The scariest part of Halloween: supply chains
Halloween. The holiday that haunts supply chains.
We are drowning in numbers, and we no longer understand what they mean. Every day, headlines bombard us with figures meant to inform: billions in spending, trillions in debt, percentages signaling growth or decline. But for most of us, these numbers blur together. They register as “large” or “small,” but almost never as real. And that is more than a math problem. It is a civic one.
INFORMS has awarded Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) its 2026 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Advanced Analytics, Operations Research and Management Science, for reengineering how global cloud infrastructure is planned and delivered, applying advanced analytics and AI to orchestrate complex fulfillment decisions across its rapidly expanding data center network.
In the rush to adopt artificial intelligence, many employers are now requiring that employees use AI tools. As you’re using AI, be intentional and selective. It’s critical that you know yourself. Research published in Management Science found that AI is most valuable for people who understand their own abilities and limitations. Assess yourself, so you can factor this into your process for incorporating AI into your work.
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Halloween. The holiday that haunts supply chains.
Inflation has made just about everything more expensive and Halloween is no exception. The cost of filling trick-or-treat bags has risen sharply, faster than overall grocery prices.
What is the likelihood of China’s economy collapsing? And if it does, what impact would this have on the global economy?
The U.S. is striving to reduce its dependence on China by derisking its supply chains. However, this process of derisking can also introduce new risks. It is crucial for U.S. firms to devise strategies to identify, evaluate, mitigate, and respond to the various types of supply chain risks that may arise from this derisking process.
Online technology is fundamentally reshaping employee evaluations. In the last decade or so, companies such as IBM, Amazon, and General Electric have adopted performance feedback apps that allow employees to “review” one another in real time. These apps take the 360-degree paradigm to its logical extreme by removing temporal, hierarchical, and geographical barriers to feedback.

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