Leaders win through logistics. Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics.
—Tom Peters
Few business transformations in recent years were more unforeseen than that of Fujifilm. Many still think of Fujifilm as the green-and-white miniature boxes of 35 mm film that sit next to Kodak’s gold boxes at the local pharmacy. But Fujifilm is no Kodak. Fujifilm took an alternative journey than that of Kodak’s descent into oblivion. As the core photographic film market gave way to digital photography, Fujifilm refused to “stick to its core,” the mantra of most legacy executives during times of societal and economic upheaval. As the film business shrank, Fujifilm started or grew other businesses, including medical systems, pharmaceuticals, regenerative medicine, life sciences, cosmetics, flat panel display (FPD) materials, industrial products, electronic materials, recording media, and graphic systems.
The outlier seemed to be cosmetics. Of all the industries to tap, what drove Fujifilm to enter the cosmetics industry? It seems random, but it’s an excellent example of John Boyd’s famous snowmobile analogy.1 In his presentations, Boyd would sometimes ask his audience to go on an imaginative journey: to imagine riding in an outboard motorboat pulling water skiers, or riding a bike on a spring day, or watching your son or daughter play with toy tractors or tanks with rubber caterpillar treads at a store. Then Boyd would walk his audience through the mental process of separating key elements from each image: skis, outboard motor, handlebars, and rubber treads. He then asked, “What emerges when you pull these elements together?”
His answer? The snowmobile.2 This was precisely Fujifilm’s strategy.
Gold Nugget: Build snowmobiles; take stock of your existing assets and capabilities to create new value for your customers.
Color photographic film is about the same thickness as human hair. To manufacture film that retains moisture and maintains its shape requires collagen. Consequently, Fujifilm, whose core competencies included chemical engineering, understood how to manufacture and control various types of collagen. This capability was also required in the manufacturing of skincare products. As a result, Fujifilm’s leadership took stock of the resources at its disposal and built, essentially, “snowmobiles,” new products with existing “components” or competencies that made life better for consumers.
The 2020 pandemic forced many businesses to divert existing capabilities to manufacture products to battle COVID-19: Gap, Zara, and Brooks Brothers converted their factories to make masks, gowns, and scrubs. The Ford Motor Company partnered with 3M to produce medical equipment on its auto assembly lines. Nike converted portions of its factories to make face shields and air-purifying respirators. In partnership with Dow, SC Johnson converted a manufacturing facility in Wisconsin to produce 75,000 bottles of hand sanitizer per month. Bacardi shifted operations in eight distilleries to make the ethanol needed to manufacture hand sanitizer. Fiat Chrysler worked with Ferrari and its parent company Exor to manufacture ventilator parts in a plant in Italy.
The ability to adapt in the midst of a pandemic is a supply chain competency—and evidence of organizational velocity (OV). The pandemic exposed poor supply chains and rewarded great ones. Consumer priorities quickly switched from valuing price, quality, and features to just purchasing a product, any product. Few people passed on off-brand toilet paper in April 2020 so that they could “squeeze the Charmin.”
Throughout the book, I’ve defined OV as the mindset and behavior of observing, accepting (or not), and acting (or not) on information from the external environment with speed and agility. The role of acting is, primarily, a supply chain exercise. It addresses the question, “How are we going to execute?”
Whether it’s goods or services, execution requires accessing resources within the organization or acquiring resources from another organization through purchase or partnership, then turning those resources into products that make the life of the target consumer better. This is, in its most simple form, supply chain. Speed and agility in the Fourth Industrial Revolution must be applied not only to new product development but to the supply chain itself. In many ways, the two—product development and supply chain—have merged into one. Much like retailers are becoming logistics companies, technology giants are becoming financial services companies. Apple expanded into payments with Apple Card. PayPal now offers business loans and recently launched its own cryptocurrency service, allowing people to buy, hold, and sell digital currency on its site and applications.3
When Disney became a streaming company, it was a supply chain decision. When Netflix moved from streaming only Hollywood’s movies to also producing original entertainment, it was also a supply chain decision. When DuPont’s expertise with nitrocellulose in explosives was applied to cellulose-based plastics and fibers products, it was, pure and simple, a rethinking of the supply chain.
An OV leader expects and plans for disruptions to the supply chain. This demands that the leader constantly cast a wide net of observation of the external environment, quickly and correctly assess the impact o changes on the business and act with speed and agility. The ability to reimagine your business based on changes in the external environment is a fundamental tenant of OV.
