients. Institutional investors also need to buy into responsible business. Responsible business is supported by Mutuality - the Interests of Others - and the chocolate company Mars has begun a partnership with the Said Business School at Oxford to research the economics of mutuality. We were all invited to take on the challenges of responsible business whether as practitioners or researchers or policy makers.


We heard of companies working even with their competitors for the common good - impressive! The importance of resources was also a theme and especially knowledge resources and ideas generated by employees. Knowledge is a resource that is not lost when it is shared. The CEO of Danone said that "prosperity does not exist if we don't share it."  Keep searching for hidden resources in your value chain and be bold. Also, new distribution channels need to be invested in.


The importance of opening your mind so that you move beyond the boundary of you company and building a new box if you can't work within the existing frameworks made a lot of sense to me.


Also, Ellen, whom I have mentioned in a previous blogpost, who is a PhD student at Said and a fellow network enthusiast, gave me a tour of the Oxford Launchpad at Said, which she is involved in, for entrepreneurship.

And, what could be better than standing in the amphitheatre below, which is part of the business school, and where activities in honor of Shakespeare, as well as other events take place.

Finally, I'd like to thank the Said staff - I do like their special events shirts and think that perhaps we should do something similar at the Isenberg School of Management!

Congrats to the Said School of Business and to Professor Colin Mayer of Said and Bruno Marche of Marson on the success of The Resonsible Business Forum, which was even videostreamed.