"The Digital Giant!" - Ray Wang, Constellation Research

"We realized digital transformation isn't enough. There's a new type of business model out there: the digital giant. "

- Ray Wang, Principal Analyst and Founder at Constellation Research

The Supply Chain Buzz is Supply Chain Now’s regular Monday live stream, held at 12n ET each week. This show focuses on some of the leading stories from the global supply chain and global business, always with special guests – the most important of which is the live audience!

In this episode of The Buzz, Supply Chain Now host Scott Luton is joined by Kevin L. Jackson, host of Digital Transformers, and Ray Wang, Principal Analyst and Founder at Constellation Research and author of the best-selling book, ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Surviving and Thriving in a World of Digital Giants.’ His book examines the differences between companies to see which are thriving and which are being crushed in today’s competitive business landscape.

Ray, Kevin, and Scott take this opportunity to discuss recent news stories that have a decidedly digital element to them:

• The recently announced partnership between Berkshire Grey and Atos, which will apply robotics-driven supply chain transformation to retail, transportation, and logistics companies
• New research from Accenture focused on how the supply chains of today need to adapt and evolve to power the business models of tomorrow
• What is likely to fuel digital transformation projects in 2022 and beyond, including data and online business models

Episode Transcript

Intro/Outro (00:03):

Welcome to supply chain. Now the voice of global supply chain supply chain now focuses on the best in the business for our worldwide audience, the people, the technologies, the best practices, and today’s critical issues. The challenges and opportunities stay tuned to hear from those making global business happen right here on supply chain now.

Scott Luton (00:31):

Hey, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening everybody. Scott Luton and Kevin L. Jackson would hear on supply chain now. Welcome to today’s live stream, Kevin, how are we doing? Okay.

Kevin L. Jackson (00:41):

Hello? Hello. Uh, welcome everyone. No, I’m not doing well. I’ll tell you. Um, I, uh, the other day I normally like, you know, I’ll, I’ll work at home, like just about everyone, right? And I take lunch and I go fix my lunch and I go out on my, uh, a screen, a house in the back of my, uh, uh, screen ports or back in my house. I go up there, I sit down, relax, sort of, you know, unwind for about an hour or so before I go back to the

Scott Luton (01:08):

Paint paint, a nice picture. I’m with ya. I’m with, you know,

Kevin L. Jackson (01:11):

So early this week I dorm out regular go on on, right. And it was cold. I mean, it was cold. I was out there in my shorts and a nice, you know, polo shirt what’s happening. The weather is changing. I don’t like that.

Scott Luton (01:29):

Oh man, we can’t wait the weather starting to change around here. It’s nice and crisp football weather. Of course play off baseball weather. We’re excited about what, uh, Atlanta is doing. Yes. Leaves a fallen dogs get frisky and it’s cold outside. I don’t know about yours, but regardless. Um, I love that picture. You painted Kevin and I’ll tell ya,

Kevin L. Jackson (01:51):

Come on.

Scott Luton (01:53):

Y’all it gets little quarter where you are, but as beautiful of a scene as you just painted, we’ve got a beautiful show teed up here today. So today Kevin is the digital transformers version of the supply chain bus. And you know, it’s always a big deal when Kevin joins us, but we’ve doubled down folks. We have got an, uh, uh, he big name from industry. Ray Wong is joining us author of the bestseller. Everybody wants to rule the world. I got my copy here.

Kevin L. Jackson (02:23):

I have been following and reading and taking a Ray’s advice for years. Uh, he is a, he’s a fixture and he’s smart too.

Scott Luton (02:34):

You’re right. And he’s a great, uh, follow if you’re looking for great people to follow across social, especially on Twitter and check out Ray, you, you will not, uh, you will, uh, learn a lot by the hour sometimes. Uh, but Kevin, are you pretty excited? We got, we got to say hello to a few folks in a moment, but you pretty excited about today’s show.

Kevin L. Jackson (02:53):

Oh yeah. I got my questions lined up here.

Scott Luton (02:59):

We’ve got a big show. We’re gonna be talking digital transformation. We’ll be talking about supply chains today, but more importantly, tomorrow and a lot more. So stay tuned. Get your folks. We want to hear from you. Get your comments ready. We’d love to hear what’s on your mind here today. As we kick off, uh, the third week of October, today’s October 18th. So let’s do a, um, let’s pay the bills a bit and let’s share some upcoming, uh, events folks. We invite you to join us on October 26th. As we host a conversation via a webinar around successfully navigating the supply chain, squeeze Kevin, the supply chain squeeze, not just in fourth quarter, but beyond. So join us on October 26. As we host ups, Crocs and sun joy, uh, for what promises to be a very enlightening conversation. And then Kevin on November 9th, uh, we’re gonna be talking about, uh, kind of what we’re gonna be talking about today. Supply chain of 20, 22 and beyond that’s right. Larysa Sarah, the one and only focused on resiliency, Kevin and agility. And of course we hear that basically every hour don’t we,

Kevin L. Jackson (04:02):

You know, she, uh, does, she just released her, uh, studying of the top supply chain and um, I guess he’s going to talk about what they’d learned in this as well.

