📈 #60 Operations Research reimagined (Part VI): the great OR transformation

From academic curiosity to business essential: a vision for Operations Research

Remember when artificial intelligence was just a mysterious field, discussed in academic corridors and understood by few?

Today, my neighbor's kid plays with AI art generators, and startups worldwide build on GPT.

This transformation didn't happen by chance. It was driven by powerful positive feedback loops that turned initial progress into unstoppable momentum.

Operations Research stands at a similar inflection point.

Throughout this series, we've dissected the challenges holding OR back: the commoditization gap, transparency issues, marketing struggles, and the theory-practice divide.

But today, we're not here to dwell on problems. We're here to explore how these very challenges can become the engines of transformation.

In this final piece, we'll explore how we can transform these challenges into opportunities and create a roadmap for OR's evolution into a mainstream business tool.

Today, you’ll read in Feasible:

• 🌱 The power of positive feedback loops: OR's hidden accelerator

• 😎 A day powered by OR

• 🧭 Four pillars of transformation: building the bridge to tomorrow

🎧 At the top, you can listen to a podcast-like version of this post!

Ready to reimagine the future of Operations Research? Let's dive in! 🪂

🌱 The power of positive feedback loops: OR's hidden accelerator

Picture a snowball rolling down a hill. As it rolls, it picks up more snow, growing larger, which helps it pick up even more snow.

That's a positive feedback loop, and it's exactly what transformed AI from an academic curiosity into a global phenomenon.

Right now, OR is caught in the opposite: a negative spiral that looks like this:

Every field that's gone mainstream has broken free from similar patterns.

Take the open-source movement: GitHub made code sharing easier, which attracted more developers, who made sharing even easier, creating a virtuous cycle that revolutionized software development.

OR can follow a similar path:

Two specific loops could catalyze this transformation:

The open knowledge loop

Imagine a world where every successful OR implementation contributes to a growing, accessible knowledge base.

Each shared solution makes the next implementation easier, attracting more practitioners who, in turn, share their successes.

We're already seeing this with tools like HiGHS solver or Google's OR-Tools. Every new contributor enhances the ecosystem..

The practical impact loop

When businesses see their competitors gaining real advantages through OR, they want in.

Each success story becomes a catalyst for adoption, creating demand for more accessible tools and expertise.

Think about how Spotify's matching algorithms created a wave of interest in recommendation systems. OR solutions have a similar impact across industries.

💡 Positive feedback loops are field accelerators.

They turn individual progress into collective momentum, challenges into opportunities, and early adopters into mainstream users.

😎 A day powered by OR

Let's time-travel to 2030. What does a world where OR has gone mainstream look like?