Principles of the ISCM
Research Agenda
The ISCM Program brings fresh and useful supply chain findings
to the ISCM sponsors through the research
agenda. Specifically, the Program brings thse findings
to the sponsors by:
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'Harvesting' supply chain research across
MIT.
Identifying and bringing relevant research
at MIT to the sponsors in research colloquiua,
quarterly collaboration and exchange meetings,
and through electronic distribution of supply
chain research content. In this way, ISCM sponsors
benefit from the broad supply chain research
activities at MIT. |
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Creating new learnings through ISCM-funded
supply chain research in several ways:
| a. |
Sole funding - these are projects
where ISCM is the sole funding group, providing
a higher level of direction to the work. |
| b. |
Pooled funding - these are
projects where ISCM pools its funding with
other groups on a research project, providing
high leverage of ISCM funds to derive learnings. |
| c. |
Seed funding - these are
projects where ISCM provides researchers with seed funding for promising new research initiatives. |
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Additionally, individual sponsors can benefit from other MIT
research through invitations to participate in various non-ISCM
research activities.
Making Research Investments
The ISCM agenda ultimately is a portfolio of projects that have different structure, focus and time horizon. As noted above, projects can be solely funded by ISCM or ISCM can pool funds with other supporters. Also, ISCM can make seed funding investments in new research projects.
In many ways, the ISCM Program serves as a venture capital organization for researchers with new ideas that need funding and support. By providing seed funding to researchers, ISCM helps researchers get started on promising research initiatives, and secures preferential treatment by the researcher for having provided .
The Research Team
Funded research is conducted by a broad set of faculty and researchers
from the Center of Transportation and Logistics, as well as researchers from across the Institute. ISCM is not limited to working with researchers from MIT,
and ISCM has developed working relationships with researchers from
other leading institutions, leveraging our respective assets and
capabilities. We expect to continue and expand this type of collaboration
to provide our sponsors with the highest impact research.
P.S. Is research the same as consulting?
You may be wondering - "What is research and how does it differ
from consulting?"
Good question, the difference is not well-understood. In simplest
terms, research entails creating new knowledge to unsolved problems.
Consulting typically entails applying known solutions and approaches
to problems, perhaps reapplying solutions from one industry to
another as an example, or from one company situation to similar
situations in other companies.
Research projects follow a rigorous methodology to establish
validity of findings. Typically, projects start with an assessment
of the current state of knowledge in the public domain, often
called a 'Literature Review'. Additional steps often include development
of a hypothesis, a taxonomy, data collection, analysis and testing
of hypothesis. Within the academic environment and using MIT resources,
this typically requires a minimum of 9-12 months for each project,
often longer dependent upon the scope and depth of the project.
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