The Chaplin Tyler Executive
Leadership Lecture Series brings leaders from the business,
not-for-profit, and government sectors to the University of Delaware
campus to share their experiences and insights with students,
faculty, and the business community. Several times each year,
Graduate and Executive Programs at the Alfred Lerner College of
Business and Economics invites these leaders to spend a day engaging
in an open exchange of ideas and perspectives. The Chaplin Tyler
Executive Leadership Lecture Series is supported by the Chaplin
Tyler Endowment Fund.
Creative Thinking and Problem Solving
Thomas L. Saaty
Professor of Business Administration
Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business & College of Business Administration
University of Pittsburgh
Challenge, so essential for creativity, is stimulation
in the presence of difficulties and obstacles. If one
wants to be creative, one must look for and take
up challenge as an opportunity. Surmounting
challenges is a great gift for making progress. A
challenge is a motivator of ideas. When a challenge is
strong but manageable, the likelihood of successful
accomplishment is high. This presentation will include
ideas, examples and humor to challenge creative
thinking and problem solving. They are taken from
the core of the speaker’s course lectures and book,
Creative Thinking, Problem Solving & Decision Making,
and will serve as an introduction to developing one’s
own creativity and problem solving skills.
Thomas L. Saaty is the architect of the decision theory, the Analytic Hierarchy
Process (AHP) and its generalization to decisions with dependence and
feedback, the Analytic Network Process (ANP) for which he received the
gold medal from the International Society for Multicriteria Decisions. He has
published numerous articles and more than 12 books on these subjects. His
nontechnical book on the AHP, Decision Making for Leaders, has been translated
to more than 10 languages. His book, The Brain: Unraveling the Mystery of How It
Works, generalizing the ANP further to neural firing and synthesis, appeared in
the year 2000. The AHP is used in both individual and group decision-making
by business, industry, and governments and is particularly applicable to complex
large-scale multiparty multicriteria decision problems. The ANP has been
applied to a variety of decisions involving benefits, costs, opportunities, and risks
and is particularly useful in predicting outcomes. In July this year he and his wife
Rozann were invited by the Royal Academy of Spain, of which he is a member,
to give a two-hour presentation on the AHP/ANP with a 100-page paper to be
published in the mathematical journal of the Academy. On October 27 this year
he is invited to give a three-day workshop on the subject in Moscow, Russia.
Prior to coming to the University of Pittsburgh, Tom Saaty was a professor at
the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania for 10 years and before that
was for seven years at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the U.S.
State Department. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering
and serves on the Board of Advisors to Decision Lens, a company based on his
Analytic Hierarchy Process and Analytic Network Process.
Following the lecture, a reception will be held in the lobby adjacent to Gore Recital Hall.
--
October 10, 2008, 3:00 pm --
Gore Recital Hall
Roselle Center for the Arts
Contact
Mr. Robert Barker if you
would like more details on the
program. (302) 831-8912
