Let me open by modifying William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey:
Ten years have passed; ten summers, with the length
Of ten long winters!
And, let me at once dispose of the (very) topical – Too Much in this World! – article in the recent WSJ that has my quote (and picture!):
Impact of Geopolitical Tumult on Business to Continue in 2023, say Risk Experts.
You know that I have always abandoned conventionality – Academic Solemnity, in particular – in favor of joyous playfulness.
So: What’s so special about January 23rd?
As I wrote in Portrait of an Academic Capitalist as a Young Man, it was while I was at Sundance Film Festival (at Starbucks, picking up my coffee) in 2013 (just the day before, I had given a talk at BYU at the invitation of Robin Roundy, my PhD advisor at Cornell) that I received a call that SAP would like to acquire SmartOps.
Ten years later, to the day, this January 23rd, I have been invited – by Krishna Jagannathan and Prabha Mandayam, faculty at IIT-Madras – to be the Inaugural Keynote at the Progress in Quantum Science and Technology Conference:
Dear Sridhar,
Hope you had a good break! Wishing you a happy and fulfilling 2023.
We are hoping to make you our inaugural speaker (9:30am on 23rd January). Just wanted to confirm that you were okay with this before we freeze the schedule!
Extracting some of the most professionally (so not counting cars, like McLaren and Lucid, or movies, like WBCN and the American Revolution and Virulent: The Vaccine War) satisfying events in the last ten years (and ignoring IPOs and “Exits”):
2013. HBS case on OrganJet. Need a Kidney? There’s an App for That! First OrganJet customer receives transplant. 2014. CBS News coverage (OrganJet). Bangs Lecture at Cornell (Academic Capitalist). Atlantic and NEJM articles on OrganJet. 2015. Pierskalla Award for OrganJet. Forbes article on OrganJet. POMS Keynote (Academic Capitalist). 2016. Management Science publication (OrganJet). IIT-Madras Leadership Lecture (Academic Capitalist). White House (Obama) Invitation for OrganJet and Nudge. 2017. Elected to NAE. MSOM Distinguished Fellow. WEF Invited Speaker (OrganJet). DSI Keynote (Academic Capitalist). 2018. DAA at IIT-Madras. Featured in Craft of Creativity. 2019. University Professor at CMU. Wicked Problems Plenary. 2020. TEDxCMU talk on Unconventional Computing. Aspen Institute Business & Society Keynote (Organ Transplantation). NASA/USRA co-development of Quantum Integer Programming course. 2021. NSF Distinguished Lecture. NASEM Committee on Organ Transplantation. Quantbot and solving AOC via Quantum Inspired Algorithms 😏. CEO Council (with Michael Dell). Pierskalla Award (Liquid Biopsy). Omni-channel Fulfillment (using IPA). 2022. White House (Biden) consult (Infant Formula). POM Publication (Nudge). MSOM Best Paper (Supply Chain). PSOR Best Paper (Organ Transplantation). Royal Society publication (Photonic Ising Machines). DARPA Grant (Quantum).
The three broad areas of my professional pre-occupation over the past decade have been:
Supply Chains. Healthcare Operations. Quantum Computing.
From my talk at BYU (in 2013):
Said one woman to Tayur, “You must be from God.” “No madam, I’m from Pittsburgh.”
“Let’s not take this too seriously,” said Tayur lightly, “but for them it is serious because they were going to die, and now they’re not.”
Tayur’s final message was simple: math is about the joy of creating.
“Why do I do what I do?” asked Tayur. “I do it because I find it fun.”
Perhaps it is appropriate to mention Walt Whitman (also modified)
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
The best I have done seem’s to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I have supposed them, are they not in reality meagre?
I, now fifty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not until death.
What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?
Paying homage to Montaigne:
Qui suis-je?
Let me mimic Robert Downey Jr.’s closing in:
Iron Man is a 2008 American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. It is the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and had box-office revenues of over $585 million on a budget of $140 million.
I am an Academic Capitalist.
What does that mean? Let me use the 2×2 Box framework 😳 of Business Schools to create a UU matrix. (No, U is not Unitary. 😏) Using Quantum lingo, Academic Capitalist is not someone who is just a superposition of “Book-Smart” and “Street-Smart”, but, is an entangled state of “Book-Smart” and “Street-Smart”! ☺️
Iron Man and Sridhar — Academic Capitalists — POMS Seattle Keynote. Cheers, Kathy
Congratulations Sridhar, on your achievements.
But to your rhetorical question “Who am I?” Truly one can answer only when the answer comes from heart in all honesty .
As for as me: I am 85 years old. I am an incomplete individual blown by what ever attracts me, like a wind blown feather flying whichever way the wind blows.
However, as worded in the lyrics in the song “What a wonderful world”
” I hear babies cry
I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more
Than I’ll ever know
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
Yes, I think to myself
What a wonderful world
Ooh, yes”
Every one must answer to this question “who am I?’ from ones own life experience.
With lots of love to fellow persons.
Bhima Rao Nagarajan.
Happy to read your Ample Life.