Supply Chain Fundamentals
No business, small or large, will thrive if it can’t keep its promises. Supply chain is how the brand promise is delivered. Consequently, every company has a supply chain. Even a small software company in the tech corridor of your city has a supply chain. Its raw material is intellectual capital. Where will this tech firm source its talent? What criteria does it use to attract, assess, and retain talent? The software company has the same supply chain tensions as the manufacturing facility just down the road: how does its leadership allocate resources between developing the next version of the current product or design completely new products? It is easy to conceptualize a supply chain for a manufactured good, but these networks also exist for services and products that are digitally delivered.
At its essence, a supply chain consists of an organization’s people, activities, information, and resources needed to move a product or service from the origins of supply all the way to the point of final consumption. Increasingly, this system extends to re-entering material that was not consumed back into the supply chain for reuse or recycling. Put more crisply, a supply chain transforms raw materials and ideas into products and services that improve the lives of consumers. Note the last phrase of the previous sentence—“that improves the lives of consumers.”
There is an organization’s supply chain, and then there is its supply chain management, the ability to move with speed and agility—and to “act,” as I mentioned earlier. I serve as a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Tennessee, where we define supply chain management as “the systematic coordination of traditional business functions within a particular organization and across organizations within the supply chain for the purposes of improving the long-term performance of the individual enterprises and the system as a whole.”4 This comprehensive definition recognizes that supply chains exist within a broader external business environment, consisting of geopolitical forces, government regulations, industry and competitive factors, and the changing nature of markets and demand.
While the digital economy has been remaking industries for decades, the supply chain industry had been relatively untouched, save the incremental innovations that reduced time and cost while increasing capabilities and quality. The historical reality of the supply chain was that assets rule: the Silk Road could be traveled only with camels, and a company could navigate the global supply chain primarily with hard assets.
However, the nexus of persistent advantage is changing.
The shift is from the “those who own the assets” rule to the “those who own the customer” rule. Increasingly, asset owners in the supply chain are not calling the shots; they are on the receiving end of the shots. And the customer rules. Simply because the Internet has given them access to the greatest source of power since the dawn of time—information. No company survives long term by shorting their customer. Especially today, because alternatives are a click away.
Nordstrom, for example, has given its customers access to the power of information. It has created accessible, accurate supply chain data that allows employees to see what inventory the company has throughout the company. More critical, salespeople can then control the movement of any item in inventory to the benefit of their customers. The transparent supply chain empowers salespeople to deliver excellent customer service. And over time, that same supply chain transparency has given online customers access to Nordstrom’s entire inventory, whether an item is on a rack at a store or in a warehouse waiting for shipment.
Transparency empowers customers to give supply chain commands. While Nordstrom is no Amazon, Nordstrom’s supply chain transparency keeps the company relevant and allows it to focus on responding to competitor initiatives and conducting new digital business experiments. Nordstrom has created a capability that the company can reuse even as the business itself becomes more complex.
A Veruca Salt World
One of the most memorable characters from the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is Veruca Salt, the immature, over-indulged young girl who managed to secure one of the GoldenTickets. Unfortunately, no price for her demands was too ridiculous; her affluent parents wouldn’t say no. So when the spoiled brat didn’t immediately get what she wanted, she screamed and stomped until she succeeded. Veruca Salt is a caricature of the quintessential customer of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We all are Veruca Salt. We want exactly what we want, when and where we want it— and at the lowest possible cost. It doesn’t matter if you’re in manufacturing, insurance, health care, or retail; your customer is Veruca Salt.
Truth Bomb: We all are Veruca Salt. We want exactly what we want, when and where we want it—and at the lowest possible cost.
The e-commerce kettle has been brewing since the mid-1990s, but it boiled over during the pandemic. McKinsey estimated e-commerce growth accelerated by ten years in the first three months of 2020.5 Whether you’re selling cars, paintings, or hot air fryers, everything is moving online where selection is unlimited. A simple search for “light bulbs” on Amazon.com will return more than 10,000 results. Are you looking for a specific whiskey? Binny’s Beverage Depot has over 1,200 brands for your selection pleasure. A typical Walmart Supercenter carries about 120,000 items, but you can find over 35 million on Walmart.com.6
Of course, you can’t drive, eat, or hug data. We are living in a material world (nod to Madonna), and for most products, digital dreams must be transformed into physical realities. Therein lies the rub. How do you satisfy Veruca’s demands for speed, selection, and quality?
