Amar Gupta

Amar Gupta is an endowed professor of entrepreneurship, management and organizations, computer science, and Latin American studies at the University of Arizona. He teaches a select group of interdisciplinary students at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management. His lectures often include guest speakers from major global business organizations, the healthcare industry, foreign government ministers, etc. Often other members of the faculty will sit in on his lectures as well as prior students and alumni. As a Tenured and Endowed Professor in the field of Entrepreneurship, he has developed new courses that focus on innovation and entrepreneurship in a global economy through the deployment of distributed work teams. For the first time, the Entrepreneurship Undergraduate Program at Eller was ranked #1 in 2006, in the whole country, by Entrepreneurship Magazine and Princeton Review; it has continued to attract very high rankings. Dr. Gupta has served as mentor to entrepreneurship teams with one of these teams being awarded the first prize of $150,000 in the coveted Honeywell National Innovation contest. Dr. Gupta is also a Senior Director for Research and Business Development. He has established dual degree programs with the Colleges of Agriculture, Science, Engineering, Medicine, and Optics. The program was designed to lead to two graduate degrees and a certificate in entrepreneurship. IBM sponsored 6 employees for this program at a cost of $2 million during the first year of inception. He played a significant role in creating the vision for new interdisciplinary research initiatives such as the proposed multi-college endeavor that would enable US and Mexico to enhance healthcare in border areas through mutual cooperation without investing any additional funds. Another of his potential endeavor's involves the creation of a new International Center of Excellence funded entirely through private donations. As the Founder-Head of the “Nexus of Entrepreneurship and Technology” initiative, Dr. Gupta has interacted with the trustees of the Thomas R. Brown Foundation to delineate and refine ideas that are of high interest to the individuals who have sponsored the endowed chair. The concerned foundation has paid substantially more for this chair, as compared to the original commitment. Furthermore, his daughter Amita Gupta claims that Dr. Gupta is an exceedingly skilled culinary technician. According to Amita, "The omelets are very good."

Early life

Amar Gupta (born 1953) was born in Nadiad, India. Gupta was admitted to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology, Kanpur to study electrical engineering, graduating in 1974.

Career

Gupta started his career working making 8 dollars a week working for IBM, and then served in various technical advisory roles for the Government of India.He received the Rotary Fellowship for International Understanding. This allowed Gupta to pursue his graduate studies with the MIT Sloan School of Management. This was the start of a 25 year relationship (1979–2004), where he was first person to have attained the rank of Senior Research Scientist at MIT Sloan. In this position, he launched the United States’ first course on international outsourcing ^[1] with the help of Professor Lester Thurow, eminent economist and former Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management. Gupta has provided his expertise to several UN organizations including WHO, UNDP, and UNIDO for various works in Latin America and the World Bank as an advisor on a Distance education endeavor in Mozambique. Amar Gupta's current appointment is at the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona as the Professor of Entrepreneurship and MIS; and Senior Director for Research and Business Development. Amar Gupta has developed patented technology and has made innovations in several areas including databases, imaging, healthcare, education, and outsourcing.

Contributions and Innovations

Amar Gupta has contributed to the following areas through mentoring of students, personal research, scientific discoveries resulting in patents^[2] , and contributing ideas that have influenced research in these disciplines.

Imaging

Gupta served as chief scientist and vice president for the development of VCN ExecuVision, the first presentation graphics program. This program changed the manner that presentations were given, first in the academic community before making its way to the business community. The company, Visual Communications Network also pioneered the development of clip art for the IBM personal computer.

At MIT, Gupta led a team of researchers to develop technology to automatically read handwritten information on checks and proposed a nationwide check clearance system, allowing the electronic clearance of printed, typed, and handwritten checks.^[3] This innovation is manifested in the Check 21 in the U.S. and in similar approaches in Singapore, and Brazil. Gupta and his colleagues also developed the first microcomputer-based image database management system.

