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#TWSCF

Can Collaboration and Community Serve as Catalysts For Innovation in Supply Chain?

September 12, 2019 by Brian Laung Aoaeh

Note: A version of this article was first published on July 31, 2019 at Port Technology.

The innovations required to reinvent global supply chains will not happen without collaboration. This article describes our experience facilitating such collaborations, starting in late 2017.

In late 2016 and early 2017, I spent a lot of time studying trucking and shipping, with a view to understanding the industry dynamics at play, and to see what opportunities might exist for software startups. What I learned about the trucking industry piqued my interest in logistics overall, and ultimately led me to a decision to focus on early stage technology investing in supply chain by building REFASHIOND Ventures to invest in early stage technology startups reinventing supply chains.

Through that work it became painfully clear to me that there is a need for closer collaboration between software startups and established, mature companies. 

This article will explain why there’s a need for such collaboration. I will also discuss the approach our community, The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation, has taken to enable such collaboration. Although it is still early, we will end with a discussion of some early indicators of the results we might expect in general.

Note on prior and recent work: Disruption, supply chain management, supply chain finance, and supply chain logistics are topics I have been studying for some time – from the perspective of an early stage venture capitalist specializing in supply chain; Notes on Strategy; Where Does Disruption Come From? (2015), Industry Study: Freight Trucking (#Startups) (2016), Updates – Industry Study: Freight Trucking (#Startups) (2016), Industry Study: Ocean Freight Shipping (#Startups) (2017), Updates – Industry Study: Ocean Freight Shipping (#Startups) (2017), Where Will Technological Disruption in The Fashion Supply Chain Come From? (2018), Is disruption finally underway in the freight brokerage industry? (2019), and Why digital freight brokers might fail to disrupt the freight brokerage industry (2019).

Identifying The Chasm

A consequence that arose from my decision to publish my articles on trucking and shipping is that it prompted several executives at established companies to reach out to me to talk about my findings. The same happened with startup founders – though, they mostly wanted to meet an early-stage venture capitalist who cared about supply chain logistics.

Those conversations made it painfully clear that: On the one hand, executives at established companies know the business problems in supply chain operations for which they desperately need new innovations. However, they typically do not have sufficient time to meet their daily responsibilities at work and scour the globe seeking out such new innovations. Moreover, their companies might not be plugged into the right communities to find such innovations through tradition RFP processes. Moreover, such executives also tend not to have a very good sense of how much certain emerging technologies have matured, and if such technologies might be applicable to the problems they need to solve. I call such executives BUYERS: these are people and organizations who want to buy new technology innovations for supply chain operations. This is particularly true in a nascent area like cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

On the other hand, founders of software startups that are creating new innovations for supply chain tend to understand the technology well, but they lack a deep and nuanced understanding of the business problems that potential customers face. They lack a sufficiently mature understanding of the value proposition they must offer to the BUYERS if they are to win market adoption. I call such startup founders BUILDERS: these are people and organizations who are building new technological innovations for supply chain operations.

For this conversation to make sense, it is critical that we share a common understanding of what I mean by supply chain. 

The definition I have adopted is from the 4th edition of Martin Christopher’s Logistics & Supply Chain Management: Creating Value-Adding Networks. A supply chain is: “A network of connected and interdependent organisations mutually and cooperatively working together to control, manage and improve the flow of materials and information from suppliers to end users.”

Crossing The Chasm

In order to bridge this chasm between BUYERS & BUILDERSTM, Lisa Morales-Hellebo and I founded The New York Supply Chain Meetup in August 2017. We started with a very simple premise: Once a month, for about 9 out of the 12 months each year, we would bring these two groups of people together to:

  • Network, 
  • Talk to one another about the problems they were trying to solve and the products that they were building, and
  • Participate in curated programming that is based on relevant and topical themes related to supply chain. 

Each event would last about 3 hours. The format of a meetup appealed to us because it is inherently grass-roots driven, and emerges spontaneously based on a shared enthusiasm among a group of like-minded people for a particular topic. 

We ultimately settled on a mission for The New York Supply Chain Meetup: To nurture and grow the world’s foremost open, global, multidisciplinary community of people devoted to building the supply chain networks of the future – starting in NYC.

Even before we held our launch event on November 16, 2017 people in other parts of the United States, and in other countries asked us if we would be live-streaming the event. We took this as a promising sign. As we approach 24 months since we initially started working on this, our tentative first efforts have grown into an initiative to build The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation; A collaborative, and mutually supportive coalition of grassroots communities focused on technology and innovation in the global supply chain industry. The New York Supply Chain Meetup is its founding chapter. 

