The Growing Need for Supply Chain Innovation

I’ve been saying this in my presentations to supply chain leaders: from mid-sized businesses to Fortune 100 companies and I’ve written about the insufficiency of continuous improvement here. Now Gartner releases data to confirm the growing concern. Sustainable innovation (i.e., continuous improvement) is not enough. Supply chain leaders have typically squeezed as much blood from the turnip as possible using those methods. What’s needed is disruptive innovation. As the second chart below indicates, leaders realize they aren’t very good at that kind of innovation and I suspect they don’t know the strategies and methods involved.