The year was 1983, and a boy from a small village in Bali was already dreaming beyond the rice fields around him. To young Dr. Nyoman Pujawan, the island that the world would later refer to as the tropical paradise, was just home. But there was another world waiting out there by those village roads.
Nyoman left his family and went to high school in the city at the age of thirteen. Freedom made him stronger. He relocated to Surabaya, the industrial centre of East Java, to pursue his studies of Industrial Engineering at Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember (ITS), one of the best universities in Indonesia.
Following his graduation, he had a short experience as a material planner in a manufacturing company after which he could get practical experience of the industrial systems he had learned. Yet the classroom pulled stronger. Within a year he became a junior lecturer, a turning point in his career.
He was awarded a scholarship to attend the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand, where he completed his master’s degree a few months earlier than his classmates. He was determined to do more and he shifted to the United Kingdom to Lancaster University where he studied a PhD in Management Science majoring in supply chain modelling.
A dream that started as a young boy in Bali rice fields had evolved by the age of thirty-one years to become the basis of a career that would make the field of supply chain and operations management.
Building a Discipline Where None Existed
When Nyoman returned to ITS after his PhD, he walked back into a landscape that barely understood the field he had spent years mastering. Supply chain management was, at the turn of the millennium, an almost invisible discipline in Indonesian academia and industry alike. Companies managed their logistics instinctively rather than strategically. Universities did not teach it. That vacuum was, to Nyoman, not a problem. It was an opportunity.
In 2001, he launched the first elective course on supply chain management in Indonesia and simultaneously established a dedicated research laboratory in Logistics and Supply Chain Management at ITS, the first of its kind in the country. Within a few years, other universities across Indonesia began to follow, adopting similar courses. He had not just entered a field. He had created one locally.
He mentions, “From 2001, I was also offering training and workshops directly to industry people. Many companies invited me to train their people and strengthen their understanding of supply chain management.” This parallel track, academic on one side and industry practitioner on the other, gave his work a dual credibility that neither a purely corporate nor a purely scholarly career could have produced.
In 2005, Nyoman authored a landmark textbook simply titled Supply Chain Management, written in Bahasa Indonesia to make the knowledge accessible to a national audience. The book sold widely and has since been updated to its fourth edition in 2023, a testament to its enduring relevance. That same year, he organized an international conference on operations and supply chain management in Bali, drawing nearly 180 delegates from 25 countries. The conference grew beyond borders and was later hosted in different countries with international institutions as co-hosts.
In 2008, he founded the international journal Operations and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, which today receives one to two submissions every single day from researchers across more than 80 countries. Nyoman did not just write about supply chains. He built the intellectual infrastructure for the field to thrive.
He asserts, “I like to start something meaningful and let the seed grow. In most cases, I let other people manage them once things are working well.”
The Youngest Full Professor and the First
He states, “I got my PhD when I was thirty-one and became a full professor at thirty-eight. At that point I was the youngest in ITS and the first in this field in Indonesia.” Those numbers are not simply biographical milestones. They are the measure of a man who moved faster, worked harder, and aimed higher than the institutions around him were accustomed to.
In 2007, at the age of thirty-eight, Nyoman received a full professorship. This made him not only the youngest full professor at ITS at that time but also the first professor of supply chain management in Indonesia. Academic recognition followed swiftly. ITS honored him with the Best Lecturer Award, second position in 2007 and first position in 2009. That same year, he earned the national second-place Best Lecturer Award at the country level.
The accolades did not stop there. The IEOM Society recognized him for Outstanding Service in 2014, followed by an Outstanding Researcher Award in 2018. That year also brought the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Asian Institute of Technology Alumni Association and the Wira Adhiacarya Award, the Rector of ITS’s recognition for academic excellence. In 2019, the President of King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok personally honored him with a special award.
The crowning global recognition came in 2024 and 2025, when Stanford University and Elsevier jointly named him among the Top 2% of researchers in the world. This distinction places him among the most impactful academics across all disciplines globally.
The Entrepreneur in the Professor’s Chair
For all his academic stature, Nyoman Pujawan never confined himself to lecture halls and research papers. In 2006, he co-founded the Indonesian Supply Chain and Logistics Institute (ISLI), a professional body whose members include faculty from universities across the nation. He served as its President for two consecutive terms and continues to guide the organization today as Chairman of the Advisory Board.
In 2018, he stepped into institutional leadership as Head of the Department of Technology Management at ITS. In 2021, he took on the role of Dean of the School for Interdisciplinary Management and Technology, a position he held until the end of 2024. During this tenure, he launched four new master’s concentrations: Supply Chain Management, Business Analytics, Design and Innovation Management, and Techno marketing. This led to a threefold rise in student enrollment at the school. He also initiated a doctoral program in Technology Management in 2020, which has since grown to become the largest doctoral program at ITS despite its young age. He added another milestone by launching the Master of Innovation in System and Technology program.
