Makridakis, Spyros G., Wheelwright, Steven C., Hyndman, Rob

Following the attainment of a place in the Greek Sailing Team in the Olympics of 1960, Spyros Makridakis set sail for New York University where he obtained a PhD in 1969. Since then he has advised numerous international organizations and government agencies and consulted worldwide.

Spyros has held teaching and research positions with several European and American institutions: as a research fellow with IIM Berlin, an ICAME fellow at Stanford University and a visiting scholar at MIT and Harvard.

He is now the Rector of the Neapolis University of Pafos and an Emeritus Professor at INSEAD that he joined in 1970. In addition to teaching and consulting expertise, he has also authored, or co-authored, 24 books including Forecasting, Planning and Strategy for the 21st Century (The Free Press), Forecasting: Methods and Applications, 3rd ed. and Forecasting Methods for Management, 5th ed. (Wiley, translated in twelve languages and sold more than 120,000 copies). He has also published more than 120 articles and book chapters. He was the founding chief editor of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting. Furthermore, he has won the “Best Teacher Award” at INSEAD twice.

Spyros’ current interest centers on the uses and limitations of forecasting and what we can do with the resulting uncertainty and risk given our inability to accurately predict a wide range of future events (e.g. the 2000 burst of the Internet bubble or the 2007-2009 major financial crisis). In addition, he is interested in medical decision making by comparing the costs and benefits of treatment. These and similar issues are dealt with in the book Dance with Chance: Making Luck Work for You (co-authored with Robin Hogarth and Anil Gaba) and in a special issue of the International Journal of Forecasting on “Decision Making and Planning Under Low Levels of Predictability” (co-edited with Nassim Taleb).