MIT Institute Professor Emeritus John D.C. Little '48, PhD '55, an inventive scholar whose work significantly influenced operations research and marketing, died on Sept. 27, at age 96. Having entered MIT as an undergraduate in 1945, he was part of the Institute community over a span of nearly 80 years and served as a faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management since 1962. Little's career was characterized by innovative computing work, an interdisciplinary and expansive research agenda, and research that was both theoretically robust and useful in practical terms for business managers. Little had a strong commitment to supporting and mentoring others at the Institute, and played a key role in helping shape the professional societies in his fields, such as the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He may be best known for his formulation of 'Little's Law,' a concept applied in operations research that generalizes the dynamics of queuing. Broadly, the theorem, expressed as L = 'W, states that the number of customers or others waiting in a line equals their arrival rate multiplied by their average time spent in the system. This result can be applied to many systems, from manufacturing to health care to customer service, and helps quantify and fix business bottlenecks, among other things....

In this day and age, many companies and institutions are not just data-driven, but data-intensive. Insurers, health providers, government agencies, and social media platforms are all heavily dependent on data-rich models and algorithms to identify the characteristics of the people who use them, and to nudge their behavior in various ways. Mazumder, an associate professor in the MIT Sloan School of Management and an affiliate of the Operations Research Center, works both to expand the techniques of model-building and to refine models that apply to particular problems. His work pertains to a wealth of areas, including statistics and operations research, with applications in finance, health care, advertising, online recommendations, and more. 'There is engineering involved, there is science involved, there is implementation involved, there is theory involved, it's at the junction of various disciplines,' says Mazumder, who is also affiliated with the Center for Statistics and Data Science and the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab....

August 17, 2020By 2040, Asia could comprise more than half of global GDP and drive 40 percent of the world’s consumption, giving it the potential to fuel and shape the next phase of globalization. This seismic shift was the impetus for our Future of Asia research series on what expanding growth and opportunity in the region means for governments and businesses around the world.“Between Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore—I’ve been working in Asia for over 17 years,” says Oliver Tonby, chairman of McKinsey’s offices in Asia. “It's an area of real global business growth.” Oliver explains that while its economies have been expanding beyond the rest of the world combined and leading in trade, capital, talent, and innovation, the region’s growth story had not been extensively told until our research series.“Growth and opportunity in Asia have significantly advanced human development—from longer life spans and greater literacy to a surge in internet adoption,” says Wonsik Choi, managing partner of the McKinsey Korea office....

The unexpectedly clean air that resulted in some places from steep COVID-19–induced drops in industrial activity appear unlikely to change a larger truth: the world is not yet on track to meet the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions-reduction targets required by the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. And it isn’t only the atmosphere that human activity is harming. At current growth rates, global annual waste generation would increase by 70 percent by 2050, while critical resources from minerals to clean water are being depleted at unsustainable rates.Industrial activities are responsible for the lion’s share of global carbon emissions. Roughly 28 percent of global GHG emissions came from industry in 2014, so unless industry can lower its emissions, the world will continue to struggle to reach its GHG-reduction goals. Companies generate greenhouse gasses directly in their factories, and indirectly through the consumption of electricity and the fossil fuels required to transport products and materials.Most organizations recognize the imperative to reduce the negative impact of their activities on the environment. There is also increased pressure from employees, investors, communities, and customers to improve environmental sustainability efforts....