Digital | Supply Chain | E-Commerce
Uber-like on-demand fulfillment platforms for supply chain and and logistics services are rapidly emerging. For companies feeling the pressure to meet rising customer expectations while keeping costs down, uberized supply chains could bring much-needed relief.
Continue reading “Supercharging Supply Chains with Platforms”
The rising requirements of urban Gen Z consumers will define where the future of retail is headed. When it comes to big-city shoppers, what really matters to winning the last mile in fast retail?
Continue reading “Winning the Last Mile – What Consumers Want”
Demands on supply chains are ever increasing as companies vie to deliver more personalized products, with faster lead time, at a lower cost. Further, unexpected execution conditions continually disrupt operational performance.
Continue reading “Sense and Pivot Supply Chain @ MIT Media Lab”
Digital transformation?? Oh, not again! Everything seems to be a digital transformation today and there’s nothing left under the sun that hasn’t been written about such disruptive change. We felt the need to demystify digital transformation and separate the truths from the misconceptions based on our hands-on experience:
Continue reading “Eight Misconceptions of Going Digital”
While AI and machine learning has made rapid progress in consumer facing applications such as Amazon Alexa, playing Go, and making art, enterprise AI and automation deployment is still emerging and uneven. We discuss key 4 facts that must about enterprise AI automation.
Continue reading “4 Facts Every Business Must Know About AI”
AI is the darling of the moment and the corporate meme-stream. So much so, it’s forcing some CFOs into tough discussions with executive teams that are overly anxious to gamble with current assets in hopes of gaining future competitive advantages. How can companies avoid overspending in AI?
Continue reading “How to Avoid Overspending on AI”
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a fast-moving technology with a long road ahead of it. For all its surrounding hype, AI is still in its infancy.
Continue reading “Will You Embrace AI Fast Enough?”
AI progress has been uneven in the past 5 decades, with spurts of breakthrough followed by “winter-like” stagnation. Barriers like technology cost, organization capability and ineffective policies held back AI from going mainstream.
Continue reading “Artificial Intelligence Coming of Age”
Advances in digital technologies such as the Internet of Everything, Deep Learning, 3D Printing and Big Data are disrupting business models and their respective supply chains.
Continue reading “The Rise of Digital Supply Chain Platforms”
The traditional value chain boundaries separating manufacturers and retailers are starting to blur under a digital, omnichannel setting. Brands are becoming retailers and increasingly playing an active role in the consumer Research – Shop – Buy cycle
Continue reading “Brands are Becoming Retailers”
The prolonged US recession and recent increase in income inequality has energized viewpoints challenging capitalism as a sustainable economic model. Some media and pundits have rallied around the Marx ideology that we are beginning to see capitalism starting to unravel itself.
Continue reading “Capital and Wealth … Was Marx right?”
During the 16th century, Spain transformed from a modest European kingdom to a global hegemony. Spain’s success was driven by monetizing innovations in trans-ocean navigation and firearms to appropriate vast quantities of minerals (silver, copper, gold) from American conquest. However, like any mismanaged enterprise, Spain’s disastrous deployment of its new found capital led to its inevitable decline. In short, Imperial Spain made three strategic enterprise building lessons:
Continue reading “Spain’s Colonial Wealth and Enterprise Building”
The term “strategic outsourcing” may sound like an oxymoron. Traditional dogma of outsourcing calls for companies to sequester strategic capabilities in-house and only source non-core or commoditized capabilities from 3rd parties. The situation becomes more complex in a dynamic market context since (i) what may be deemed a core competency today may become peripheral tomorrow and (ii) firms may increasingly find a deficit of in-house critical capabilities and know-how as they react to new markets and consumer changes. One key implication is that outsourcing must recognize and anticipate the underlying industry structural trends (consumer, technology, macro-economic) that can unexpectedly change a firm’s value chain capabilities landscape.
Continue reading “Strategic outsourcing is not an oxymoron”
Take a look at some of the key shows on CNN and one cannot but notice the network’s recent adoption of an explicit “House of Brands” strategy in an effort to better wage the battle for “viewer eyeballs”. Continue reading “CNN and the house of brands strategy …”
Like so many favored incumbents, Hillary Clinton could not escape the Innovator’s Dilemma in a competitive bid for the market place (the democratic primary in this case) Continue reading “Obama, Hillary and a case of Innovator’s Dilemma”