The ultimate portable skill?
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Try again
Imagine a warehouse operating at a 100% automation level with no person around and frenetic robots performing a non-stopping choreograph around the clock, fulfilling orders, receiving parcels, and shelving them after positive identification using the full array of resources from computer vision to motion sensors and prescriptive replenishment to autonomous materials handling equipment. The facility serves a cluster of customers which are fully integrated in a digital twin community where demand and supply data flows across the entities in an optimized scenario capable to deliver door to door in few hours as it navigates the area in scope on a truck equipped with last mile units in charge of gently dropping the order and ringing the bell for a top user experience and an unbeatable price.
Innovation is the capacity to solve problems with a different approach, using a vision to perceive how it might work and advocating its way to get as close as possible to that aspiration in a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). It pursues a solution first and fights against obstacle while inspiring those around with creative energy flowing in the team devoted for the best solution and continue thriving iteration after iteration. As the ultimate transferable skill, you may want to put it high in your list in this changing world of ours.
Granted the vision of a digital supply chain on the move is not a done thing — or is it? Wonder how much effort has been invested in a similar view — for customers looking next offering capable to awe them with unexpected features. More to my point, how close is the state of the art of digital supply chain to deliver this solution?
What if the key skill in the new workforce is abstraction — the capacity to imagine a different world, and innovation is the most relevant leadership style capable to multiply the capacity to solve new problems in a technological changing scenario by engaging all minds aboard with full creative, and cooperative focus.
The friction between the visionaries, creative minds capable to see the solution in their minds with the rigid fact-based predictable side of the business required to stabilize the performance is found in the operative system available for the mixed business reality, where agile and hierarchical worlds can live together under lean and agile framework. You may think of a translator capable to keep the conversation between both worlds or a data diplomat as mentioned in a previous entry.
Time to mention the elephant in the room the way Antoine de Saint-Exupéry depicted it on his wonderful book The little prince. A hint, check for the first page drawing but please go and read it in full.
Digital Supply Chain Innovator
Richmond, Texas