Veruca wants what she wants. She may not walk into a Target store expecting to buy an Italian gas cooktop, but she can find it at Target.com and have it delivered for free. If you don’t have it available, your competition is only a click away.
Veruca wants it now. A 2020 survey of retailers indicated that 71 percent planned to offer next-day or same-day delivery by 2022.7 Amazon has led the way, investing over $60 billion in 1-Day Prime delivery. Their big-box competitors like Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Petsmart are upping the game by turning their massive footprint of retail stores into fulfillment centers. This enables same-day shipping powered by a combination of store employees, gig-workers, and contractors coordinated through powerful AI-enabled routing software.
Veruca wants it at the lowest possible cost. Moving physical goods across a network versus moving packets of information are night and day different. Understand, however, that it’s your problem, not Veruca’s. And solving for speed, selection, and cost is only half the battle. It must be done despite labor constraints, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) considerations, geopolitical unrest, natural disasters, and constant cybersecurity threats. In this environment, OV is not an option; it’s a requirement.
Companies will need to become MMA fighters, able to sense and respond, pivot instinctively. The elements of OV will be your roadmap:
Observe
• Use technology to cast a wide net of observation.
• Become comfortable being uncomfortable; explore emerging technologies and business models.
Accept
• Use technology to separate the signal from the noise.
• Block the “blockers.”
• Hire/promote diversity of thought to reduce blind spots.
• Create boundaries allowing decision making to be pushed to the edge, closest to the customer.
• Use your Board as an asset, not a gatekeeper.
• Foster rapid learning using a small bets strategy and autonomous teams.
• Align hiring, promotion, and compensation to encourage OV actions.
• Build snowmobiles; take stock of your existing assets and capabilities to create new value.
• Create a compelling narrative that unites a distributed work-force around a common mission.
• Eliminate organizational friction—expand information access, raise spending authority, and reduce time-sucking committees and meetings.
• Build your capabilities, creating new options you can leverage in times of threat or opportunity.
• Celebrate OV actions within your company.
OV is happening today in the supply chain. Retailers are building snowmobiles when they convert a physical store to a fulfillment operation. Inventory is getting pushed closer to consumers. Carriers are balancing ESG concerns and costs by adding electric vehicles to their fleet. Perhaps the most significant change is how the supply chain is viewed within the organization from a mindset perspective. Is it a cost center or a strategic asset? If your Chief Supply Chain officer or equivalent title is not reporting directly to your CEO or, in some cases, COO, you have work to do. Veruca Salt is waiting.
Merging Worlds
Digital supply chains start with the consumer and are built back to the source, not the other way around. On the other hand, traditional manufacturing is designed around mega-factories in low-cost countries, making millions of the same widget. Demand forecasting, upon which the conventional supply chain was built, imperfectly manages bulk movements from supply centers to demand centers, where goods are stored and shipped to retailers or consumers as needed. While supply chains can absorb shock(s) and quickly respond to interruptions to a certain extent, the magnitude of disruptions in 2020 eclipsed their capacity to adapt. Increasingly, the centralized manufacturing model in low-cost countries supported by lengthy supply chains will be challenged by on-demand consumers who increasingly want customized goods and delivery as close to now as possible.
As Veruca Salt drives on-demand production, the historically separate elements of manufacturing and supply chain necessarily merge. Ondemand requires greater coordination between manufacturing and supply chain, including regional/local product availability. This can quickly become an inventory nightmare unless Industry 4.0 technologies are used. One such technology is blockchain, a kind of digital diary that is virtually impossible to forge. An easy way to think of the components of a blockchain is to use the analogy of train tracks. The railroad ties equate to a block of data, the track is the chain connecting one block to another, and the train is the application that operates on top of the track. Multiple parties need to agree on where to place each railroad tie. Theoretically, one party could move the railroad tie, but not without removing the track and with the other parties agreeing where to move the railroad tie. This is why blockchain is said to be immutable.
Gold Nugget: As Veruca Salt drives on-demand production, the historically separate elements of manufacturing and supply chain necessarily merge.
Revisiting the blockchain story from chapter three, Walmart Canada deployed the technology to pay freight bills from trucking companies. As one of the largest truckload shippers in the country, Walmart Canada partners with approximately 60 for-hire carriers to move millions of pounds of freight annually. Each invoice (or freight load) generated 200 data elements. This profusion of data created an abundance of invoicing issues. In fact, disputes affected 70 percent of invoices, resulting in long delays in processing payments to the carriers. In addition, Walmart Canada personnel spent a considerable amount of non-valued added time determining how to assign charges to a specific load. Partnering with DLT Labs, Walmart Canada deployed a customized blockchain solution (DL Freight) for its freight invoice and payments system.8 The solution provided a single ledger with consistent data.
