Can We Stay Ahead of the Obsolescence Curve? On Inflection Points, Proactive Preemption, and the Future of Supply Chain Management
探讨技术和社会拐点如何加速组织过时，并提出主动抢占策略，为供应链管理学者和实践者提供应对未来挑战的思考框架。
Great companies—like great products and great nations—have always endured a four‐stage life cycle: emergence, growth, maturity, and decline. Faster clockspeeds—enabled by compressed technology cycles and accelerated by new knowledge‐sharing routines such as crowdsourcing—are shrinking life cycles. What does this mean? Entities of all kinds now find themselves in a constant race against obsolescence. We thus ask a vital question,”Can we (as a discipline) stay ahead of the obsolescence curve?” Technological and sociological inflection points promise to change the rules of engagement. For instance, 3D printing, Big Data, and drones promise to change management practice. Budget deficits, poor skill improvement, and MOOC s promise to change academe. We discuss adaptation challenges and proactive preemption as preludes to presenting various visions of the future of supply chain management.