【SDS Colloquium Series】Operations in the Sharing Economy
December 11, 2024 SDS Colloquium Series
SDS Colloquium Series | |
| Topic | Operations in the Sharing Economy |
| Speaker | Saif Benjaafar, Seth Bonder Collegiate Professor, University of Michigan |
| Host | Zicheng WANG, Assistant Professor, School of Data Science, CUHK-Shenzhen |
| Date | 11 December (Wednesday), 2024 |
| Time | 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM, Beijing Time |
| Format | Onsite |
| Venue | 103 Meeting Room, Daoyuan Building |
| Language | English |
Abstract | |
| The sharing economy, a term we use to refer to business models built around on-demand access to products and services mediated by online platforms that match many small suppliers or service providers to many small buyers, has emerged as an important area of study in operations. We first describe three "canonical" applications that have garnered much attention from the operations community: (1) peer-to-peer resource sharing, (2) on-demand service platforms, and (3) on-demand rental networks. We use these applications to highlight distinguishing features of sharing economy business models and to point out research questions that are new. For each application, we describe our attempt at addressing some of these questions. We conclude by drawing connections between classical operations theory/models and theory/models that have been used to study sharing economy applications. | |
Biography | |
| Saif Benjaafar is the Seth Bonder Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan where he also serves as the Goff Smith Co-Director of the Joel D. Tauber Institute for Global Operations, a joint institute of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and the College of Engineering. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, he was McKnight Presidential Endowed Professor and Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota where he was Head of the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering. He is a founding member of the Singapore University of Technology and Design and served as Pillar Head (at the rank of Dean) of Engineering Systems and Design. He has broad research interests in operations management (supply chains, service systems, and markets), with a current focus on technology-enabled operations (sharing economy, on-demand services, and automation) and societal impact. He is a Fellow of MSOM and INFORMS and a former Editor in Chief of the INFORMS journal Service Science. He is a board member of HOURCAR, a social car sharing organization. | |
