With apologies to Sergio Leone, I'll refer to these three questions as the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I have concluded that the business school teaching community would be well advised to reflect at length upon three important questions. teaching in light of the 'Science of Better' campaign. I've been thinking about business school O.R. The INFORMS official definition of operations research is 'the discipline of applying advanced analytical methods to help make better decisions.' A key step was to establish a definition of O.R. INFORMS recently took a very important step by initiating the 'Science of Better' campaign. technology in a business world organized around 'vertical' industries. is all about it has been a constant refrain at INFORMS conferences and with colleagues trying to sell 'horizontal' O.R. We were not alone in struggling to explain what O.R. (My personal favorite was 'Come for the analysis, stay for the pie.') We even had a contest to come up with the best short slogan for what we did. We spent a lot of time wrestling with this problem. consulting firm, we struggled to explain to potential clients (as well as strangers on airplanes) just what it was that we did that we wanted all that money for. This is a welcome and important initiative, and I wish it had happened many years sooner. INFORMS is running a campaign called 'The Science of Better' to educate business executives about the benefits of O.R.
