Said Gattoufi

University of Tunis, Tunisia

Abstract: This talk introduces a new research paradigm in management science, calling for a synergy between the emerging fields of Business Analytics (BA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), both of which have seen an exponential increase in successful applications across a wide range of domains. These fields are becoming increasingly significant as data continues to grow in volume, variety, and velocity. There is great excitement surrounding analytics, data science, and AI, as organizations and businesses explore how they can leverage large volumes of data to create value. Governments and communities are also seeking to derive broader value from their data resources.

The talk begins by discussing Reisman and Gattoufi’s strategies for knowledge creation, followed by an exploration of the limits and limitations of AI, referencing Gödel's incompleteness theorems. It also touches on the intrinsic flaws of AI through the lens of non-Euclidean geometries and considers ethical issues as well as technical challenges related to collecting, storing, and processing data.

Within this context, the talk proposes a new paradigm for research in Management Science: Intelligent Data Enabled Analytics (IDEA). This paradigm creates a synergy between BA and AI and encompasses three types of analytics: descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive. For each type, several appropriate intelligent tools are suggested. The talk concludes by presenting a set of successful applications and proposing promising domains for future theoretical research and practical applications. The focus will be on the application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and its inverse version as a benchmarking approach using Optimization and Inverse Optimization in finance, healthcare, logistics and transportation and agriculture.

This approach seems to position IDEA as a promising paradigm that can address contemporary challenges in management science by harnessing the growing capabilities of data analytics and AI providing a systematic approach to handle them.

Biography: Pr. Said Gattoufi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, an MBA, and a Ph.D. in Management Science and a Habilitation to conduct research in Quantitative Methods (Business Analytics). He is currently a full Professor at the Institut Supérieur de Gestion de Tunis, where he also serves as a Research Director at the SMART lab. Over his distinguished career spanning more than three decades, Professor Gattoufi has established himself as a distinguished university teacher, a leading researcher, a knowledgeable consultant, and a highly skilled corporate trainer. 

Dr. Gattoufi has published over 60 papers in renowned academic journals cumulating over 1400 citations. His research primarily focuses on business analytics, with a particular emphasis on efficiency analysis through various Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models based on convex envelopment of data. He has developed innovative models to assess efficiency and enlighten decision making processes with applications in finance, particularly mergers and acquisitions in banking, in insurance as well as in healthcare. He has suggested genuine intelligent algorithms to solve complex optimization and inverse optimization problems derived from DEA basic models.

Throughout his career, Professor Gattoufi has supervised many doctoral and master theses in Tunisia and abroad, guiding research on topics closely aligned with his areas of expertise. He produced research in a variety of topics and applications in business analytics synergizing with data science and its confirmed intelligent tools, mainly machine learning, to widen the scope of DEA and strengthen its analytical nature.

He has visited universities in more than 40 countries to participate in over 100 international conferences as a speaker or as organizer, contributing significantly to the global academic community and disseminating his genuine research.