The initiative is entirely grass-roots driven. Our community includes:

  • Startups,
  • Mature Companies – across all industries,
  • Academics from research institutions,
  • Early-stage technology venture capitalists, and other late-stage investors, and
  • Journalists, regulators, professional services providers, and any other groups of people with interests and skills relevant to innovation in supply chain.

We have 1900+ members in The New York Supply Chain Meetup – the founding chapter, 2700+ members around the world, an active chapter in Charleston, South Carolina, and chapters in the process of being formed in several other cities around the world. 

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation held its inaugural global summit, #SCIT2019, on June 19 and June 20 in NYC. 

  • We had 1000 people sign up for the event before we closed registration. 
  • During the event we had about 400 people attend on each day of the summit. Attendees came from 15 countries. 
  • We had 31 speakers: With 11 startup showcases, and a presentation by the Singapore Economic Development Board on June 20. Video of the event is available on our YouTube channel. 

Also:

  • Here’s a short 2-minute video featuring people who attended the summit: #SCIT2019 Highlight Reel 
  • I wrote a summary blog about it: Supply Chain, Innovation, & Technology (#SCIT2019) – Event Summary

In An Age of Platform Competition, Open Collaboration, Open Communities, and Open Ecosystems Matter A Lot

Why are companies like Amazon, Apple, AirBnB, Microsoft, Alibaba, Google, JD.com, Uber and others, posing a threat to companies in traditional industries? Why are startups that many people have never heard of beginning to attack and threaten companies in mature, established industries that one may have considered immune from such threats as recently as even just half a decade ago?

It is because the companies I have listed, and others I have not, understand the importance of business models that are built on open ecosystems rather than proprietary and linear value chains owned by a single company. 

Using the internet and other maturing software-enabled technologies as the foundation, these companies are launching demand-side and supply-side attacks on industries that have become accustomed to relatively sanguine competition among well established companies. 

That raises the question: What is an ecosystem? A business ecosystem has three main characteristics;

  • First: It is a network of networks.
  • Second: The focus of the ecosystem orchestrator must be on enabling and facilitating the creation and exchange of value, between all participants of the ecosystem.
  • Third: The creation and exchange of value must occur in a way that increases the aggregate well-being of the entire network over time.

When executed well, platforms and ecosystems give rise to powerful network effects. Network effects matter because, in the most extreme cases they can lead to winner-take-all outcomes. At best, they lead to winner-take-most situations. 

What’s are network effects? 

As I explained in my September 2014 article on the topic Revisiting What I Know About Network Effects & Startups: “A network effect occurs when the value of a good or service increases for both new and existing users as more customers use that good or service. The network effect is a virtuous cycle that allows strong companies to become even stronger. Network effects are also known as direct-benefit effects.”

The Results Are Early, But The Signs Look Promising 

As I have pointed out already, our effort is entirely grass-roots driven. We are yet to attract significant outside support to accelerate our efforts. Nevertheless we are showing promising early results in the 24 months during which we have been working on this. Here are just a few highlights.

  • A startup in our community is working with a very large shipping company that is seeking software technologies that enhance its ability to make decisions under uncertainty. Such software can be applied in various aspects of the shipping company’s global operations. The software could also be introduced to the shipping company’s customers who also need to optimize their own supply chain operations. The shipping company gains new technology, while the startup wins a channel partner to aid its go-to-market efforts.
  • A handful of startups in our community are building software to enable established freight forwarders modernize their business operations without bearing the expense of developing software from scratch. Many such efforts are led by people with significant experience in the freight forwarding business who have teamed up with technologists to build the technology. For such startups, a community like ours provides a great, low-pressure opportunity for them to connect with potential customers as well as potential investors.
  • Another startup in our community is building a derivatives exchange for the freight markets, creating a new suite of tools that shippers and carriers can use to manage risk.
  • One startup in our community is building a communication platform to enable communication around the transactions that take place between shipping companies and beneficial cargo owners, freight forwarders, and other parties involved in the shipping of cargo. Currently that communication happens over email, and relies on manual, paper-based processes. The team already has significant experience building software for the maritime shipping industry. The need for the product it is building is confirmed by the explosive rate of growth in adoption by very large shipping companies around the world. Where our community can help is with advice about the startup’s interactions with potential venture capital investors, and providing opportunities for the startup to tell its story to a wider audience. In one instance, after presenting at one of our events, a real estate broker told the startup’s founder that the same problem exists in the real estate industry. He also met an executive from a large shipping company who offered to introduce him to the shipping company’s corporate venture capital arm.   