Scott Luton (04:14):

Uh, well, between her and mot off, I’ll tell you folks, you’re going to earn basically a college degree in an hour. This conversation coming up on November 9th. So join us for that. And of course it’s free to join our webinars. So we’d invite you to come out. All right. So Kevin, before I want to, I want to touch on, um, some big news that you were a part of, uh, right before we bring on Ray Wong today, folks stay tuned for a great conversation. Let’s say hello to a few folks before we do all of that. Uh, man room is filling up here today. Uh, let’s start Peter bowler all night and all day. Great to see you here, Peter. Uh, now Kevin Peters golf game is strong, is strong. I bet he’s like a two handicap rabbit.

Kevin L. Jackson (04:55):

You know, when I go golfing, I would have at least three extra balls in my pocket.

Scott Luton (05:01):

Yes, that is per hole for me. I am not losing at least plenty of golf balls, but great to see you here, Peter, uh, let’s see a manual is with us, uh, from, uh, uh, Legos, Nigeria. Great to see a manual, uh, via LinkedIn looking forward to hearing what you’re saying. Uh, Jean pledger is back from a vacation in lower Alabama. That’s the LA he’s referring to, uh, Jean. Great to see you. Uh, LTV Tom Valentine is with us here today via LinkedIn. Great to see your time what’s going on with you and your neck of the woods. Uh, oh, goon, let’s see here. [inaudible] uh, Ogun towel. I think if I said that right close. Let me know. It’s really important to get folks name, right. Uh, let me know, uh, if, um, you have any helpful tips as we pronounce folks name from around the world, but great to have you here today. Looking forward.

Kevin L. Jackson (05:52):

Yeah, I really like shutting not to Nigeria. I tell I have a lot of followers, digital transformers. There’s a lot of a download some from Nigeria. Really? Yeah.

Scott Luton (06:00):

Yeah. Well, he’s a huge, he says huge fan of the show and I bet he’s a big fan of Kevin L. Jackson too. So great to see here. Uh, let Kay from Lagos, Nigeria, uh, let’s see here, David is back with us. Kevin David, how you doing? Great to see ya. Uh, Kevin, do you ever do any off-roading?

Kevin L. Jackson (06:20):

Um, no, but, uh, I would love to,

Scott Luton (06:25):

I like how we get to the, uh, to the quick answer. Uh, uh, well, Davan has a Jeep four by four weekends, mud, you name it and more. And then of course,

Kevin L. Jackson (06:36):

A lot of, um, a rod on, uh, I’m not a Trek bike, right. And for the past three weeks I’ve been riding virtually in Kenya land park and, uh, archers are out in Utah and, you know, I see all of the off-road vehicles, just having a great time and, and, uh, you know, with the Colorado river and ground, it, it’s just amazing. That’s why I really want to, I want to try that out. I want to go out and canyon lands and Robert

Scott Luton (07:12):

W we gotta, we gotta send a camera crew with you and we document all of that. Uh, Kevin, uh, have a new reality show to add to your, your growth growing a collection. Um, let’s see here. Shawshee great to see you here. Appreciate, yes. You’re going to have lots of inspirational and informative insights from Kevin and Ray here today. And we want to hear from you, let us know what you’re thinking is we tackle a variety of topics here and David says, come on up, Kevin, he’ll take you out four by four. All right. So with all of that said, and sorry, we couldn’t get to everybody. Uh, but again, we want to hear from you today as we walk through a variety of topics here, but Kevin, right before we bring on our special guests, or do they want to bring this story back in? Cause you’ve been in some big news related to Galveston down in Texas. Tell us about this.

Kevin L. Jackson (08:03):

Well, yeah. So what you see there is the 1861 Galveston customs house. So, uh, uh, back in the civil war days, the very last battle of the civil war was in, uh, just outside of Galveston, Texas, and the, uh, general, uh, toad basically emancipated the last group of slaves there in Galveston and went around the city, making that, that announcement. And this was one of the, uh, it’s one of only two physical locations that still exist, where they made the announcement. Um, and we’re, uh, I’m with a group here in Washington, DC, and we are purchasing this building that you see here too for a Juneteenth museum, because that was the birthplace of Juneteenth, June 19th, the day that, uh, last slaves were emancipated in, in the United States. So, uh, we make front page news this week. I’m excited,

Scott Luton (09:11):

But that is outstanding. Well, um, I can’t wait to hear a lot more about that, uh, this critical project. And of course we want to celebrate as, uh, as a museum eventually opens I think next year, Kevin, and I understand the timeframe is that right?

