07-28-2025
Since launching its Future Edelman Competition in 2022, Purdue University’s Daniels School of Business has transformed its competition from a nascent experiential learning initiative into a proving ground for cutting-edge analytics solutions addressing real-world challenges.
Launched under the guidance of Professor Matthew Lanham, the contest emulates INFORMS’ prestigious Franz Edelman Award, challenging MS in Business Analytics and Information Management (MSBAIM) students to deliver projects balancing technical rigor, measurable impact and layperson accessibility. The competition has now evolved to showcase advanced AI integration, cross-industry scalability and solutions tackling pressing global supply chain and sustainability issues.
The inaugural 2022 competition established core evaluation criteria through its E-del-man rubric:
Early winners, like a retail inventory optimization project, demonstrated potential annual savings of more than $6 million across 5,000 stores by aligning product assortments with local demand. This emphasis on translating analytics into actionable business strategies became a hallmark of the competition.
This year’s entrants reveal three evolutionary leaps. The winning team’s project, Sustainable Supply Chain Innovation, addressed agricultural logistics challenges to achieve:
The team’s work highlighted the growing focus on environmental impact alongside cost savings — a dimension barely mentioned in early competitions.
Another finalist team tackled AI-driven operational efficiency, revolutionizing logistics for a trailer subscription model using:
This solution exemplified the competition’s shift toward embedding machine learning into core business operations while maintaining human-in-the-loop oversight.
Another finalist employed LLM-powered sales automation, developing an AI agent system for B2B sales pipelines featuring:
This project reflected the competition’s adaptation to generative AI’s disruptive potential while emphasizing ethical implementation.
Since 2022, the Future Edelman program has continually enhanced student experiences. This includes expanded mentorship. This year’s projects involved multiple faculty advisors such as computer science researcher Shoaib Khan, signaling broader departmental engagement. The Associate Certified Analytics Professional (aCAP) integration means that 100% of 2024-25 cohorts earned INFORMS’ aCAP certification, formalizing analytics best practices. Furthermore, projects demonstrate cross-industry portability. Solutions now explicitly target applicability beyond initial-use cases.
Lanham’s original vision of nurturing future Edelman Award contenders stands out among business school programs. The 2025 logistics project’s $800,000 savings and the agriculture team’s emission reductions approach the billion-dollar impacts characteristic of Edelman finalists.
As the competition enters its fourth year, it continues fulfilling Lanham’s 2022 aspiration: “I really want to see one of our alumni be a real Edelman one day.” By maintaining rigorous empirical standards while embracing AI’s transformative potential, the Future Edelman Impact Award has become both a talent pipeline for industry and a laboratory for analytics innovation.