Collaboration Is Especially Critical in Blockchain + Supply Chain

Like everyone who is enthusiastic about supply chain and technology, we are exploring how blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies will affect the supply chain. Here are some of the things I have learned;

In relation to blockchain, one of the lessons I learned while studying the shipping industry in early 2017 was this: 

“One product that it appears the industry would gravitate towards is a system of record that connects all participants in the supply chain, from end-to-end. This would be a platform into which various shipping industry data could be input, and other data can be obtained as outputs. Probably most input data would come from other platforms and data repositories, while output data would be fed to different counterparties based on their access rights and information requirements.” 

In that blog post, which I published in June 2017, I went on to say that this product seemed to be one ideally suited to be built on a blockchain. The platform would need to allow several independent parties to collaborate with one another while providing each of them with anonymity for certain aspects of their interactions. 

For example: Customs agencies around the world might demand special access rights to enable them monitor international trade transactions happening under various national regulatory jurisdictions. Such agencies could desire anonymity under certain scenarios.

About a week after I published the blog, I discovered that IBM and Maersk were beginning to release more details about their plans for TradeLens to the public.

During our meetup in January 2018, we hosted a discussion featuring speakers from UPS, SAP, Sweetbridge, Blockcience, and MState. The keynote speaker at that event was Dr. Michael Zargham, CEO and Founder of Blockscience, and at the time, also a technical advisor to Sweetbridge. The overarching conclusion I reached by the end of the event was this:

 “Successful implementations of cryptocurrencies and blockchains in supply chain will require more collaboration than the traditional industry is accustomed to.” — Why? The technology combines: digital systems; physical systems; social and political organization; economic structures and incentives; finance; and capital markets. No single organization is expert enough in all those fields to go it alone.

At our meetup in April 2018, we had speakers from: Algorand, Maersk, IBM, TigerTrade, EY, MState, Celsius Networks, and Sweetbridge. Professor Silvio Micali of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory was the keynote speaker at that event. He described the key ideas behind Algorand, a blockchain he invented expressly to satisfy the demands of businesses. The other speakers discussed what it would take to bring blockchains out of the lab and into the real world of supply chain. Based on the discussions that day, I reached the conclusion that: 

Blockchain applications for supply chain must be interoperable with other blockchain platforms, and they also must be interoperable with the older technologies that businesses have relied on up till now.

TigerTrade started a conversation with IBM as a result of initial informal interactions at our in April 2018. Ultimately, this led them to partner and collaborate on the creation of TRADEFLO, a blockchain-powered platform for global trade facilitation and financing. Tanjila Islam, CEO and founder of both TigerTrade and TRADEFLO presented TRADEFLO at The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation’s inaugural global summit in New York City on June 20, 2019. Tanjila’s experience building TigerTrade directly informed her understanding of the need for a platform with TRADEFLO’s attributes. 

Conclusion

Platforms and ecosystems work well because they allow each participant of the platform to play to its unique strengths, while relying on its ecosystem partners for capabilities that it does not have in-house. This is not an issue that has mattered for shipping companies in the past. But, it is becoming more of an issue now, and it will continue to become a more acute problem in the future as beneficial cargo owners demand more sophisticated services from their supply chain partners. 

Collaboration is difficult because it requires a change in culture. It requires an openness that is not customary in many organizations. Collaboration for the purpose of discovering and nurturing innovative new ideas, products, services, and business models is even more difficult because it requires a commitment from senior leadership. Given how often individuals are shuffled around in organizations, it can be difficult to get anyone to focus appropriately on the long and difficult work that is required to build collaborative partnerships.

However, those companies that do not partner with others to meet their customers’ demands stand the risk of losing those customers to companies that come to grips with platform-and-ecosystem-driven competition more quickly. 

Filed Under: #TNYSCM, #TWSCF, Business Models, Communities, Entrepreneurship, How and Why, Innovation, Investing, Long Read, Startups, Strategy, Supply Chain, Technology, Venture Capital Tagged With: Blockchain, Disruptive Innovation, Distributed Ledger Technologies, Early Stage Startups, Innovation, Startup Communities, Startups, Supply Chain Finance, Supply Chain Logistics, Supply Chain Management, Technology

Supply Chain, Innovation, & Technology (#SCIT2019) – Event Summary

July 19, 2019 by Brian Laung Aoaeh

More than 800 Supply Chain Professionals from 15 Countries Attend Supply Chain, Innovation & Technology Conference 

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation (#TWSCF) held its inaugural global summit on June 19 and June 20, 2019 in New York City. The 2-day conference was hosted by Microsoft Reactor NYC and Microsoft For Startups in NYC. 