Education

1. Doctorate of Philosophy, 1980. Thesis, in the area of Decision Support Systems, was supervised by Professor Peter G. W. Keen of MIT and Professor P. G. Reddy of I.I.T. Delhi. Degree awarded by I.I.T. Delhi. Research performed in US, UK, and India.
2. Master of Science in Management, 1980. Thesis, in the area of Multi-microprocessor Systems, was supervised by Professor H. D. Toong of MIT. Thesis was awarded Brooks Prize Honorable Mention. Degree awarded by M.I.T.
3. Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, 1974. Degree awarded by I.I.T. Kanpur. Undergraduate project, on the design and implementation of an Electronic Taximeter, was one of two finalists for best project of year.

Amar Gupta, created the first course on outsourcing of professional services, with Lester Thurow, and taught it at MIT in 2004.^[4] The aim of the course neither to praise the benefits nor discuss the horror stories of outsourcing. The course discussed both the reasons outsourcing in more common in the business place and bring in CEO’s and economic leaders to discuss their experiences with this movement^[5] This pioneer course has been replicated at several other leading universities in the U.S. and abroad.

Gupta launched the first academic program that leads to two graduate degrees and a certificate in entrepreneurship. This involves a management degree from the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management, and a second graduate degree in optics science, engineering, agriculture, or medicine.

Outsourcing

The concept of the [24-Hour Knowledge Factory] was developed by Amar Gupta. This concept allows for multiple professionals in different geographical locations to work together to perform a single task or project. Research is being conducted to utilize this model in a variety of industries. In 2007, Gupta was awarded an IBM faculty award for this vision.

In early 1980, Amar Gupta proposed to Citibank to do software development work in India. This idea turned into Citibank overseas Software Limited, the pioneer example of a large multinational bank doing such work in India.

Current Projects

24 Hour Knowledge Factory

The concept of the 24-hour Knowledge Factory is inspired by the Industrial Revolution. Prior to the Revolution, manufacturing was a cottage industry where a product was developed from ideation to creation by a single craftsman and attending apprentices. The Revolution saw a transformation in manufactured goods from individual objects of art to interchangeable commodities. This transformation was made possible by investing unprecedented capital into specialized tools and machinery. Manufacturers, in order to leverage their invested capital as well as meet growing demands for their products, moved from daylight work hours to the modern system of working shifts around the 24 hour clock.

Today, the advanced economies of the world are moving from the production of tangible goods to the development of intangible intellectual property (IP). The frontier of IP development is still relatively new and is in much the same place as pre-Revolution manufacturing. Software, ASICs, marketing campaigns, and many other fields still, by and large, produce objects of art by the work of a relatively small number of masters and understudies. However, industry can be seen to be experimenting with this concept. In particular, contemporary software development is often a global effort with development teams distributed across North America, Europe, Russia, India, and Australia, to name a few common places. This strategy allows for an efficient design process that has a faster turnaround time. It provides the firm with access to high-talent designers who would otherwise have to move to a different country, or work at odd hours of the night. The creation of professional service teams that transcend geographic and temporal boundaries offers the potential to change the face of many industries. This new innovation will dramatically impact the manner in which companies build, test, sell, and support their products and services.

The 24 hour knowledge factory can therefore deliver many benefits. However, there remain significant challenges in communication, collaboration, project management, and administration in this novel business environment. Dr. Gupta's goal is to generate new ideas, explore many alternatives, and conduct research and development of new processes and systems that will make a significant contribution to the realization of the 24 hour knowledge factory.

Books and Publications

Books

1. Outsourcing and Offshoring of Professional Services: Business Optimization in a Global Economy (Advances in Electronic Commerce)
2. Knowledge Reuse and Agile Processes: Catalysts for Innovation
3. Creating Agile Business Systems with Reusable Knowledge
4. Agile Systems with Reusable Patterns of Business Knowledge: A Component-Based Approach

