Good Morning, Exploring the academic side of supply chain—looking for perspective
I’m beginning to explore whether a PhD in Supply Chain / Operations is the right long-term path for me—specifically as it relates to teaching, research, and practitioner-academic impact.
If anyone here has:
- Transitioned from industry into academia
- Balanced doctoral study with professional practice
- Strong opinions on when a PhD makes sense (and when it doesn’t)
I’d value hearing what you wish you had `known earlier. I’m early in the exploration phase and mostly listening.
Appreciate this group’s willingness to share hard-earned insight.
It depends on your current experience and passion. Supply chain field is full of challenges and opportunities as geo-political issue, disruptive tech, changing customer expectation and environmental factor plays the role to shape it. Academia need to play a bigger role in partnering with Industry and inspire future generation. So intersection of academia and industry sounds like a great place to be. I have some ex-colleague who transitioned to freelancing and academia w/o PHD. Either place you have a critical role to play, Best wishes!
Jaya, I would like to connect with you sometime and explore this in more detail. would you be open to connecting to discuss more? I would be very interested in your perspectives as I couldn't agree more with some of the challenges facing this landscape. It would be great to get the PhD in some passion area and then utilize it to further advance the field in more of an operational setting that academia, I think. I just love the problem solving side and having those wins, but as a previous Professor at University of Georgia, I really loved watching the light bulb turn on as well. So little confused in the passion and hence the explorations.
Chad