The Supply Chain, Innovation and Technology Summit (#SCIT2019) is produced by The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation. Attendees of this FREE global gathering are the most obsessively enthusiastic technologists, supply chain executives, professionals, academics, entrepreneurs, and investors from around the world.  

BUYERS & BUILDERSTM of innovations for future-ready global supply chains came together over two days to talk about how technology is transforming their respective industries. 

A Cross Section of The Audience at #SCIT2019

Here are the highlights… 

  • Here’s a short 2-minute video about #SCIT2019 in which people who attended describe the experience.
  • Photos from the event are available here: #SCIT2019 Photos, by Ray Neutron. 
  • Social Media posts on Twitter and LinkedIn can be found using #SCIT2019 or #SCIT19.  See more comments at #SCIT2019 Twitter Moment.
  • See more conference highlights and lessons learned at Brian Aoaeh’s column in FreightWaves.  Commentary: Three themes driving a new era of competition in supply chain.

Day One #SCIT2019 put all the emphasis on the future of supply chains – globally, and across industries.  Innovators in Fashion Technology, Logistics, Maritime and BlockChain talked about a variety of issues including:

  • What problems remain that need to be solved? 
  • What problems have now arisen that we did not anticipate even a decade ago? 
  • What is now possible with software-enabled technologies? 
  • How can intra-industry and inter-industry collaboration between BUYERS & BUILDERSTM  help make this future a reality? 
  • Why is this an important discussion we need to have now?

Day One Session Highlights – BUYERS

The first day of #SCIT2019 focused on people and organizations who want to buy new innovations for supply chain. 

Keynote with Q&A: Paul McCulloch, NYC Cyber Law Group

Title: The T.A.O of Supply Chain — Technology, Architecture, & Operations

Link to YouTube Video: #SCIT2019 Day I Welcome Remarks, Keynote, & Fashion Track

Notes: Paul’s keynote presentation starts at about 19 minutes.

Paul McCulloch is a coder and information technology architect, a government advisor, and an attorney in technology, privacy, and cybersecurity law at NYC CyberLaw Group. He is a former vice president of technology law & digital compliance at JP Morgan Chase. He now spends his time empowering companies to get compliant, innovate, and implement digital transformation.

The world is becoming more complex, more interconnected, more distributed and more decentralized. At the same time, society demands more from the BUYERS, BUILDERS, and OPERATORS of the world’s supply chain networks. In “The T.A.O of Supply Chain – Technology, Architecture, & Operations”, Paul discussed the issues that emerging startups, medium-sized businesses, and large corporations operating anywhere in the world should be concerned about.

  • Organizations that do not have a strong grasp of technology law risk being burdened by liabilities off-loaded onto them by their more knowledgeable competitors. This is especially critical for startups which can easily be hobbled with fines for non-compliance with technology related regulations.
  • The risks increase as data and information crosses borders and becomes subject to different compliance regulations each time national borders are crossed. This is the internationalization of risk as data is transmitted around the world.
  • Compliance has usually been used as a defensive mechanism. More and more it is being weaponized and used as an offensive mechanism to handicap competitors.

FASHION TRACK

Link to YouTube Video: #SCIT2019 Day I Welcome Remarks, Keynote, & Fashion Track

Notes: Fashion Track discussion starts at about 60 minutes.

How is the fashion industry adopting customization, personalization, and on-demand manufacturing? How is data being leveraged to provide predictive, personalized digital experiences? How are brands allowing their consumers to co-create? What does luxury on-demand manufacturing look like today and where will it be in 5 years?

Moderator — Emma Cosgrove, Supply Chain Reporter, Supply Chain Dive

ELSE Corp — Andrey Golub, Founder & CEO

Milaner — Elisa Rossi, Co-founder

Queen of Raw — Stephanie Benedetto, Founder & CEO

  • Technology makes it possible for fashion and apparel to operate on the basis of customization, personalization, and real-time inventory.
  • Companies who can introduce technology to address huge issues with waste and pollution will be the ultimate winners.
  • This requires major shifts in supply chain operations. It is NOT the same as the fast-fashion business model.
  • Speed to market is critical for luxury fashion which is all about exclusivity. Speed does not have to compromise the product and brand.
  • Breaking down silos can speed up the process of manufacturing luxury fashion and accessories.
  • There is a growing interest in localization, but there are still a lot of outstanding questions, and the process of transition will be gradual. 