Publications

Social Science Research Network

1. The 24-Hour Knowledge Factory Paradigm: The Evolving Model for Offshoring based on Strategic, Economic, Legal, Health, Technical, and Other Considerations
2. Harmonization of International Legal Structure for Fostering Professional Services: Lessons from early U.S. Federal-State Relations
3. Use of Collaborative Technologies and Knowledge Sharing in Co-located and Distributed Teams: Towards the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory
4. Outsourcing in the Healthcare Industry: Information Technology, Intellectual Property, and Allied Aspects [Information Resources Management Journal, Volume 21, No. 1, 2008, pp. 1-26]
5. Agile Software Processes for the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory Environment [Journal of Information Technology Research, Vol.1, Issue 1, 2008, pp.57-71]
6. Hybrid Offshoring Composite Personae and Evolving Collaboration Technologies [Information Resources Management Journal, Vol.21, Issue 1, 2008, pp.89-104]
7. Transformation from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age: Impact on Outsourcing [Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations, Vol.5, Issue 2, 2007, pp. 57-76]
8. Leveraging Knowledge Reuse and System Agility in the Outsourcing Era [Journal of Information Technology Research, Vol.2, Issue 1, copyright 2008, pp.1-20]
9. The 24-Hour Knowledge Factory: Can IT Replace The Graveyard Shift? [Computer, Vol. 42, No. 1. (January 2009), pp.66-73]
10. Public and Private Sector Legal Process Outsourcing: Moving Toward a Global Model of Legal Expertise Deliverance
11. The Valuation of Intellectual Property in Offshoring Decisions
12. Anti-Offshoring Legislation and United States Federalism: The Constitutionality of Federal and State Measures Against Global Outsourcing of Professional Services [Forthcoming in Texas International Law Journal (2009)]
13. Outsourcing from the Perspectives of International Protocols, Law, Intellectual Property, and Taxation
14. The Value of Outsourced Software [SEAFOOD (First International Conference on Software Engineering Approaches for Offshore and Outsourced Development), Zurich, February 2007 (published in a Springer Volume, Editors: Mathai Joseph and Bertrand Meyer)]
15. Global Teleradiology - An internet-based application for optimization of health care delivery across domestic and international borders
16. Interoperability of Medical Applications and Devices
17. A Standardized Pre-Hospital Electronic Patient Care System
18. The Use of Information Systems by Collocated and Distributed Teams: Towards the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory[Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2008]
19. Software Development Using the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory Paradigm [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2008]
20. Leveraging Temporal and Spatial Separations with the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory Paradigm [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2008]
21. 24-Hour Knowledge Factory: One Instance of Services Computing [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2008]
22. Offshore-Onsite Team Dynamics: Applications of the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2007]
23. Toward the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory - The New Global Work Paradigm [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2007]
24. Toward the 24-hour Knowledge Factory: Offshore-Onsite Team Dynamics [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2007]
25. The Critical Role of Information Resource Management in Enabling the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory [Information Resources Management Journal, Vol.20, Issue 4, pp.105-127]
26. Evolving Relationship between Law, Offshoring of Professional Services, Intellectual Property, and International Organizations [Information Resources Management Journal, Volume 21, No. 2, 2008, pp. 103-126]
27. Harbinger of the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2007]
28. Toward the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory in Software Development [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2007]
29. Deriving Mutual Benefits from Offshore Outsourcing: the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory Scenario [To appear in Communications of the ACM,2009]
30. An Information Technology Architecture for Drug Effectiveness Reporting and Post-Marketing Surveillance [International Journal of Healthcare Information Systems and Informatics, Volume 2, No. 3, 2007, pp. 65-80]
31. Offshoring and Transfer of Intellectual Property [SEAFOOD (First International Conference on Software Engineering Approaches for Offshore and Outsourced Development), Zurich, February 2007 (published in a Springer Volume, Editors: Mathai Joseph and Bertrand Meyer)]
32. 24-Hour Knowledge Factory: Using Internet Technology to Leverage Spatial and Temporal Separations[ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, Volume 7, No. 3, August 2007, pp. 1-22]