While blockchain is a disruptive digital technology, Walmart Canada’s application to its invoicing crisis was, at least in the narrow definition of innovation, more of a sustaining innovation.9 When applied to track and trace, provenance, payment processing, managing IoT networks, medical record sharing, smart contracts, and digital content distribution, blockchain’s benefits tend to be incremental. It’s a problem Clayton Christensen identified in The Innovator’s Dilemma: “If, as most successful companies try to do, a company stretches or forces a disruptive technology to fit the needs of current, mainstream customers … it is almost sure to fail.” Blockchain is no silver bullet, though that doesn’t mean the technology shouldn’t be applied to improve existing processes. But a technology, such as blockchain, is truly disruptive when it does more than sustain innovation.
Another digital technology, Additive Manufacturing (AM), mentioned in previous chapters, is increasingly enabling distributed manufacturing. Customized goods can be produced in lower quantities, more often, and closer to the point of consumption. This eliminates portions of the storage and shipping process (old-school supply chain elements). It unleashes agility and flexibility as local manufacturers closer to the customer tailor products to smaller groups of consumers or even individuals.
A simple example is Adidas’s FutureCraft line of shoes.10 Its midsole is 3D Printed and can be customized to an individual’s weight, gait, and usage. Imagine the data that Adidas is collecting with its brand. And how it’s customizing its supply chain to its Veruca Salt consumer mindset. This type of technology is like the proverbial pond with one lily pad that doubles every day. As I explained in chapter 2, the growth on such a small base goes unnoticed for a long time until lily pads cover 25 percent of the pond, the next day 50 percent, and by the next day, it’s covered completely. Competing shoe companies may look at solutions like FutureCraft and scoff. They may be right. There are always a hundred different reasons a lily pad innovation dies. When they’re not right, it could be devastating to their business. The lily pad proliferation swallows them. That they “never saw it coming” was a choice, not a circumstance. OV companies observe the few lily pads on the pond and ensure they are ready to pivot by making small bets in areas like AM so they can move and adapt quickly.
OV companies take stock of both the known and the unknown. In this situation, what is known is that consumer expectations seldom go in reverse. As I have noted, customers want what they want. Go to any website or store selling athletic shoes, and you’ll see hundreds of styles in various sizes and colors. If customers could get a shoe made specifically for their body and style at a comparable price to other choices, wouldn’t they take it? Of course they would; this is known. What is unknown is whether the mass customization of shoes can be accomplished at a price point consumers will accept. OV companies don’t wait for the answer; they discover it by making small bets in the space to speed learning and build new supply chain capabilities. Adidas bet that customers will demand customized shoes and are building optionality with their FutureCraft venture.
While UPS is not in the shoe business, AM could have an equally disruptive impact on UPS. UPS’s core business is essentially to store and ship products, two activities that would be exponentially reduced if this technology for mass customization takes hold. Why? If AM could be done cost-effectively for a single, customized shoe, then the ripple effect would flow through the supply chain. Manufacturing would become decentralized, and products could be produced closer to the point of consumption. In addition, there would be little need for massive warehouses to store goods waiting to be purchased because demand (exactly what the customer wants) would be known in advance.
UPS, or any other firm, cannot change trends on its own. It is what it is. An OV company would observe the changes in manufacturing, accept that this could impact them … or not, and act accordingly … or not. Every company faces these moments from time to time. UPS decided to act on this potentially disruptive innovation. It was a difficult path. Spending resources exploring the unknown competes with spending resources on the known. In this case, AM represented a potential threat that may or may not materialize.
I led the exploration of AM at UPS. In 2014, UPS invested in a startup called Fast Radius, an AM initiative in the logistics space. Fast Radius’ first Additive Micro-Factory (AMF) was launched on the UPS Supply Chain Campus in Louisville in May 2015. Fast Radius could receive an order in the afternoon, manufacture it, and then have it delivered anywhere in the United States by the next morning.
The original vision for Fast Radius was to build micro-factories in every global UPS Logistics Park, where small volume and/or customized products could be made and then delivered. UPS would then be part of this emerging supply chain, not a victim of it. What we learned was that the technology was not yet ready for prime time. Like so many disruptive technologies, the initial cost was too high, quality too low, and production speed and material availability left much to be desired. This is the challenge of the “S-curve.”