Kevin L. Jackson (09:24):

We’re going to open, uh, June 10th, 20, 20.

Scott Luton (09:29):

Awesome. Well, we’re going to celebrate with you, uh, and, uh, mark wa isn’t an incredible historical, um, uh, part of our collective history. So thanks for what you do, Kevin, and what the interview, you and that investment team soon, and learned more, a lot more about y’all’s vision. You bet. Okay. So with no further ado, I want to bring on our special guests today. So as I mentioned, uh, Ray Wong will be joining us principal analyst and founder at constellation research author, again of the best-selling book. Everybody wants to rule the world surviving and thriving in a world of digital giants. Welcome in Ray Wang. Hey Ray, good afternoon. How are you doing?

Ray Wang (10:11):

I’m doing great. What’s going on with you guys,

Kevin L. Jackson (10:15):

The other side of this horse from the other side of the world.

Scott Luton (10:21):

So Kevin, you letting the cat out of the back, great tiller buddy, where you are,

Ray Wang (10:25):

I’m in Dubai. And one of the things that I’m doing out here is checking out the expo 20, 20 lots of conversations about sustainability, lots of conversations about, um, what’s happening next and, uh, you know, a lot of insight, right? So catching that. And of course, we’ve got a couple clients out here and that we’re doing some conversations around the book and stuff from leadership man.

Scott Luton (10:46):

Uh, and I bet you’re lucky to get a couple hours sleep each night with all the stuff you’ve got cooking on.

Ray Wang (10:51):

This is a tough time zone, really because you work the rest of the world hours and you work with out here as well. So you forget to take some time off. It is brutal. So

Kevin L. Jackson (11:03):

Yeah, I just want to work with it with the kingdom. And I was working all night and been working all day.

Scott Luton (11:09):

Wow. Um, or we’re gonna have to connect our friend. Uh, Kim winter out in Dubai. Dubai is such a fascinating, innovative part of the world. And we look forward to hearing more about your, your travels there. We’ll probably touch on some of that today, Ray, and then, uh, we’ll have to keep our finger on the pulse of your global travels. So great to have you here today.

Ray Wang (11:28):

Well, Hey, thanks for having me and a big fan of the show, so,

Scott Luton (11:32):

Wow. Thank you. All right. So Kevin, uh, with, uh, you and Ray, we want to kind of walk through some of the leading headlines across the world of supply chain with a really heavy digital transformers flavor. So I want to start Kevin, see if I can get my, my graphics ready to go here today. We’re going to start with a big news when it comes to automation and global supply chain as Berkshire grey. And [inaudible] tell us more about it, Kim.

Kevin L. Jackson (12:00):

So, you know, I, you know, I talk about digital transformation, but one of the key aspects of digital transformation is robotics, right? And, uh, Berkshire, grey and autos really have teamed up together because they see digital transformation and robotics as two sides of the same coin, especially in the supply chain world, because everything is on demand. So they’re working together to provide a real holistic, flexible and a cost-effective warehouse automation to support supply chain transformation solutions. Uh, and this is the meat, you know, the high need, uh, and, and required the lossy as we transition in this post COVID world.

Ray Wang (12:49):

Yeah. I mean, Kevin you’re so right. I mean, this is a, I mean, if you look at what Amazon’s doing on the warehouse side level automation, that’s required the volumes that are there. I mean, just take the longshoremen on every port. I mean, we’ve got to get as much of that automated. We got to get the warehouse automated, we’ve got to get transit automated, right. That’s why everyone’s looking at autonomous trucks going coast to coast. And that’s where the big battle was, uh, between Volvo, Tesla and others in the long and the long haul, uh, because there’s not enough workers, right. And we’ve got so much material that we’re moving and we’re not doing a good job manually, and we’re not even doing a good job from a safety record. And we’re also not doing a good job from environmental perspective,

Kevin L. Jackson (13:24):

What a huge backlog at, um, all of the ports, because there’s not enough drivers. Right. Um, and all the backlog and from the ships, it’s because there’s not enough longshoreman, you know, w it is really bad.

Scott Luton (13:42):

Right? Of course we don’t don’t have enough equipment, uh, the infrastructure and, and the, uh, transfer points or a lot of congestion there. Um, we’ve got kind of a perfect storm in many ways, but I want to add to this, um, you know, I love that, how this partnership, because you’ve got the technology side, then you’ve got, then you have the expertise of implementing it, right. And training organizations, how to use it, because as powerful as automation is, you know, implementing it and a managing, it can be really challenging. I point to there’s lots of case studies out there, Ray and Kevin, as, you know, rent the runway, very public problem back in 2019, where a little software glitch, you know, shut down the operation for several days, uh, missed orders, miss subscribers and angry customers. So, Ray, you’re not in your head. Automation can be tricky. Right.