LOGISTICS TRACK

Link to YouTube Video: #SCIT2019 Day I Logistics Track

What problems can technology solve in land-based supply chain logistics? What’s most promising in the near term? Where do we still have challenges? What’s happening in other parts of the world?

Moderator — Eric Johnson, Senior Editor, Technology at JOC.com

Maersk — Bob O’Donnell, Head of North America E-Commerce Logistics

Princeton University & Optimal Dynamics — Juliana Nascimento, Optimization Expert, Operations Research

SCMI University of San Diego — Joel Sutherland, Managing Director & Professor of Practice                                                                                                    Transfix – Ahmad El-Dardiry, Chief Revenue Officer

  • The biggest problem is harnessing technology to reduce waste in a fragmented industry.
  • Supply chain is a massive optimization problem. There’s a lot of value in implementing simple technologies in supply chain logistics.
  • Transparency and automation matter A LOT to shippers and carriers.
  • For supply chain optimization to be effective it cannot be siloed. It has to be organization-wide. Optimization requires critical mass.
  • Technology is allowing us to do things we could not do in the past but we still need people with expert knowledge to augment software systems.
  • Startups still make the mistake of building technology that is too cutting-edge for market realities, and there isn’t enough collaboration. 

MARITIME TRACK

Link to YouTube Video: #SCIT2019 Day I Maritime Track

What problems can technology solve in maritime supply chain logistics? What’s most promising in the near term? Where do we still have challenges? What’s happening in other parts of the world?

Moderator — Timothy Simpson, Maritz Global Events

Advent Intermodal Solutions — Allen Thomas, Chief Strategy Officer

Maersk — Erez Agmoni, Regional Head of Supply Chain Warehousing and Distribution, Americas

Gemini Shippers Group — Kenneth O’Brien, Chief Operating Officer

  • Shippers in the maritime industry are facing several complex problems, and many are looking for builders to help them solve those problems.
  • Visibility across intermodal systems was an issue 10 years ago, and it’s still a problem.
  • Shippers expect reliability, but it’s complicated. Reliability means different things to different companies.
  • Market-driven collaboration is the new norm.
  • Blockchain is still controversial in maritime and it is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on maritime logistics. 

BLOCKCHAIN TRACK I

Link to YouTube Video: #SCIT2019 Day I Blockchain Track I

Notes: Tanjila starts at 2 minutes, Patrick starts at 24:30 minutes, and Michael starts at 37:30 minutes.

What lessons have we learned about bringing blockchain + supply chain from the lab and into the real world? 

Emcee — Kelly LeValley Hunt, Blockchain Specialist, Forbes 2018 Blockchain “Pioneer”, Microsoft’s 2018 Women in Blockchain Award for Hyper-growth & Innovation

Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA) — Patrick Duffy, President

BlockScience — Michael Zargham, Founder & CEO and Harry Goodnight, Lead Executive Advisor

TradeFlo — Tanjila Islam, Founder & CEO

  • Tanjila Islam is building TRADEFLO, a blockchain-powered platform to facilitate global trade and trade-financing with an initial focus on emerging markets. When she spoke at The New York Supply Chain Meetup’s event in April 2018, she had not yet started building TRADEFLO. However, after meeting an IBM executive at that event she began exploring building TRADEFLO in partnership with IBM. She’s been building TigerTrade for over a decade, and TRADEFLO is inspired by that experience. TigerTrade is the largest wholesale reseller of excess retail inventory.
  • The Blockchain in Transport Alliance (BiTA) focuses on creating open-source and royalty-free technology standards to encourage the adoption of blockchain in the transportation industry by bringing together technology companies, service providers, transportation companies, financiers, and insurers. Patrick Duffy is President of BiTA and he talks about the progress they’ve made in the two years or so that the organization has existed.
  • BlockScience’s Michael Zarghan and Harry Goodnight touched on supply chains as cyberphysical systems, what blockchains enable, and the implications on operations research, applied AI, and distributed systems. They believe that blockchains are ideally suited for describing and establishing supply chain network ontologies. They emphasize that corporate executives need to start thinking about ecosystems.

