Business-as-a-Service a Resilient Response to Pandemics

Ecosystem Platforms
I have spent nearly 30 years in and around Silicon Valley.  I have worked for small start-ups, medium sized and large established technology and services companies.  Looking back over my high-tech career and the careers of my peers, it seems our skills and expertise overall have easily transferred across different companies, roles, industries, technologies and solution categories.  For the most part, at least in the high-tech industry, business is business.

At the highest level all businesses have similar processes.  They need products and services to sell, customer acquisition processes, customer success processes, front and back-office systems and operations to keep track of everything.  All of these processes and systems must have experienced experts supporting them.  

Over the course of my career I have spoken with dozens of venture capitalists and angel investors.  In no case did these investors express an interest in spending money on the basic business processes listed above.  They wanted to invest in unique and clever products and services that are in demand and generate profits.  All the rest of the business is simply noise to many of them.

Using Data and Deming in a Pandemic

Throughout history military leaders have wrestled with the “fog of war" - the desperation of not knowing critical information.  Information as basic as where are my forces and where are the forces of my opponents?  We face similar information needs today in our battle against the COVID-19 coronavirus.

“The ultimate purpose of data is to provide a basis for action or a recommendation for action,” wrote the revered quality improvement consultant W. Edwards Deming.  Today, in our battle against the COVID-19 virus, we are struggling to make informed decisions because of our own lack of data.  The absence of information both paralyzes decision-making and forces us to expend enormous amounts of time and energy defending against all kinds of scenarios that may not in fact be relevant.  We just don’t know.  Think about a scenario of being lost in a dark forest at night with all kinds of strange sounds and dangerous predators lurking about. How would you defend yourself? Which way would you turn? It would be difficult in the best of times, but the absence of data can make it even more excruciating!  We are struggling with this today.

Today the fog of war can largely be lifted with the combination of software systems, mobile phones, sensors and analytics.  With COVID-19, however, we have the necessary and important consideration of how to protect personal privacy.

Another relevant Deming adage, “The biggest problems are where people don’t realize they have one in the first place.” Not knowing the status of COVID-19 in our communities is a big problem.  In order to move forward and open the economy again we need to understand precisely our COVID-19 exposure and status.  We must quickly remove the blind spots by collecting as much data as possible, while at the same time protecting as much of our privacy as possible.

I look forward to quickly reaching a point where we replace conjecture with good data.  Removing the blind spots is our next best step for our physical, mental and financial health.

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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS
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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Protecting Our Global Economic Network from Pandemics

The word pandemic comes from the Greek words “all” and “people.”  It is a fitting title given to the COVID-19 disease that crosses all people groups, economies and continents without respect to ethnicity or status.  It has a way of pulling back the curtains and showing us what makes the world run.

Pandemics travel on our community’s economic and transportation networks. Because pandemics are international travelers, they disrupt our global economic networks, which are the sources of much of our economic prosperity today.  

Post-Pandemic Risk Strategies for Supply Chain and Procurement Leaders

In this interview supply chain risk management expert Joe Carson shares strategies for addressing the Covid-19 pandemic and preparing for the next one.



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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Six Degrees to Contagion - Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic

Small World Networks
Seventeen years ago, in 2003, Professor Duncan J Watts, published a book titled, “Six Degrees, The Science of a Connected Age.”  In it he wrote the following warning, “In a world spanned by only six degrees, what goes around comes around faster than you think. So just because something seems far away, and just because it happens in a language you don't understand, doesn't make it irrelevant.” Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people in the world on average are only six or fewer social connections away from each other.  It has been proven time after time to be true as the famous Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game has demonstrated and the study of the small world networks phenomena.  What this means is you are only six or fewer social connections away from a person living in Wuhan, China where the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak first emerged.  

More thoughts from Professor Watts, “When it comes to epidemics…we are all connected by short chains of influence. It doesn't matter if you know about them, and it doesn't matter if you care, they will have their effect anyway. To misunderstand this is to misunderstand the first great lesson of the connected age: we may all have our own burdens, but like it or not, we must bear each other's burdens as well.” All of us are in this global community.  We all share earth, and we are only six or fewer social connections from someone who is infected by the Covid-19 coronavirus.  We might feel we are great distances away from an epicenter, but we are really only a relationship or a handshake away.

