Reflections on 20 years with the Edelman Award Competition

A defining moment in my career occurred just after my first article appeared in Operations Research. My dean (Jack Wettlaufer) appeared unannounced in my office bursting with enthusiasm and congratulations. After some moments of euphoria, he then deflated my bubble somewhat by laying a sheet of paper on my desk. On the sheet was a list of the school’s advisory board members who were mostly CEOs and C-level executives of Canada’s major businesses.

“Now which of these people should I send your article to?” Jack asked. Jack’s simple question began a career long quest to try to conduct OR/MS/analytics (hereafter “analytics”) research that would be of interest to C-level executives. Since senior executives are focused on business strategy, one research idea was to investigate how analytics could be linked to strategy, and for this I needed to find some data.

The Franz Edelman Award competition had been running since 1972 and showcased some of the most significant real-world analytics work. Furthermore, these works had been verified by judges, and the finalists were all published. After reading many of the finalist papers, we came up with a research project to address the issue of which analytics works would attract the attention and support of senior management and could, therefore, be called “strategic.” We took an 8-year sample of Edelman finalists (published 1989-1996) that were all at least five years post implementation and contacted them. We also interviewed several people familiar with their respective work and its history over the years following implementation. Interestingly, we concluded that only one of the 48 works was likely not quite as advertised, a great tribute to the Edelman verification process! We published our findings in several outlets including Operations Research [1].

Career-Changing Event

A lasting and career-changing benefit from this project was an invitation in 2000 to be a judge for the Edelman Competition. Judging the six finalists is the final step in the rigorous process of selecting the winner that begins with a large selection panel that reviews the initial submitted abstracts and decides the ones to move forward to the next step, which is verification. The selection panel is large because it typically needs to provide 20-24 verifiers to look in detail at the 10-12 applications they select for follow-up, as well as 12 coaches for the six finalist teams that are selected by the same panel after verification. Because a large number of volunteers are required, this panel provides an excellent entry-level opportunity for INFORMS members interested in practice.

I was fortunate to serve my apprenticeship in the Edelman Competition with Gene Woolsey and Newt Garber (among others), who had played a major role in starting the Edelman Award and were important figures in nurturing the competition during the early and sometimes difficult years. In my 20+ year involvement with the Edelman Competition, I performed many verifications where I had the opportunity to talk to senior executives about work being done in their organizations, and also coached many finalist teams where I had the opportunity to interact closely with professionals who were doing leading-edge analytics.

Years ago, the highlight of the competition for the judges was the meeting where the winner was chosen. In the days before the Edelman Gala, the judges were sequestered over dinner with free and unlimited food and drink until the winner was decided. Being good analytics people, the judges knew the value of free food and drink! On at least one occasion, the pre-dinner chat among the judges suggested that the winner was so clear that had we taken a vote before dinner we would have had a unanimous outcome. However, Newt took leadership and insisted that all six finalists received careful consideration, and after many rounds of negative cumulative voting we identified the obvious winner sometime after midnight.

Once the Edelman Gala was initiated, these late-night sessions disappeared, as did the idea of a consensus winner. I recall one year when we were still in deliberation well after the call to the Gala dinner, with the votes tied 4-4 and no hope of the usual consensus. Fortunately, the chair cast the deciding ninth vote; otherwise the Gala attendees might still be waiting for a decision.

As an academic not regularly exposed to practice in my day job, participating in judging the Edelman Competition provided many career benefits, and I am grateful to the many fellow screeners and judges who gave me the opportunity to interact with many practice leaders and to learn about the difficulties and the joys of practice. A major benefit to me was the opportunity to take the Edelman experience into the classroom. I could talk about the current state of analytics, which firms and individuals are leading edge, where the promising new application areas were, and how the theoretical materials in the course were actually being used and the benefits that were being realized today.

Lasting Impression

A lasting impression from my involvement with the Edelman Competition is the talent represented on the various Edelman panels and the rigor and seriousness that all the Edelman teams bring to the competition. Choosing finalists and picking the winner are very difficult tasks where the margin between success and failure is often very slim. To understand Edelman judging it is necessary to recognize that the panels and judges are acutely concerned with the proven impact of the work. The fact that the impact has occurred and has been credibly measured is a critical component in the assessment of every entry. This presents many challenges as few organizations have the time or resources to conduct the parallel tests that are often required in our research to demonstrate and measure differences. Consequently, most efforts to measure impact are open to be challenged.

These issues are amplified when you consider the wide variety of impact from applications ranging from analytics applied to critical healthcare and government activities to the analysis of game-changing organizational decisions or the improvement of critical corporate functions such as supply chain or revenue generation. How does one decide whether improved health outcomes, including perhaps lives saved, compares to millions or even billions of dollars of business impact – a comparison that is particularly important today as we consider how to react to COVID-19? Judging the Edelman Award means making these difficult choices in a public forum where the outcome matters both to the people who submitted the work and also to the credibility of INFORMS as an organization.

Practitioners are fond of the saying: “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is” [2]. I think this is true, but I urge all academic INFORMS members to conduct their own investigation by becoming more involved in practice. You may be surprised at the number of well-known researchers and research-focused schools represented in the INFORMS practice community; many top-ranked research papers originated from ideas that surfaced first in practice.

The Edelman Competition involves a major effort by a small army of INFORMS members to produce the six finalists and the eventual winner. New volunteers are always needed. Joining the Practice Section of INFORMS, which manages the competition as well as many other practice-related activities, is an easy way to start. Joining this section will enable you to interact with an outstanding group of INFORMS members and leaders and have a lot of fun while at the same time enhancing your understanding of the practice of analytics. Participating in the Practice Section and the Edelman Competition has greatly benefited my research and teaching and expanded my analytics network. In my experience, academics do not have to choose between research and practice but can enhance their careers by being interested and curious about both.

Reference and Note

1. Peter C. Bell, Chris K. Anderseon and Stephen P. Kaiser, 2003, “Strategic Operations Research and the Edelman Prize Finalist Applications 1989-1998,” Operations Research, Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 17-31.
2. The original source appears to be Benjamin Brewster, The Yale Literary Magazine, 1882, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/04/14/theory/.