Managing Director at BCG. Reflections on Digital Supply Chains & Platforms
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. Uberization, the business paradigm that disrupted the taxicab industry, is about to transform supply chains everywhere as companies increasingly rely… 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? We recently surveyed more than 4,000 consumers in the United States and big cities globally for the answer. The survey points… 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. For these reasons and more (see our recent MIT Sloan Management Review article), companies must do more than digitize supply chains. They must also develop operational ability… 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: (1) Start with the external customer Focusing… Continue reading Eight Misconceptions of Going Digital
While A.I. and machine learning has made rapid progress in consumer facing applications such as Amazon Alexa, playing Go, and making art, its deployment across the enterprise is still emerging and uneven. Opinions differ on the scope and pace of A.I. to automate and enhance activities across the organization. On one end, a recent Oxford… Continue reading 4 Facts Every Business Leader Must Know About AI Automation
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? AI certainly holds serious potential, even as research continues to… 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. Intelligent systems have moved from simple, rule-based tasks such as spell-check into narrow machine-learning activities such as predictive maintenance and work automation, but they remain far from their ultimate destiny… 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. Yet, this trend shifted starting in 2005 with performance breakthroughs across numerous cognitive applications. Convergent advances across three enablers: computing power, training data,… 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. As supply chains become more digital, they increasingly benefit from platforms. A set of common digital technology powered processes, tools and approach allowing users to create value by adding… 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 that has traditionally been the domain of retailers. We see this "direct to consumer" as a pervasive and on-going trend across numerous industry sectors. Although… 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. In his "Das Kapital", Marx argues that the capitalist's pursuit of profit accumulation over… 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… 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… 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". The collage below shows some of CNN's major shows and their distinct "brands" (e.g. AC360, Fareed Zakaria… 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) Coined by Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen, the Innovator's Dilemma states that often it is the very strength and core offering of the established incumbent that ultimately lead… Continue reading Obama, Hillary and a case of Innovator’s Dilemma
Michael Hu | BCG 