A supply chain leader’s perspective on Eric Kimberling’s “Final Countdown: Strategies to Reach the Third Stage of Digital Transformation“ The supply chain world is drowning in digital transformation promises. Every vendor claims their solution will revolutionize your operations. Every conference speaker talks about AI-powered forecasting, blockchain transparency, and IoT-enabled visibility. Yet despite billions invested in…
Category: Books
Reviews about books
The Supply Chain Thucydides Trap: When Market Disruption Leads to Corporate Warfare
In ancient Greece, historian Thucydides observed that “the growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.” This phenomenon, now known as the Thucydides Trap, describes the dangerous dynamic when a rising power threatens to displace an established hegemon. While Harvard’s Thucydides Trap Project found that 12…
Dunbar Number, Can it Dump Supply Chain Management?
In the 1990s, British anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed a fascinating idea: humans have a cognitive limit to the number of meaningful relationships they can maintain somewhere between 100 and 250, with 150 being the most commonly cited figure. This concept, known as the Dunbar number, suggests that beyond this threshold, our ability to manage stable social connections breaks down. But what…
The Sinatra Test in Supply Chain Management: Proving You Can Make It Anywhere
Frank Sinatra’s legendary song New York, New York isn’t just a song about ambition—it’s a philosophy. The line “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere” captures the idea that conquering the toughest challenge in your field proves you can handle anything. Chip and Dan Heath, in their book Made to Stick, call this the “Sinatra Test”—a single, high-stakes…