State and Local Supply Chains Challenged by the Pandemic

In this episode, I get to interview Brian Utley, CEO and Founder of Periscope Holdings, about the unique challenges government supply chains, especially state, city and local are having during the COVID-19 pandemics.  Brian shares how government-centric supply chain ecosystems are working together to solve these issues and to develop new strategies.



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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Pandemic Resilience is Knowing When to Quit

Thomas Edison
“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be a more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks." ~ Warren Buffet
Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties.  It doesn’t, however, require you to return to a previous state.  Often the fastest way to recover is to quit and start again.  Think of a jeep climbing a steep muddy hillside.  Mid-way up the hill, tires spinning it comes to a stop.  In this situation your choice is often limited to staying in the same spot spinning your wheels or quitting and trying again.  Life often provides us with similar choices, and the COVID-19 pandemic will force many businesses to face this decision.  

Let’s talk about the role quitting plays in resilience.  As a youth I was taught that with enough hard work, belief and long hours anything could be accomplished.  Now as a veteran high-tech executive with thirty plus years of experience I no longer hold that maxim to be true.  Some businesses are just bad ideas.  Some good ideas are before their time.  Sometimes people in leadership positions shouldn’t be.  Some ideas just run out of money before they get to market.  Some good ideas just can’t rise above the noise and fade off into oblivion.  Sometimes pandemics happen.

Ecosystem Commerce and Pandemic Supply Chains - Interview with TCS Expert Rich Sherman

In this episode, I interview Rich Sherman, Senior Fellow at the Supply Chain Centre of Excellence at TCS.  He shares his insights on the impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having on global supply chains and what can be done in the future to make them more resilient, adaptable and redundant.

 



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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Steps Required to Stop and or Live with the Pandemic

Common Good
We have all learned a great deal about living with and fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.  Not everything for sure, but enough to start sketching a plan for the guaranteed next one.  We don't ever want to be in a situation again where we must decide between our lives or a functioning economy.  We also recognize that both COVID-19 and poverty have their own associated health risks, so let's try to balance both concerns.

A working plan seems to be emerging from the fog of war.  It isn't fun.  It requires isolating those that feel sick, those that test positive, and those that are in contact with those that test positive.

This plan is also written without due consideration for individual liberties.  It is simply a list of what works to stop the virus from spreading, while keeping the economy functioning long enough for effective treatments and vaccines to be developed and "herd immunity" achieved.  An implementation of this plan, however, would need to balance the concerns for individual liberties against the common good. 

This plan is not original.  It is the aggregate of what has already been widely reported and argued to be working.  I have simply collected them in this living document and will continue to add, subtract and edit as we gain better insights.

Pre-Pandemic Assumptions and Presumptions

Over the last 3 years my wife and I have become avid backpackers with many adventures under our belt.  One of the biggest surprises I learned during my time in the wilderness was how often I make wrong assumptions.

It was mid-July and the lake we were backpacking to was still frozen over and the trail was covered in deep snow.  I had assumed warm mid-July weather would have cleared the trails.  Another time after fishing in a high mountain lake, I looked at the map and saw the trail passed directly above our location.  After over an hour looking for the trail we realized it didn't exist.  My assumptions that maps are updated regularly and accurately reflect the reality on the ground were wrong.  I can't tell you how many times I have learned that the obvious shortcut doesn't save you time.

We all make assumptions.  We assume something is true or certain to happen, without proof.  We also make presumptions.  We presume ideas are true, and then use them as the basis for other ideas until we have built ourselves a house of cards that is one fact away from collapsing.  As we ponder our changed mid-pandemic world from our home offices with our dogs and kids under our desk, it is a good time to reflect on the assumptions and presumptions that got us into this predicament.  

I think we presumed the biggest dangers in flying were potential terrorist attacks or equipment failure.  I think we assumed our doctors had the answers to whatever illness we picked up.  I think we presumed that since all companies seemed to be developing long and lean supply chains that they must be resilient, redundant and reliable.  I think we presumed that an illness in China was a Chinese problem.  I think we assumed that the local hospital could just order and quickly receive any supplies or equipment they needed.  I think we assumed that our economy would always be there in the morning.  I think we assumed toilet paper would always be available. I think we assumed our leaders had a plan.

As our anxiety evolves into acceptance of our mid-pandemic situation, perhaps it is a good time to re-evaluate the assumptions and presumptions we all have about the world around us.  What I have learned in this past month is we have far less control over our world and destiny than might have been presumed.

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Kevin Benedict
Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict