A New Horizon for OR/MS

T he Web creates important OR/MS opportunities, and the Bhargava–Krishnan feature article does an outstanding job of sketching some of them and of explaining the technicalities of how the Web can be used in the service of OR/MS. This commentary discusses briefly two points made in the article, and then calls attention to a new domain for OR/MS applications. This domain arises from a new and potentially large Web clientele for OR/MS that seems to have escaped notice to date: ordinary people. Satisfying this new clientele requires exactly the technologies explained by Bhargava and Krishnan. Doing so would pump new vigor into the field, directly benefit many people who use the Web, and help solve the long-standing public visibility problems of the field.