BLOCKCHAIN TRACK II

Link to YouTube Video: #SCIT2019 Day I Blockchain Track II

Given some of the lessons learned, what work is being done to bring blockchain + supply chain from the lab and into the real world? Kelly and Rob are returning speakers: They have each spoken at past meetups organized by The New York Supply Chain Meetup on the topic of blockchain in supply chain.

Emcee — Kelly LeValley Hunt, Blockchain Specialist, Forbes 2018 Blockchain “Pioneer”, Microsoft’s 2018 Women in Blockchain Award for Hyper-growth & Innovation

Inflection Point Blockchain Advisors — Joshua Klayman, Founder & CEO

MState — Rob Bailey, Co-founder & CEO

r3 — Alisa DiCaprio, Head of Trade and Supply Chain

  • We’re in the early days of figuring out how blockchains will impact supply chains and it is important to get try to get the fundamentals right.
  • Companies interested in figuring out how to deploy blockchain can tap into a wealth of resources, partnerships, and organizations focused on understanding how blockchains can be integrated into supply chains – no one has to go it alone.
  • There are many more blockchain projects that no one is publicizing than those that are in the news. There are a lot of questions that remain open.
  • Blockchain in supply chain is complicated by the fact that data traverses multiple legal jurisdictions. There are also relevant questions that surround laws specific to specific industries. This is an important part of the conversation. The role of incumbents is a source of concern.
  • Blockchain is a point of convergence of many other technologies. Container shipping is one of the industries doing early work on this issue. Here, blockchains function as a permissioned data transfer layer.
  • Supply chain might require the development of new blockchain protocols that are uniquely designed for application in supply chain.
  • There’s an outstanding question about the utility of product provenance for mass consumers. 
  • Here’s the reading list Kelly refers to during the conversation. 

Day Two Session Highlights – BUILDERS

The second day of #SCIT2019 focused on people and organizations who are building new innovations for supply chain. 

Keynote with Q&A: Rosemarie Truman, Center For Advanced Innovation

Title: SCALE – Supply Chain and Logistics Enterprises

Link to YouTube Video: #SCIT2019 Day II Welcome Remarks & Keynote

Rosemarie Truman is an entrepreneur, growth strategist, distinguished corporate executive, angel investor and prolific startup catalyst. She is the Founder and CEO of the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI), a 501c3 non-profit which identifies breakthrough inventions and maximizes their commercial potential. 

SCALE – Supply Chain and Logistics Enterprises is a global contest to disrupt retail supply chain, logistics, and transportation. SCALE is orchestrated by the Center for Advancing Innovation (CAI) in partnership with the Walton Family Foundation. CAI’s past challenges were the catalyst for 200+ startups and 2000+ knowledge-based jobs in the past 4 years. 

The rest of the day featured presentations from start-ups around the globe as well as a guest presenter from the Singapore Economic Development Board.

STARTUP SHOWCASES

BLOCK I – Emcee: Sapna Shah, Principal, Red Giraffe Advisors

MILANER

Elisa Rossi is co-founder MILANER. MILANER empowers the world’s top luxury manufacturers to sell direct to consumers for the first time. MILANER has operations in Europe and San Francisco, CA.

Link to YouTube Video: MILANER

FAST Applications

Adam Yaron is ceo of FAST Applications. FAST Applications designs, develops, and manages professional networking software solutions for the freight industry.

Link to YouTube Video: FAST Applications

limbiq, by Setlog

Guido Brackelsberg is a founding partner and managing director of Setlog. Setlog develops supply chain management software that optimizes transparency, digitalization and real-time data exchange. In this presentation, Guido premieres limbiq, a new platform for digital procurement that has been developed by Setlog.

Link to YouTube Video: limbiq by Setlog

FreightWaves Sonar

Description: Patrick Duffy is President of Blockchain in Transport Alliance, a sister organization of FreightWaves. FreightWaves is a provider of data for the freight markets. Patrick showcases Sonar, a platform that brings together millions of disparate freight market data points with a robust analytics toolset and the market intelligence of the FreightWaves team. FreightWaves operates from Chattanooga, TN.

Link to YouTube Video: FreightWaves Sonar

Queen of Raw

Description: Stephanie Benedetto is founder & CEO of Queen of Raw. Queen of Raw turns pollution into profits across the textile supply chain by building a marketplace for brands to sell excess and scrap textiles rather than warehousing or shipping and incinerating them at a loss. Their analytics tools provide real-time actionable insights, helping to create transparency and efficiency. Queen of Raw operates from New York, NY.

Link to YouTube Video: Queen of Raw

Voyage Control

Description: Jameson Peterson is Head of Construction Solutions at Voyage Control,  a cutting-edge ‘Air Traffic Control’ for inbound logistics management. 