Ray Wang (14:27):

You know, automation is hard, right. And if we look at automation, like the way we look at autonomous vehicles, there’s five levels, right. There’s basic automation and it’s like cruise control, but you still got to steer. Maybe you got break. Uh, you probably do have to break. Right. And then we get level two, which is kind of like, you know, there’s, there’s some level of like, you know, human directed, which is not bad. Right. That’s like a Tesla autopilot, the car will drive itself. But if there’s no car at a stop site, it will run through the stoplight. So you still have to jump in, okay. It’s just a little bit, and then we get machine intervention and that’s when you know, you’re backing up and it goes, beep beep, beep, okay, what happened? Right. It brings kicked in. There’s someone behind you. There’s like a ball.

Ray Wang (15:04):

You know, it was like another car, right? That’s machine intervention. Like we’re somewhere between two and three right now, but we can get the four, right. And four works like this. Right. You go to every major airport, these automated trains work on themselves right now, if you think about the history of train accidents, it’s crazy. Like conductor fell asleep. Conductor was drunk. Conductor was on a mobile phone. Right. It’s all human error. There’s very little arrow in the airports. Right. I mean, there’s, I never hear about airplane, airport, trains crashing into each other, carrying people. Right. So, so we get to that level. And at some point we’ll get to full automation where humans are optional, but we’re somewhere between level two and level three, in most cases. And in the warehouse, given what your pick packing and shipping, it’s hard, right? There’s some things that just don’t fit, right? They’re all exceptions. And it’s the exceptions that are just brutal, right? Even if you’re 95% accurate, the last 5% will take up probably 80% of your time. And that’s what people are trying to solve at this moment. And they need massive amounts of data, massive amounts of volume to figure, figure that out. Um, that’s, that’s why Amazon has a massive lead. DHL has a really good lead XPO logistics has a great lead, right. But everybody else, like what are they going to do? Right. And, and that’s why this partnership is interesting.

Scott Luton (16:10):

I love that, Ray. All right. So Kevin, uh, quick response, and I’m gonna go to some of the comments

Kevin L. Jackson (16:14):

Okay. Where it’s kind of interesting that people complained about robotics and robots are going to take all the jobs away from humans. Right. But now when they assess a shortage of humans to take a lot of jobs, we’re in the middle of the great resignation where everybody is quitting their jobs. So, so humans don’t seem to be too smart if they’re quitting right at the time where robots are prime to take over,

Scott Luton (16:49):

Uh, great opportunities, right? All this technology innovation is creating a lot of great opportunities for professionals to continue to advance and learn new things and try new things. Um, I wanna, uh, so Tom Valentine would mention him earlier busy helping existing and new companies with their logistics challenges and has raised. And Kevin points out, no shortage of logistics challenges. Hello, Mathias. Great to see they’re from St. Augustine beautiful city in Florida, uh, via LinkedIn. Great to see you. David says, welcome Ray. See, we’re rolling out the red copper, uh, carpet for one Ray Wong here today. Shashi is also from Dubai. Uh, nice to see Ray expo. 2020 is one of the great events here. So, uh, the world’s really a small place. Once you start peeling the onion back, Eric also reminds us that it’s it’s enough. Oh, he says, it’s enough drivers, but not enough. Chassies in chassies as part of that equipment. Uh, uh, Ray and Kevin speaking, a chassis that we’ve heard, uh, someone reported on our show a few weeks back that isn’t, there’s an eight year manufacturing bat law backlog. The chassies. How about that?

Ray Wang (17:53):

It’s true on the heavy trucks there there’s that issue, but, but actually what’s really concerning right now is it’s three fronts. One is school lunch programs. Aren’t getting food, right? Um, the supply chains for grocery are so behind at the moment, if you looked on TV, you’ll see in every city that the shortlist shops are bare and many grocery stores at the moment. Right. And the third piece is, and this is the crazy one. There are people who’ve shipped goods to other people to pick up those goods that all are bankrupt. What are we going to have? Why don’t we do like mystery box container? Like, you know, I mean, you know, like you go up, what’s the what’s that show where they go out and find these mystery things. They go dig it up and you know, they go and see what’s in these boxes. It’s going to be with containers.

Scott Luton (18:34):

That’s crazy. It is a unique time. Uh, all right. So this first story we’re talking about Burchard gray and Attos are partnering, uh, courtesy of our friends over at supply chain brain. So a lot of good stuff there. Uh, Kevin and Ray, I think they get, uh, your rubber stamp of approval. So we’ll see how that plays out as they look to tackle some of the challenges we’re speaking of, all right, let’s move right along because we won’t talk. We’ll talk about this piece of research that comes to us from Accenture, talking about how today’s supply chains, Kevin, uh, you know, no shortage of challenges and innovation talk about, but how all that’s got to evolve to serve the supply chains of tomorrow. Tell us, tell us more.

