Rethinking Project Selection at the Monterey Bay Aquarium

• Published in: Interfaces (Providence) Vol. 30; no. 6; pp. 49 - 63
• Main Authors: Felli, James C, Kochevar, Randall E, Gritton, Bruce R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Linthicum INFORMS 01-11-2000; The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS); Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
• Subjects: Aquariums; Audiences; Cash flow; Committees; Councils; Critical numbers; DECISION ANALYSIS—APPLICATIONS; DECISION ANALYSIS—MULTIPLE CRITERIA; Directors; Economic models; Environmental policy; Executives; Innovation; Maintenance costs; Modelling; Multiattribute models; Multilevel models; Net present value; Operations research; Planning; Preferences; Project evaluation; Public aquariums; Studies; Target audiences; Technology; Trade-off; Viability; Monterey California; United States > US
• ISSN: 0092-2102; 2644-0865; 1526-551X; 2644-0873
• DOI: 10.1287/inte.30.6.49.11628

In 1995, the Monterey Bay Aquarium started an experimental business unit called Electronic Outreach. Electronic Outreach's mission was to employ emerging technologies to deliver the aquarium's messages of ocean stewardship to diverse and scattered audiences. Faced with many projects from which to choose, the Electronic Outreach team wanted to determine which projects were most likely to succeed before they actually had to dedicate resources to development. We constructed two models to help them accomplish this: a multiattribute-value model to quantify a project's alignment with the aquarium's mission and a discounted-cash-flow model to quantify a project's viability as a business venture. We then combined the outputs of these two models into a two-dimensional framework to allow the Electronic Outreach team members to focus on monetary-nonmonetary trade-offs when evaluating potential projects.