A powerful and easy-to-use software platform, Voyage Control enables ground transport hubs to proactively manage, optimise, track, and communicate with their traffic. Voyage Control has operations in the UK and the US.

Link to YouTube Video: Voyage Control

BLOCK II – Emcee: – Michael Rentz, Founder, The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup

Optimal Dynamics

Daniel Powell is co-founder and CEO of Optimal Dynamics, a NY-based company bringing advanced AI to the supply chain and logistics industry. Based on over 30 years of innovation, Optimal Dynamics is changing how companies operate. 

Link to YouTube Video: Optimal Dynamics

Singapore Economic Development Board 

Samuel Chan is the regional vice president for the Americas at the Singapore Economic Development Board (SEDB). SEDB is a statutory board of the Government of Singapore that plans and executes strategies to sustain Singapore as a leading global hub for business and investment. *This is not a startup showcase, but rather an update on what’s happening in Singapore as the government facilitates and enables supply chain innovation to boost economic growth.

Link to YouTube Video: Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB)

PeerLedger

Dawn Jutla is founder and president of PeerLedger. PeerLedger uses cutting-edge blockchain technology to help companies collaborate to protect human rights, improve environmental performance and significantly reduce key risks, such as counterfeiting and safety, in their supply chains. PeerLedger is based in Halifax, Canada.

Link to YouTube Video: PeerLedger

ELSE Corp

Andrey Golub is founder and CEO of ELSE Corp, an Italian B2B and B2B/2C startup. Headquartered in Italy, ELSE Corp, designs new technological solutions for virtual retail and cloud manufacturing. 

Link to YouTube Video: ELSE Corp

Kontainers

Graham Parker is co-founder and CEO of Kontainers, an ocean freight platform serving some of the biggest brands in shipping. Kontainers allows users to get instant container shipping rates and transact entire shipments online in under one minute. Containers has operations in the UK, and in New York, NY.

Link to YouTube Video: Kontainers

Locus

Shaun Siler is vice president of sales for North America at Locus. Locus is a global decision-making platform in the supply chain that uses deep learning and proprietary algorithms to automate all human decisions required to transport a package or a person, between any two points on earth. Locus is headquartered in Bangalore, India and is establishing operations in the United States.

Link to YouTube Video: Locus

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is the collaborative, and mutually supportive coalition of open and multidisciplinary grassroots communities focused on technology and innovation in the global supply chain industry. Founded in August 2017, The New York Supply Chain Meetup is the founding chapter of #TWSCF with a sister chapter launched in Charleston, SC, and other chapters in the process of forming in Vancouver, Athens, Singapore, Bangalore, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities around the world. There are more than 1900 members in New York, and 2700+ members globally.

Filed Under: #TNYSCM, #TWSCF, Communities, Conferences, Innovation, Meetups, REFASHIOND Ventures, Supply Chain, Technology Tagged With: #TNYSCM, #TWSCF, Community Building, Early Stage Startups, Innovation, REFASHIOND Ventures, Startup Communities, Startups, Supply Chain, Technology, Venture Capital

#CountDown: 8 Days To Launch in Charleston, SC

March 19, 2019 by Brian Laung Aoaeh

Acknowledgement: I am grateful to Laura Corder and Benjamin Johnson of the South Carolina Department of Commerce for pointing me to relevant stats and data for this article.

Introduction

It is with great excitement and anticipation that I write this blog post; At 5:00 PM on Wednesday, March 27, 2019, I’ll join Michael Rentz as he launches The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup. The theme for the event is: Supply Chain & Innovation in South Carolina. The evening will feature a keynote address by Jim Newsome, President & CEO of the South Carolina Ports Authority. That will be followed by two discussion panels. You can find out more details by clicking to the event page using this link: #TCHSSCM01 – Launch: Supply Chain & Innovation in SC.

I wrote about this a few weeks ago – without as much of a focus on Charleston: UnderConstruction | Why Is A Global Grassroots Supply Chain Community Starting in NYC, and Charleston, SC?

What is The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup?

The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup is the first domestic, active sister-chapter of The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation.