Kevin L. Jackson (19:12):

Well, one of the things that’s important to note is that nobody talked about supply chains for the longest time, right? Because they were just in the background, they all worked. You always had things on the shelf. And then when the pandemic hit supply chain became front page news, because it started failing. In fact, that TIVA published an article saying that articles on supply chain itself were up 45% year over year in 2020, because everyone started talking about news was just dominated, not dominated by stories and pictures of the shelves. And at retail, it was an idol automotive assembly line because he couldn’t get parked and containers waiting to be unloaded. And what Accenture did in this study, they were basically saying, well, what does the supply chain managers, designers need to do to fix this issue? So they came up with really three points. They said that supply chains need to adapt to their customers value while continually decreasing the resources required to deliver it.

Kevin L. Jackson (20:39):

Uh, Ray would just talk to me about, you know, people paying people to deliver boxes that were delivered by other people, right? These middle men really need to, you need to get rid of them because that just increases cost. Supply chains need to be more resilient. Okay. They must protect their customers, companies and their partners from the supply and demand shocks. One of the things we talked about before is that a lot of this automation and data that people are using for artificial intelligence, they are looking at data from the past, thinking that that data could help them manage the future. And that is so wrong. That is so false. You need visibility into the supply chain in order to manage today, you need that visibility of yesterday, not 10, 15 years ago. And finally supply chains have to take this on their shoulder. They have to be more responsible. They have to have to operate in ways that are not only good for the bottom line, but good for the planet and society. And they need to establish and maintain and enhance trust with all the stakeholders that depend on the supply chain. So that this is a tall order, but it’s about, um,

Ray Wang (22:14):

Well, excellent. So Ray, uh, there’s a lot of Kevin just shared there. W where do you want to respond? Yeah, no, I think it’s really important to think about this, uh, in, in, in the holistic way, right? If you’re a company, the front end is really your orders and your commerce systems, the backend is supply chain. People have optimized their supply chain. Therefore there’s nothing to sell, right. If you optimize your orders, there’s nothing to deliver. Right. And so, so these have always been hand in hand. That’s why order management is really important because it brings those two areas together. And so what we’ve learned is supply chains would be massively disrupted, um, and in constant chaos for quite some time, because we don’t have the demand signals down. Right, right. We’re using historical data and trying to forecast off that, but the demand signals have changed, and we’re not sure exactly what changed.

Ray Wang (22:55):

And so that’s what people are trying to find too at the moment. But the other piece that’s really important is we’re going from, you know, just-in-time to just-in-case right. And that requires a capital investment, which means inventory costs are going to go up, which means CFOs are going to be unhappy. But the agile supply chains we thought we had are pretty brittle. Right. And, and what we actually need now is that it’s like par levels, right? We need reserve capacity. Uh, and, and, and we never, we never accounted for it, which means the way that we built these long supply chains are pretty much going to be broken down to near shoring. And, and things started to come back, uh, closer to, to, you know, where your production is coming. Just like when we looked at additive manufacturing and 3d printing, that that was going to change those supply chains.

Ray Wang (23:35):

Uh, the other piece is really, um, data-driven approaches are powering the future, right? Everything is really about grabbing those data signals and what we haven’t done a good job with is, and I’m not harping on the vendors. But if I was going to build a brand new software company, I’d give away the software for free, the transactions are free, but you pay for the insight because I need more data. I mean, there’s not enough data. Everyone’s like, oh, I have a really good algorithm. And I’m just like that algorithms, okay. You just don’t have enough data. If you had more data, you’d actually get better precision. And what you’re missing is the precision. And back to what Kevin say, and the false positives and false negatives are like, they’re freaking all over the map. That’s why people can’t forecast. So, and then the other piece is the automation.

Ray Wang (24:11):

We have a concept called decision velocity. It’s super important, right? You and I make a decision per second. It kicks us. I don’t know, a week to get out of that management committee. A quarter became longer. Who knows? Right? I mean, it can take forever, right? But machines are making decisions a hundred times per second, a thousand times per second. It’s that algorithm that allows people to actually react more quickly. And what you’re seeing at places like Amazon is an Alibaba and JD is that they’re getting really good with their algorithms. Right. They know exactly what they need to get, get a delivery. And the more sensing data and delivery times that they get, it gets even better. Right. They can tell you that prediction pretty well. And then this is the part Kevin’s all about. Right. But he’s right. Blockchain and smart contracts are gonna speed up efficiency. Right. There’s so much crap. Like how much facts and like, I don’t know. You can still walk around with a clipboard and look important, like on the floor, but seriously, like what the hell is this? Right. Right. And the last piece is really sustainability. I mean, that’s the piece that’s missing in this article. We should be talking about where sustainability, circular economy and other pieces are gonna be

Scott Luton (25:07):

