Keeping your direction, don't just follow fashion

This Friday, Kevin Shang gave us a talk about multi-echolen inventory problem. It is very classical problem but there aren't many people focusing on this area. And the barrier to this area is higher than most other areas related to inventory theory. So most people like to chase research 'fashion'. Somebody told me that a few years ago, sessions of SCM are full of people. But in this Informs meetings, RM seems more popular. A lot of people talk about dynamic pricing etc.

But Shang sticks to multi-echolen inventory problem after he passed his qualify exam. And he told me that he will continue to explore this area. It should be appreciate. Although our field just like a branch of applied math, it doesn't mean that everybody should just apply similar math technics to different applications. Once the math is too hard to go on in one area, then everybody shift their research interests. I don't mean that we shouldn't do so. In contrast, we need some people to do so to spread out our field. But what I mean is that we need some people to develop some unique math methods to solve those unsolved problems. Like developing in physics can push math forward. Why won't our IE people do the similar things? (Btw: I am not talking about those optimization people in IE fields)

Actually, I am a guy, who cannot focus on one thing for a long time. I like to find tons of applications, which can be easy in math. But I will find an area which can attract me for at least ten years. Of course, I will do other things on the same time.