33. A Context-Specific Mediating Schema Approach for Information Exchange between Heterogeneous Hospital System[International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, Vol 8(3/4), 2007, pp. 298-314]
34. Research Commentary: Toward the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory - A Prognosis of Practice and a Call for Concerted Research [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2006]
35. The Drug Effectiveness Reporting and Monitoring System: Discussion and Prototype Development [International Journal of Technology Management (IJTM), Vol.47, Nos.1/2/3, 2009, pp. 174-190]
36. Offshoring: The Transition From Economic Drivers Toward Strategic Global Partnership and 24-Hour Knowledge Factory [Electronic Commerce in Organizations,Vol.5, Issue 2, pp.1-23]
37. The Use of Information Systems in Collocated and Distributed Teams: A Test of the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2006]
38. Strengthening OV-6a Semantics with Rule-Based Meta-models in DEVS/DoDAF based Life-cycle Development for Enterprise-Service Architectures [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2006]
39. Integrating Ontology into SBVR [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2006]
40. An Information Technology Architecture for Post-Marketing Surveillance: The Drug Effectiveness Reporting and Monitoring System[Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2006]
41. A Three-Faceted Educational Approach to Catalyze Innovation Amar Gupta [Journal of Industry and Higher Education, Volume 20, No. 4, August 2006, pp 269-272]
42. An Integrated and Collaborative Framework for Business Design: A Knowledge Engineering Approach [Data and Knowledge Engineering, Volume 42, No. 1, Jan 2005, pp 157-179]
43. Feedback Based Architecture for Reading Check Courtesy Amounts [Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, 2004]
44. Wireless Grids: Approaches, Architectures and Technical Challenges [International Journal of Grid and High Performance Computing, 1(3), 37-51, July-September 2009]
45. Handwritten Bank Check Recognition of Courtesy Amounts [International Journal of Image and Graphics, Volume 4, No. 2, 2004, pp 1-20, World Scientific Publishing Company]
46. Self-configuration and Self-Administration of Wirelss Grids [To appear in the Journal of Information Technology Research, Volume 2, No. 2, 2009]
47. Global Outsourcing of Professional Services [MIT Sloan Working Paper No. 4456-04, 2004]
48. Toward the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory [MIT Sloan Working Paper No. 4455-04, 2004]
49. A Knowledge Based Approach to Facilitate Engineering Design [MIT Sloan Working Paper No. 4381-02, 2002]
50. Directions for Web and E-Commerce Applications Security [Tenth IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises (WETICE), Cambridge, June 2001]
51. Training Neural Networks for Reading Handwritten Amounts on Checks [IEEE International Workshop on Neural Networks for Signal Processing, 2003]
52. Reading Courtesy Amounts on Handwritten Paper Checks [The Journal of Electronic Imaging, Volume 12, No. 1, Jan 2003, pp 194-202]
53. Automated Design Data and Rationale Capture [Virtual Worlds Conference, San Antonio, 2002]
54. Using Structural Analysis to Mediate XML Semantic Interoperability [MIT Sloan Working Paper No. 4345-02, 2002]
55. Use of Recurrent Neural Networks for Strategic Data Mining of Sales [IRMA Conference, 1999]
56. Reducing Impediments to Collaboration in a Virtual World [Virtual Worlds Conference, San Antonio, 2002]
57. A System for Processing Handwritten Bank Checks Automatically [Image and Vision Computing, July 2006]
58. Collaborative Commerce and Knowledge Management [The Journal of Knowledge and Process Management, Volume 9, Issue 1, 2002]
59. Selective and Authentic Third-party Distribution of XML Documents [IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Volume 16, No. 10, Oct 2004, pp 1263-1278]
60. Data Fusion through Statistical Matching
61. A Self Configuring and Self Administrating Name System with Dynamic Address Assignment
62. A Four-Faceted Knowledge-Based Approach for Surmounting Borders [The Journal of Knowledge Management, Volume 5, No. 4, 2001]

References

1. ^ "New MBA course: Outsourcing ", http://money.cnn.com/ article cites course URL retrieved on March 4, 2007.
2. ^ "United States Patent",URL retrieved on March 4, 2007.
3. ^ "Gupta eyes paperless check clearance ", MIT Sloan Newsroom URL retrieved on March 4, 2007.
4. ^ "Course description", MIT URL retrieved on March 6, 2007.
5. ^ "India the big topic in B-schools abroad", The Economic Times URL retrieved on March 4, 2007.

External links

• Link To Dr. Amar Gupta's research page at the University of Arizona
• Link To Dr. Amar Gupta's page at the University of Arizona
• Link To press release by MIT Sloan School of Management
• Link To press release for handwriting recognition softawre used for check processing
• Link to patent information on character recognition
• Patent Office:System and method for character recognition with normalization

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