Play a role. Great point, Hey, really quick. I want to bring in a couple of comments here, and then I’m going to, uh, talk about Everlane for a second. Tom Valentine makes a great point, which I generally agree with automation is not necessarily here to replace humans and supply chain, but it’s being expedited because humans are not willing to do the specific job function. We’ve seen a lot of folks just leaving their jobs. Cause they’re tired of treatment. They’re tired of the, the, the nature of the job or, or tired of the pandemic. Yeah, that’s right. Uh, David agrees with Tom, then I’m gonna also come back up to, oh, Alabi great to have you here today. Oh, Alabi digitization trying to set up seven times fast digitization and supply chain management has jumped up post the climax of COVID-19 as startups and logistics is growing day by day here in Nigeria, he says they are basically digital as a pandemic, clearly showed the world a lot could be done without physical contact.

Scott Luton (25:58):

It’s just the beginning. As many people are quitting their jobs to set up their logistics outfits mostly in last mile. Delivery. Love that. Um, okay. And really quick one, add two points. You’re making, uh, two quick data points. Uh, according to this research from Accenture, 53% of CEOs are allocating funding to drive supply chain innovation only 53%. And it gets a worse, only 49% of CEOs are allocating their top talent to supply chain. That’s a challenge. We got to have the, Buck’s got to have the talent and then, uh, Everlane neat story. Here’s a, here’s a good, so here’s the good news. Everlane is a retailer offers a wide range of, uh, clothing, primarily apparel, but a big part of their culture is what they call radical transparency. Get this Kevin Ray y’all might already know they investigate and audit each factor they work with on things like fair wages, reasonable hours, and the environment and offer all that information to Everlane customers. I’ve read. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve read. It’s a one click. Uh, uh, the customers can, uh, one click away from peering into the factories that I would argue is a big part of supply chains of tomorrow at Kevin gets you respond.

Kevin L. Jackson (27:05):

That’s all part of building trust. And as Ray talk about blockchain and the importance of data, well, you have to have trust in that data. You have to understand the Providence of that data. You have to understand source of that data. Um, and similarly, when you are supplying products and services to your customers, your customers want to understand your Providence of those products. Okay. So providing that visibility, uh, builds trust between a customer and their, um, uh, uh, the, the store and a store needs to build trust across their ecosystem by using verifiable immutable data. Uh, and this is why like blockchain is so important to across every industry. It’s that it’s that trust is that data that has to be rebuilt right

Scott Luton (28:06):

With trust. You know, Ray, you mentioned a decision velocity. I think if you trust in the data and you trust in the decisions that are to be made, you can move a lot faster, right.

Ray Wang (28:16):

Way faster. You’re definitely gonna move much quicker. Um, but, but I think, you know, the, the whole point of smart contracts and the ability to get these smart contracts to work is the fact that, you know, everything’s established, right. You you’ve got that in place. It can be anonymous. You’re zero knowledge proofs are in place. You get some really cool, you know, contracts or demand, sensing, demand pricing, and that adjust on their own. I mean, it’s, it’s beautiful, right? I mean, when you look at like trade lens with IBM Merce, right, that’s kind of an idea of what could happen, right. And to me, that’s super powerful. And, and this is really, you know, some of the things that we’re looking at, these what we call data-driven digital networks, these will be multi-sided platforms that are trading on insights and data, and those insights and data become important because that’s, that’s my pricing optimization. That’s my ability to put up a bid. That’s my supplier, uh, vendors, procurement, like reliability score, right. And I’m ranking rating them all the time. And it’s also my ability to figure out, holy crap, we are missing some rare earth materials. How is that going to work? We’re short on chips, on ships,

Kevin L. Jackson (29:14):

Transparency and visibility into that supply chain, right?

Scott Luton (29:19):

So I want to touch on something. Uh, Eric, both of y’all have spoken to this. And of course this, this article here today, we’re talking about tomorrow’s supply chains. So Eric says many people have theorized that trucks will be fully automated. First I beg to differ because the first level two trucks are just now being released from Freightliner. For example, this means the technology continues to put into the cars. First, your thoughts, uh, Kevin, let’s start with you.

Kevin L. Jackson (29:46):

Um, I think the industry itself transportation as a vertical has been slow to adopt technology. Similarly, distribution has been slow to adopt technology. Things like, um, RFI for tracking items and goods and pallet, uh, could have been deployed years ago, but the, the battle between, I guess, the unions and, and have been humans to do this work versus being more efficient and collecting data with technology, has it just prevented that. And I think we’re at a tipping point, right?

Ray Wang (30:30):

Yeah. I think we’re actually going to be much closer, uh, than, than people realize, uh, trucks are really important. Right. And they’re going to be the long haul routes, the hub, the hub. They’re not going to be the short haul, like last mile driving. Um, so as you’re going across any of the, uh, even number roads, uh, east, west and the U S um, you’re going to see some of these automated trucks that are popping up. So Tesla definitely has things go on. Volvo definitely has things going. Um, you got a company called embark, that’s doing some really interesting things. Uh, and, and they’re basically trying to figure out how to automate the freeway part of the journey. That’s the only part that they matter. Daimler’s trying to get into the space. You know, we see them popping in, um, with their autonomous trucks. I think they’re a little behind, uh, but you know, I mean, they’ll all get there, right.