When companies pursue the “act” phase of OV, they will often experience the all-too-common S-curve. Essentially, new products go through inflection points. In the early days, expenses are high and sales are low as companies build their market share. The product will bend toward profitability if things go well until eventually plateauing and declining, creating the entire “S.” The challenge is, when you’re in the early days of the trough, you don’t know how long that will last. If you’ve ever been there, you know it’s a lonely place. The naysayers have the upper hand, and the status quo forces will try to divert resources back to the “known.” While UPS still has an investment in Fast Radius, the S-curve trough and another unknown, the COVID-19 pandemic, diverted attention and resources back to the core business in 2020. The existential threat of AM remains, but the desire to prepare for it has waned.
OV companies realize that acting is never the end of the process. Acting allows the company to capture both financial and knowledge capital. The new knowledge capital renews the observe-accept-act process. UPS, like all companies, had a choice to make when mired in the trough of the “S” curve. Overcome the organizational friction that throws sand in the OV gears or create the next iteration of learning.
In UPS’s case, the opportunity to invest more into Fast Radius took a turn in June 2021 when Fast Radius announced a $1.4B SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) deal that will make them a public company in the fourth quarter of 2021. As a result, the financial return on UPS’s investment in Fast Radius will pay out in spades, but the strategic value drops. Fast Radius no longer needs UPS’s deep pockets to reach scale. The lesson here is that UPS observed and accepted the potential opportunity and threat of AM but failed to treat it with the appropriate sense of urgency and resources. This is more common than not. Consider that Barnes and Noble sold books online, Blockbuster offered movies by mail, and Kodak invented digital photography. The time to double-down on investment is before success is obvious, as Honeywell did when facing competition from Nest Labs’ smart-home thermostat.
Truth Bomb: The time to double-down on investment is before success is obvious.
Forms of Friction
Only a full-on commitment to OV can enable companies to rethink their supply chains. What prevents OV is not the technology or a company’s ability to acquire it. The issue is always friction, and it comes in a variety of forms, such as the C-Suite protectionist mindset and the errant thinking that it can defend the castle; its current competitive advantage and customer set.
This friction keeps organizations from “acting,” the very behavior that creates change.
GM, Ford, and other incumbent automakers are attempting to enter the electric vehicle market out of necessity but also face the issues of an architecturally different product. The years of experience developing internal combustion engines may inhibit their ability to succeed. This is where OV comes to life. From the managers put on the project to the organizational structure and measurement systems, every decision carries with it this question: will you create friction or remove it?
Slade Gardner is a leading expert in advanced materials, manufacturing, and processes for mission-critical prototypes and replacement parts. Previously a Fellow at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, he developed and implemented next-generation solutions for complex molded hardware in the aerospace and aeronautical industries. In an interview, he told me that of the eighty customers that Big Metal Additive serves, only one is looking at how additive can change manufacturing; the others are simply using the technology to support their existing supply chains. In short, they are attempting to use the technology within the constraints of their existing manufacturing paradigms. Good is the enemy of great.11 While improving efficiency may solve short-term problems, it doesn’t create new business models, which is the promise of AM.
Slade says that one of the friction points in adopting AM is that it encompasses every science discipline. It requires systems thinking, and no one or no silo can be left out of the process. He said that everyone must be an “A” player because the mechanics, the dimensional control, the thermodynamics—every aspect of the manufacturing process must be rethought.
“Wherever you find friction in adopting AM,” he says, “you find a ‘B’ player.”12
Truth Bomb: Wherever you find friction in an organization, you find a “B” player.
Executives don’t need to know how to code in Python to be fluent in technology or be active participants in testing new concepts to support innovation. Likewise, they don’t need to be scheduling shipments to drive the supply chain. However, they need to set the goals and boundaries under which all the supply chain decisions can be made. They need to focus on inputs and outputs, not the technical “sausage-making” between those two points. Doing so only adds friction to the supply, not remove it. And in a Veruca Salt world, friction in the supply chain is death. See Table 8.1 for seven questions to reduce your corporate friction.