In August 2017, Lisa Morales-Hellebo and I teamed up to start building The New York Supply Chain Meetup (#TNYSCM). Our goal was a very simple one; to create a grass-roots driven community that brings together the BUYERS of supply chain innovation and the BUILDERS of supply chain innovation. We have now built it into the world’s largest, fastest growing, and most active supply chain meetup, with 1700+ members in NYC alone. That success has led us to start creating The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation based on requests from people in other cities, like Charleston, SC. The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is the world’s first network of collaborative and grass-roots driven supply chain meetups. Our network has 1880+ members globally. We are in the process of building an active chapter in Bangalore – The Bangalore Supply Chain Meetup held its first event on November 24, 2018, and we will now have our second active chapter in Charleston. We expect to launch a few more chapters by the end of 2019, and we already have a few communities in progress – awaiting the emergence of a community leader whose obsessive enthusiasm for supply chain and innovation drives them to opt-in to lead the initiative to build the local communities that will become part of our network on the ground.

Our Mission

To nurture and grow the world’s foremost open, global, multidisciplinary community of people devoted to building the supply chain networks of the future — starting in NYC.

Our Vision

To create a global movement; the largest community on the planet of people obsessed with supply chain technology and innovation.

Why Charleston, SC?

This is a question that arises whenever we tell people about The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup. The first answer is really quite simple. We’re optimising for enthusiasm. In the past year of building the community in New York City, we have discovered that you can’t manufacture enthusiasm for our declared mission. So, we need people like Michael who opt-in because our mission is something they believe in, not because it is part of some strategy. The enthusiasm for what we are trying to build has to be intrinsic, not extrinsic.

A little bit about Michael; He is a native of South Carolina. He studied Civil Engineering at the University of South Carolina – Columbia. Then he obtained a JD from the Charleston School of Law, and an MBA from the College of Charleston. Most recently, he spent 2 years at Maersk, and was based in the New York City area, before decided to return home to South Carolina towards the end of 2018. Before returning home, he joined us in NYC for several of our meetups, gaining a sense of the community we are building and understanding our mission better. Once he was settled in Charleston, he let us know he wanted to recreate a sister community in Charleston. We couldn’t have wished for a better sequence of events.

It turns out Charleston, SC is an ideal place to consider building grass-roots driven community that focuses on supply chain, innovation, and technology. Here are some stats;

  • According to the World Trade Atlas, South Carolina traded with 198 countries in 2018. Given that the Port of Charleston will boast the second deepest habor on the United States’ East Coast by 2025, one expects this number to increase in the very near future. Presently, the state’s biggest trading partners are China, Canada, Germany, Mexico, and the United Kingdom.
  • According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, South Carolina’s GDP was $221.7 billion in 2017, having grown by 114% over the past 20 years. When you marry that with a 2015 economic development estimate that the Port of Charleston generates roughly $53 billion in annual economic activity that supports about 187,200 jobs across the state, one realizes how pivotal Charleston is to economic progress in South Carolina.
  • According to the South Carolina Ports Authority, $38 billion worth of exports travelled through South Carolina.
  • The Port of Charleston hosts 13 of the world’s 15 biggest container shipping lines, and the South Carolina Ports Authority plans $2.4 billion in capital expenditures to improve its physical and technological capabilities in order to handle more freight from post-Panamax vessels. It is one of the top 10 ports in the United States, and has the stated ambition of vaulting itself into the top 5.
  • According to the Charleston Regional Development Alliance; The Charleston region ranks 9th among U.S. metros in attracting foreign direct investments, benefits from transportation infrastructure that puts shipments through Charleston within 48 hours of most domestic markets, with more than 20% of the U.S. population within a day’s drive of the region.

So, while Charleston, SC may not be the first place most people think of when they think of the location for the next domestic chapter of our supply chain community, I would argue that Michael is right when he observes that the ground in Charleston, SC is fertile for a community like the one he’s set out to build.

As The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup grows, Michael and it’s other members will have the support of our growing network of communities, starting with the community in New York City. Join us in spreading the news about the community we are building, and specifically, The Charleston Supply Chain Meetup.

Our Mantra

About The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation

The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation is the collaborative, and mutually supportive coalition of open and multidisciplinary grassroots communities focused on technology and innovation in the global supply chain industry. Founded in August, 2017, The New York Supply Chain Meetup is its founding chapter.

About REFASHIOND Ventures

REFASHIOND Ventures is an emerging early stage venture capital firm that is being built to invest in early-stage startups creating innovations to refashion global supply chain networks. REFASHIOND Ventures is based in New York City. The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation and The New York Supply Chain Meetup are initiatives of REFASHIOND Ventures.

Filed Under: #TWSCF, Communities, Entrepreneurship, Investment Themes, Meetups, REFASHIOND Ventures, Supply Chain, Technology

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