Ray Wang (31:08):

But the question is like, who’s buying these trucks and what’s going to happen. And you have to basically look at, you know, like Amazon station buying tons of these trucks, right. And corporate fleets are buying tons of these trucks, uh, because they’re afraid that they’re going to get into like carbon emission issues. And so they want electric trucks and they want automated. And those two things work hand in hand, Volvo is doing really good jobs with their automatic trust platforms. And that’s something to watch because they’ve got that in place. And then a couple other ones, you know, there’s Ike and some other smaller ones that are in the play,

Kevin L. Jackson (31:36):

The long haul,

Ray Wang (31:38):

Long haul.

Scott Luton (31:40):

Yeah. So we’ve been talking about, uh, this article here from Accenture research from Accenture, uh, y’all check with that resilient and responsible tomorrows supply chains. I want to share, I want to share two quick comments and get both of y’all to respond. Uh, just before we go to our third and final article, and then we’re going to talk about Ray, your book here today. But Tom says, he’s talking about the administration does not need to put more regulations and restrictions, but to work as a trap partnership with the private sector educational system and the government to solve the numerous issues we’re facing, he’s kind of alluding to that supply chains are, we’ve heard about possibly being implemented. And then, uh, and I’m not sure if, uh, Amanda or clay or Al if you can let us know who this LinkedIn user is, but they say a splotchy visibility, as simple as it sounds, lots of organizations do not have it. Hence we don’t know where to start to change or to fix the problem. That’s an excellent point. So Ray, I’ll start with the five control

Ray Wang (32:38):

Towers.

Scott Luton (32:41):

Uh, let’s see here. And that was, uh, Santos. Thank you for that comment Santos. So Ray, we’ll get you to respond to either, uh, the challenge of real supply chain visibility or, um, the role between the private sector, working with the government and educational systems to move forward address either, either one of those, uh, if you would

Ray Wang (33:00):

Look, I’m an abashed free market capitalist. Um, and I think it’s basically a demand issue. So, you know, there’s not enough people. I mean, you can look all around the world, everybody’s the same trouble. You know, if you’re in like the UK, the lorry drivers, aren’t delivering Petro, therefore the lines are so full, right. And so everywhere we’ve got this issue in terms of, are we paying the right prevailing wages? Um, are they matching to what people are looking for? Is it, you know, the people really take the great reg designation as Kevin was talking about. I mean, that’s, it’s happening, right? So people reevaluate their jobs, but you have people like that were in the airline industry that quit and then I’ll drive in trucks, right? So there’s, there’s a whole bunch of shifts that are going on. And, and I think that’s, that’s the thing we have to look at. It’s, it’s understanding that demand cycle, adding more government, isn’t going to help, right. Unless they have the data. And I really doubt that they have the data. So that’s why I’m worried about, but if the private sector provides the data, puts it up so that we actually have larger sets of data to look at patterns, then I can see that private public partnership working. And then I hope that’s where we end.

Scott Luton (33:56):

It’s almost like mass laws, uh, uh, uh, hierarchy of needs is changing in front of our eyes. So Kevin, uh, if you would, uh, either respond to Ray or the comments we heard just there from the sky box,

Kevin L. Jackson (34:09):

We’re actually, I believe education is key, but it’s not just education and education, vertical education in the commercial world. And most importantly in the government world, I mean, people think they know everything, but they know everything from 20, 30 years ago, it doesn’t apply to today. So people really need to understand, they have to understand the new model. They have to understand the power of, day-to-day got to know what data is actually available and that takes education.

Scott Luton (34:42):

So, uh, and let me correct myself. I think I said mass law, I think I was combining Maslow and [inaudible], it’s a hybrid, it’s a hybrid. Y’all get the point though. Really the motivations and incentives and, and, uh, there’s a great psychology study. I’m sure that’s gonna be coming out. Um, okay. So for the sake of time, uh, I want to move right along to our next, uh, story here. Let me pop that up. Uh, now with this one, we’re talking about what 2021 has taught us about, especially about digital transformation and what successful digital transformation is going to be fueled by in 2022 and beyond. So Kevin, tell us more here.

