Why hasn’t artificial intelligence fully transformed supply chains? Several years ago, some of us predicted that AI-powered automation would lead to “the death of supply chain management.” However, despite heavy investments, companies have not realized the vision of AI-managed supply chains.
According to our survey, only 22% of workers globally rank compensation as the thing that matters most to them in a job. This isn’t to say that people will accept a job without fair pay: Compensation still ranks higher than all other job attributes. But it’s evident that a coin-operated view of workers, where firm leaders see employment as a purely financial transaction, underestimates the deeper human motivations for work.
In November 2019 Stanford Health Care moved into a new hospital building. With seven stories and 824,000 square feet, the hospital required over a decade and two billion dollars to plan and construct. Most descriptions of the hospital focus on the airy private patient rooms or the state-of-the-art operating rooms, but one of the most technologically sophisticated aspects of the building is found in the basement.
Today, powerful forces are pushing sustainability innovation. Mounting political pressure on corporations, customer demands for climate-friendly products, and record levels of investment in climate tech all play a role. In Europe alone, the climate tech start-up ecosystem is now worth more than $100 billion, having doubled in just two years, according to Dealroom.
Most consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies have a dilemma. They need to upgrade their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems—a multiyear modernization effort that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. However, a CPG digital transformation—a near-term value-driven initiative that is increasingly urgent in order to remain competitive—is also an imperative.
