Last week we welcomed Professor Bin Jiang to hold the first in a series of research themed presentations by visiting professors at our newly opened Sora Café.

Bin Jiang is the inaugural Driehaus Fellow and a professor specializing in operations management. He has authored over 40 research articles and has received the Best Paper in Journal of Operations Management, the Stan Hardy Award, the APICS Best Paper Award, the Second Place of POMS’ Wickham Skinner Best Unpublished Paper Award, and Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award.

During the presentation, Bin shared with us his strategy to become a successful researcher after surveying more than 80 top researchers and summarizing their opinions into six key principles that you can read in full here. The following are some key takeaway points:

A PUBLISHABLE PAPER IS A TRIO

Among the principles, Professor Jiang’s research found that a publishable paper is a trio; contribution, motivation, and expression are all important to a publishable research, and very hard to pick one as more important than another.

WORKING WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE IS KEY

He also shared that working with the right people is key. “The collaboration has to be based on mutual respect and support”. As a result, your coauthors’ personality, complementary expertise, research interests, and working styles and habits are all critical to a successful collaboration.

FOLLOW YOUR INTEREST RATHER THAN YOUR TOOLS

His final advice was to follow your interest rather than your tools “If you aren’t interested in your topic – no one else will be either. Your goal is to convey your enthusiasm”. If you are engaged in problems that you enjoy, whether they are big problems or small ones, “you are creating, not working; you have a passion, not a job”.

Professor Jiang then proposed to the faculty of NUCB his ideas for joint-research with a keen interest on topics such as disaster recovery, supply chain management, and Toyota’s recall due to safety concerns.

We were very fortunate to learn invaluable information from someone so highly thought of in academia and look forward to our upcoming events with visiting professors.