In 2019, he founded a professional training and certification company for supply chain practitioners in Indonesia. The timing seemed audacious, just a year before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill. Yet what looked like a risk became a revelation. When the pandemic hit and training shifted online, working professionals discovered they could attend evening sessions from home. Enrollments surged. His company now employs around ten people and has certified over 2,500 supply chain professionals across Indonesia. When global supply chains seized under pandemic pressure, Nyoman’s company was quietly equipping the workforce to rebuild them.
He highlights, “During COVID, both my company and the school I managed actually grew because working professionals preferred the online mode, and we were already set up to deliver exactly that.”
A New University and a Bolder Mission
From January 2025, Nyoman took on perhaps his most ambitious role yet as Rector, or President, of Universitas Logistik dan Bisnis Internasional, a newly established university. The institution sits at the intersection of two fields Nyoman has spent his entire career advancing: logistics and international business. Leading a new university from its earliest days is not for the faint-hearted. It demands the vision of an architect, the patience of a farmer, and the resolve of someone who has built things from nothing before. Nyoman has been all three.
His international footprint also stretches far beyond Indonesia. In 2004 and 2005, he taught as a lecturer at the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, one of the world’s leading business schools. For the past decade, he has served as a visiting professor at King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok in Thailand, strengthening ties between Asian academic communities.
He says, “I always believe that if we add value and solve problems, businesses will grow and sustain. That is the same philosophy I carry into leading this university.”
Balance as a Philosophy, not a Buzzword
Ask Nyoman about work-life balance, and he speaks with disarming simplicity. “It’s like water flowing,” he says. Academic life gave him something a corporate career could not offer freedom. He chose that freedom deliberately, leaving his manufacturing job early because he did not want his time dictated by others. As a professor and leader, he channels that freedom into productivity rather than rest.
He rarely extends his working day past 4:30 in the afternoon unless the situation genuinely demands it. He walks before heading to the office. On weekends and public holidays, he spends time with family. Every long holiday, he and his family return to Bali, back to the island that started it all. Occasionally, they travel together to other cities and countries.
He mentions, “That freedom could mean two things. Not doing much because there is no pressure or using it to optimize time and potential. I chose the second.” This distinction explains how one man managed to build so much across many fronts without ever appearing frantic.
His leadership philosophy echoes his personal style. He designs the big picture, sets the direction, and then trusts his people to run with it. He openly acknowledges that this approach works brilliantly for self-driven individuals but less naturally for those who need close guidance. That honesty, rare in leaders of his standing, speaks to the authenticity that has long defined him.
The Wisdom He Passes On
For those aspiring to lead in their own fields, Nyoman distills decades of experience into clear, unvarnished counsel. First, love what you do but do not let that love become an excuse for mediocrity. Push yourself to operate at the level the work demands, not merely the level you enjoy. Second, be bold enough to be seen. Build a reputation through sustained achievement, integrity, and persistence. Reputation, he insists, is never instant. It is the compound interest of long years.
Third, be natural. Once in a leadership position, bring genuine energy and drive innovation rather than maintaining the status quo. Do not imitate other leaders. People sense inauthenticity instinctively. “Good outcome out there is a result of something good and solid inside,” he says. Finally, trust your instincts. When a complex decision looms, ask yourself whether it aligns with your deepest values. That inner compass rarely lies.
He states, “I also enjoy working with the younger generation. Those who work not just to complete tasks but to find opportunities, to be creative, and to run an organization without needing much direction. Those are the people who genuinely excite me.”
A Seed That Grew into a Forest
There is a thread that runs through everything Nyoman Pujawan has built: journals, laboratories, companies, conferences, university programs, and professional bodies. That thread is the belief that planting the right seed in the right soil is enough. He does not cling to his creations. He grows them, nurtures them, and then hands them to others capable of taking them further.
He highlights, “I am good at balancing the big picture design of an organization and translating that into operations. Quite often I receive feedback from students that what I teach is easy to understand.” This rare combination, the strategist who can also communicate clearly, has made him equally effective in boardrooms, classrooms, and conference halls across three decades.
Pujawan’s mantra for the leaders who follow him is deceptively simple: do the right things in the right manner. Achievement must align with personal values and the values of the organization. Being popular is a by-product, never the goal. In difficult moments, when the right call is the uncomfortable one, choose integrity over applause.
He says, “Being right is more important than being nice.”
From a remote Balinese village to the offices of one of Indonesia’s newest and most forward-looking universities, Prof. I Nyoman Pujawan has not simply followed a career path. He has carved one through jungles of institutional inertia, geographic distance, and the quiet doubt that every pioneer knows. The supply chain discipline he built from nothing now trains thousands of professionals across the archipelago and earns academic respect in over 80 countries. The boy who left Bali at thirteen to find his education has spent the rest of his life bringing that education back to the world.
