SMU Professor of Computer Science Lau Hoong Chuin was one of the collaborating partners at the Collaborate to Innovate TV Forum 2026, where he and Julian Tan, IBM Singapore Business Development Executive discussed how their collaboration succeeded. When asked why IBM needed SMU, Mr Tan said that academia like SMU looks at the longer range and more strategic frontier capability building, and that SMU complemented IBM in terms of operational research and their familiarity with the supply chain optimisation space. Meanwhile, Prof Lau said that working with real-world problems is a very different set of challenges for academics. He explained that disruption happens over time and in stages with high uncertainty, and that these tensions will make the model robust enough for real-world deployment.