Dr. T. Grandon Gill is a professor of Information Systems & Decision Sciences and the Academic Director of the new Doctor of Business Administration program at the Muma College of Business of the University of South Florida. His MBA and DBA degrees are from Harvard Business School. He is a leading researcher in the transdisciplinary field of informing science, and is Editor-in-Chief of Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline. He is internationally known for his research in the development and use of case studies and is currently working on a grant with the National Science Foundation to develop discussion case studies relating to cybersecurity. His principal research areas are the impacts of complexity on decision-making and IS education, and he has published many articles describing how technologies and innovative pedagogies can be combined to increase the effectiveness of teaching across a broad range of IS topics. His most recent book, Informing Business: Research and Education on a Rugged Landscape, deals with how we might better align business academia with the complexity of business practice. Professor T. Grandon Gill has also extensive experience in case method research, as well as in writing cases for classroom use and facilitating case discussions. His MBA and DBA are both from Harvard Business School, where the case method originated. He is author of the book Informing with the Case Method (2011, Informing Science Press) and recently became the founding editor of Journal of Information Technology Education: Discussion Cases, a publication outlet for case studies in the MIS, IT and informing science fields
 
Dr. Nagib Callaos is the founding president of the IIIS and the founding president of the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics, and Informatics (JSCI). He is former Dean of Research and Development of the University Simon Bolivar and was the founding president of several organizations on research, development, and technological innovation, e.g. The Foundation of Research and Development of the University Simon Bolivar, the founding president of the Venezuelan Fund for Technological Innovations (created by presidential decree), The founding president of the Venezuelan Association of Executives in Patents and Copyrights, etc. His main research and professional activities were in the area of systemic Methodologies of Information System Development, Group Decision Support Systems, and Action-Research mainly via Operations Research. He tutored more than 100 undergraduate and graduate theses and produced more than 100 research papers and reflection articles.

Some academic areas necessarily require consulting activities or other related practicing experience, especially if that research leads to development. For example, what would be the “lab” (as an instrument of development) for a professor of information systems development methodologies if not information systems development in the real world? In some other academic fields, consulting activities might enrich, support and enhance research as it might be the case of some engineering fields, law, medicine, managements science, operation research, etc. Still, in other academic fields consulting is perceived as a distracting activity from what is considered to be a scholarly research. In some fields or disciplines this might be true, but even in these cases, scholarly research would eventually generate, via other scholars or researchers, applied research which would support real life problem solving and, consequently, decision and policy making processes which form part of the consulting activities.  It is well known that research activities in many academic departments go on because of grant monies received to development. Consequently, in such cases, to cybernetically relate research and consulting might produce the desired development (see figure below).
 
Research*, development and consulting** are, directly or indirectly, immediately or mediately, related and complementing each other via cybernetic co-regulative loops (negative feedback or feedforward) and co-amplificatory loops (positive feedback) which, in turn, might potentially produce synergic effects that a) increase the effectiveness (and possibly the efficiency) of both kinds of activities, and/or b) generate systems/products development, innovations, entrepreneurship, patents, research papers, etc. On the other hand, this kind of systemic-cybernetic relationships between research and consulting provides the type of experience required to be combined with the knowledge transmission for a real education which should not be reduced to mere instruction.  Within professional careers is where this kind of experience is mostly needed in an authentic education.

* We are referring to financially supported research (via grants, salaries, etc.) and non-financially supported ones.
** We are referring to for-benefit, not-for-profit, and pro bono consulting activities.