Case Method Discussion Leadership Program.

【Speaker】Professor Z. Justin Ren, Boston University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

【Time】2009-11-03, 10:30-12:00

【Venue】Weilun 453

【Language】English

【Organizer】Department of Management Science and Engineering

*Biographical Sketch*

Z. Justin Ren is an Associate Professor of Business Administration and Dean’s Fellow in the Operations and Technology Management Department at Boston University School of Management, and is a Visiting Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management. At Boston University, Professor Ren teaches Core operations management courses, and an analytics course which focuses on tools and frameworks that help managers gain market intelligence and make strategic decisions. He also teaches in executive education in financial risk management. He is a certified teacher by the Harvard Business School

Professor Ren has worked for INTEL in its Capital Equipment Development group, and has consulted for PRTM on global operations strategies. His research focuses on supply chain coordination, operations strategy and operations quality. His research has appeared in publications such as /Management Science/, /Operations Research/, and /Medical Care/. He has

received several recognitions, including the INFORMS George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award, INFORMS Junior Faculty Paper Competition Award, and the Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) Wickham Skinner Early-Career Research Accomplishments Award.

He holds a B.S. in Economics and International Trade from Nanjing Agricultural University in China, and an M.A. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Ren received his M.S. in Operations Research and Ph.D. in Operations andInformation Management from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

*Abstract*:

Businesses, especially global businesses, face a wide variety of shifts – we call these global disruptions – that can have a significant impact

on their strategy and business performance. The distributed nature of global operations offers a unique set of business and operational

innovation levers for dealing with these disruptions. Based on a survey of 242 global firms, we find that the best performing firms adapt and

act rapidly by wielding multiple types of innovations simultaneously.

Yet, developing such rapid responses across multiple functions and types of innovations is a daunting challenge that seems to stump a large

number of these firms, especially in resource constrained settings. We introduce the idea of “multidextrous responses” to describe how global

firms can prepare and respond to these disruptors.