The trigger for this post could have been called A Tale of Two Emails.
Earlier this week, I received this email (titled Hello from Hyderabad) out of the blue:
Hi Sridhar,
Hope you are doing well!
I recently came to know you are an alumni of our school – Hyderabad Public School (HPS) and wanted to reach out to you. Having read about the amazing works you have been doing, I thought it would be great to connect with you. Please let me know if you happen to be in India next and would be happy to meet with you.
With best regards,
M Adithya Reddy
Member, HPS Board of Governors
I was there 1976-82, and have not been back to campus (or even Hyderabad) since then! It has been 43 years! So, I decided to check up:
The Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet (HPS, Begumpet) is a privately funded school in Hyderabad, India. It was established in 1923 as Jagirdars College (renamed in 1951) by the Seventh Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, and served as a school exclusively for the sons of nawabs, jagirdars and other aristocrats and elites. The school has a 122-acre campus with buildings built in the Indo-Saracenic style. Notable US/Canada-based alumni include Ajay Banga, Satya Nadella, Shantanu Narayen and Prem Watsa.
Sometime later the same day, I received this second email (connected via Sunil Chopra):
Sridhar
Would like an opportunity to connect. I am currently CEO of Protolabs, which is the world‘s largest and fastest prototype manufacturing company using a digital and software enabled manufacturing platform. I have had the opportunity to use SmartOps early in my career and have implemented it into two different companies.
Let me know if you can make time for a quick Introductory call.
Suresh Krishna
The two companies are Diageo and Polaris, and that took me back about 20 years!
This immediately reminded me of the quote from William Faulkner:
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
You may also remember it from:
Midnight in Paris is a 2011 fantasy comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. In 2012, it won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. It had box-office revenues of over $151 million (on a budget of $17 million).
Anyhoo, all this made me think a little bit about the last 50 years:
What’s exciting that is happening in 2026 that I would remember in 2036?
The inaugural Tayur Poetry Prize (from CMU Press) will be announced in the coming days! (Thanks Jake Grefenstette; see Tayur Poetry Fund.) There were about 500 submissions, four of them will be published (will be available in the Fall), and since three of them are debut poets, these three are the finalists. Sign up for the CMU Press Newsletter here to hear about the inaugural winner!
The third Kedia-Tayur Distinguished Lecture in South Asian American History (recall La Femme Nikki?) is (thanks Nico Slate) on March 12th:
You may recall from Casablanca, Corsendonk, Como about the founding and the early years of Supply Chain Thought Leaders (SCTL) Conference. This year, after many years (20!) of being away, I am attending, and moderating a session (many, many thanks to Arnd Huchzermeier for identifying and inviting the panelists, who I will announce in a future post) broadly on
How did this come about?
July 2025. I wrote Capitalism, Supply Chains and Democracy which argued that we Operations Management (OM) folks should interlace Political Economy (PE) into our activities: POEM. I will be presenting it at the Sears Research Seminar at WVU this Wednesday.
December 2025. At a panel in AI in Supply Chains workshop (based on the book co-edited by Maxime Cohen and Tinglong Dai), I brought up the importance of POEM that was well received by the audience. Jan Fransoo and I initiated the discussion about a possible session at SCTL Munich.
January 2026. Over dinner at my place during his CMU visit, Jan and I further explored how to bring up POEM at SCTL.
February 2026. Arnd Huchzermeier and I are finalizing the panelists. Coincidentally, this week Chris Miller visited CMU, and we (Alan Scheller-Wolf and Nilsu Uzunlar and I) had an engaging session with him on POEM!
I liked visiting Munich, having been there several times (doing Executive Education for McKinsey, in Munich and in Kitzbühel, 25 years ago!), and of course as a cinephile, cannot not mention:
Munich is a 2005 epic historical drama film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. It received five Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, and Best Score. It had box-office revenues of $130 million (on a budget of $70 million).
