Rather than suffer “strangulation by footnotes
and references,” for brevity and equity I do not provide
references to subjects such as auctions, the new industrial
organization, or experimental gaming because there are
The more than adequate references and survey articles available.
The visit to the main library at the University of Toronto
to look randomly at the new books in economics led to
How my going to Princeton to study game theory. To this day,
I have been struck with the thought that it is possible to
not know precisely what one is looking for, but recognize
To immediately when one finds it.
At Princeton, there was some direct talk about operations
research per se, and only a few of us were aware of the
To the newly formed Operations Research Society. But in a few
years around Fine Hall (and elsewhere), much of the math
Among the visitors, students, and faculty were Bellman,
Feller, Kuhn, McCarthy, Mills,
Minsky, Nash, Scarf, Tucker, and Dynamic
programming, linear programming, convex programming,
integer programming, inventory theory, game theory,
intelligence, and applied probability were all being
While still at Princeton, and then when at the Institute for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and at General
Electric in the period between 1953 and 1958, I was con-
a broad impact, not only on operations research but on the A basic problem that has beset the publication of
applications of operations research from its inception (in
both the United States and the United Kingdom) has been
Consulting firms flourish. A variety of military opera-
as they were when operations research was young and
100% improvement in performance almost anywhere was
of auctions or in the structuring of games to study market
structure
Our “flagship journals” are academic journals, and the
incentive structure for most practitioners to publish their
The findings in them is minimal. Validation in application is
probably better measured by a repeat order from a temple
The goals
of academics in operations research and the goals of temple
basically different and can be appreciated only
when placed in the context of the organizations for which
After my stay at the Institute for Advanced Study in
the Behavioral Sciences, rather than return to academia
I decided to join General Electric, where are operations
research group was being formed explicitly to pro
operations researchers at Columbia, among them David
Few long-range plans can afford the luxury of working out
One more than a few alternative paths. To even the most staid
of firms goes out more than a few years into the future,
the planning becomes more of an exercise that provides a
My other interests at IBM were in experimental, teach-
operational gaming and in developing a theory of
It seemed to me that gaming provided a useful
way to teach the insights of game theory and to provide
a way to organize concepts and data on the structure of
I believe to this day that eventually a good plan-
department of any major corporation should utilize a
simulation of the corporation and its market as a device to
organize perceptions and data, to help formulate questions,
and to facilitate communication among practitioners.
Most of the individuals writing in this issue have much of
But many of them, though rich in
The experience, are still young in perception and thought. The
purpose of musing and summary is not to bury a subject but
to understand what has been learned and how to utilize the
body of knowledge and understanding to start to explore
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