Table 8.1 Seven questions to reduce corporate friction
Seven questions to reduce corporate friction | |
1 | Will you fully fund the project or meter out funding through a series of incremental stage gates? |
2 | Will you dedicate some of your best and brightest to discover new growth or make innovation a distraction to an already overloaded group? |
3 | Will you allow many small bets to create rapid, truth-based learnings? |
4 | Will you embrace outcomes, good or bad, as learnings to propel the next step or bury them? |
5 | Will you accept certain short-term losses for uncertain long-term returns? |
6 | Will you unburden new businesses with the overhead load of existing business? |
7 | Will you discourage the “blockers” concerned with protecting what they have? |
To stay ahead of disruption requires a relentless focus on making lives (the customers’, not the executives’) better. Technology isn’t disruptive because it’s new; it’s disruptive when it helps people do what they already needed to do, helping them solve for insufficient wealth, access, skill, or time.13 To be an OV leader means to embrace the journey, not the hype. A company touting pilot projects that never turn into products, or whipsawing their investments in innovation, is a tell-tale sign that the company is not operating with OV.
At Cainiao Smart Logistics annual industry summit in Hangzhou in 2020, Daniel Zhang, Alibaba Group CEO and chairman of Cainiao Smart Logistics Network said, “Only through building the digital infrastructure for logistics can we truly enable and push the industry forward.” As Alibaba’s logistics platform operator, Cainiao Network owns few traditional logistics assets, like those of UPS and FedEx. Yet Cainiao processes the majority of parcels shipped in China every day through their open platform coordinating 3,000 logistics partners and 3 million couriers.14
Cainiao aims to connect 100 million smart devices to its IoT technologies in three years, including its connected devices, warehouse and delivery robots, and algorithm-backed management systems. Logistics can no longer be an afterthought for any company but an integral part of digital infrastructure in today’s world.
Whether you’re a family-owned business or a publicly traded corporation, whether you’re in services, retail, manufacturing, or logistics, disruption to your supply chain is coming to a theater near you. Only those who implement the principles of OV will be able to thrive in what’s to come.
What? The third component of OV, acting, converts ideas into action. The supply chain brings digital dreams to life. |
So What? Fast decision making will hit an execution brick wall if there is friction in the supply chain. Time is collapsing on the physical world. Demanding consumers will abandon the slow and static for the fast and nimble. |
Now What? The reality of a “right now” world is not a question of “if”; it’s a question of when. So prepare your organization to observe, accept, AND act. Building advanced manufacturing and logistics capabilities, exploring new business models, and building your tech-savvy bench must be done now. The lily pads will soon be covering the pond. |
1 J. Boyd. 1987. Destruction and Creation. U.S. Army Comand and General Staff College.
2 Boyd, Destruction and Creation.
3 C. Alcorn. 2020. “Bitcoin Surges After Paypal Jumps into the Cryptocurrency Business,” In Markets Now (CNN Business). www.cnn.com/2020/10/21/investing/paypal-bitcoin-cryptocurrencies/index.html
4 J.T. Mentzer, W. DeWitt, J.S. Keebler, S. Min, N.W. Nix, C.D. Smith, and Z.G. Zacharia. 2001. “Defining Supply Chain Management,” Journal of Business logistics 22, no. 2.
5 Mckinsey & Company. July 28, 2020. “The Quickening,” Survey, McKinsey Quarterly. www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/five-fifty-the-quickening
6 T. Walk-Morris. July 30, 2020. “Walmart’s Marketplace Doubles in a Year: Report,” Retail Dive. www.retaildive.com/news/walmarts-marketplace-doubles-in-a-year-report/582599/
7 Perspectives on Retail and Consumer Goods, McKinsey & Company (August, 2020).
8 N. Tabak. September 08, 2020. “How Walmart Used Blockchain to End Freight Payment Woes in Canada,” FreightWaves. www.freightwaves.com/news/how-walmart-solved-canada-carrier-payment-woes-with-blockchain
9 C.M. Christensen. 2013. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, 226. Harvard Business Review Press.
10 “Adidas Futurecraft,” Adidas US. www.adidas.com/us/futurecraft (accessed June 28, 2021).
11 J. Collins. 2016. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. HarperCollins.
12 S. Gardner. September 09, 2020. “President and Founder at Big Metal Additive.” Interview by Alan Amling.
13 M.W. Johnson, C.M. Christensen, and H. Kagermann. 2008. “Reinventing Your Business Model,” Harvard Business Review 86, no. 12.
14 C. Campbell. November 23, 2020. “Chinese Company Cainiao Could Revolutionize Global Logistics,” Time. https://time.com/5914173/cainiao-logisiticsalibaba-china-trade/