Kevin L. Jackson (35:22):

Thanks. First of all, Ray was talking about how this is everywhere. So I want to point out that this article, uh, came from the United Kingdom, right? Talking about what’s, what’s driving business growth and in the United Kingdom, and it is digital transformation. So the question is, what are the top five trends in digital transformation? Number one is data, but using data as a quote, creative material business leaders really need to recognize the advantages of data driven approaches to improving what their customer experience are and their strategic roadmap for going forward. So, first of all, data is a creative material, right? Second, the online business models. I mean the internet is not going no way and up value. The velocity of commerce that’s been delivered by the internet is going to continue to increase. So these new online models will drive growth. And as this, as these things grow and, you know, global commerce is going to remain global all.

Kevin L. Jackson (36:45):

And we all just talked about onshoring and reassuring. That doesn’t mean we will not have a global economy. We will still have a global economy and it’s going to accelerate, which means faster decisions. And those decisions need data. Third, it has to be a strong focus on resilient supply chains. So how do you get resilient supply chains? I haven’t visibility from yesterday. So you can deliver today and being able to use that data to respond to demand of today so that you can deliver tomorrow. Once again, it’s all about data and rapidity of decisions, forth, artificial intelligence. Why? Because people are too slow, right? It may take them a second to make a decision, but then a whole quarter to get it through the board of directors. All right. So they’re going to give it all to the artificial intelligence so that they can make these decisions fast, but they don’t have to be responsible for them. See, that’s, that’s the key, you know, what fast decisions that people don’t have to take responsibility. And finally, all of this technology, all of this data, all of this artificial intelligence, the internet of things is built on top of cloud cloud is a foundation for business. So it’s the growth pillar that all of this is going to be built on top of. And I’m talking about cloud native infrastructure and IOT as five, five G telecommunications technologies really liberate, you know, the virtual machines, I know storage funded data centers and take it out to the edge. So that’s, what’s going to change everything

Scott Luton (38:50):

5g for you and me. Don’t be, don’t be scared of 5g folks. All right. So Ray, what’s some of your thoughts there.

Ray Wang (38:58):

I like the article. I think it makes sense for 2022. Uh, but when I look at 2030, I look at this very differently. Um, at that point, the metaverse economy has taken over and digital goods and services while paced physical goods. Right? So I’m, I’m, I’m always wondering, like, are we overbuilding capacity right now? Because we’re just trying to compensate for 18 months of really just chaos, right. And, and that’s just backlog and we’re over expanding capacity to the point where as, as things become more digital and goods become more digital and, you know, I’m buying an NFT, I’m trading in the metaverse, I’m in a digital world, right. A lot of my goods and services and transactions are handling in the web three O uh, and they’re all defined and decentralized. Um, is it really necessary to double down on these things? And I’m kind of curious, like how much of it translates back into where the metaverse economy picks up. And so I like the trends. I think they make sense for 20, 22, but I got to put my futurist hat on and I’m like in 2030. Yeah. I know that’s going to be happy. It’s all be the metamours right.

Kevin L. Jackson (39:56):

It’s uh, it’s the industrial revolution all over again, right? When you rent off the farm and went into the factories, uh, then you left the factories with information technology and went into the offices and now we’ll leave in the offices to go home so that we can leverage the internet to work from home and operate in the multi-verse. And there’s, the transitions are becoming faster, more pronounced and global. So, so you’re right. This might be good for 20, 22, but 2030 is not that far behind. And the digital economy, the virtual world is going to accelerate everything.

Ray Wang (40:39):

I mean, Scott, Kevin, we’re going to be doing this in front of like 10,000 people in a metaverse room. Like we could be in a roadblocks room or an epic games environment right now, and we’ll be able to see everybody in the future. Right. So it’s,

Scott Luton (40:51):

I mean, it’s the only way I’m getting like your show’s going to be

Ray Wang (40:53):

There until years. You know,

Scott Luton (40:55):

It’s only, I’m gonna get my son’s attention. Uh, Ray, no one left one little, one little segment from this article and we’re referencing this article, uh, let’s see here, BCS, the charter Institute for, uh, it, it was talking about, you know, AIS, of course it’s not just everywhere these days, but it’s talked about nonstop and every conversation these days. Right. But I like this point here, key point that was made, if you do three things, number one, leverage it with complimentary technology. Number two, really wrap it around customer centered thinking. And number three, not just using it as a way to simply replace people or other technology, if you can apply AI with those three, a three legged stool in mind is going to truly optimize the powerful impact that AI can make. Um, Ray, you’re not in your head, would you agree or disagree?

Ray Wang (41:49):

Oh, I definitely agree. I definitely agree. We’re heading in that direction and you know, the more we accelerate that, um, the more data we can put in there, the more we can actually accelerate that and make sure we precision decisions. Right. What I’m worried about is the false positive, the false negatives, right? 98% accuracy in manufacturing. That’s okay. 98% accuracy in healthcare, right? Yeah. Your pills are 98% accurate.

Scott Luton (42:13):

We need to have a dial tone accurate that line. Right. Kevin, your thoughts, uh, related to AI or your final thoughts related to this piece?

Kevin L. Jackson (42:22):

Well, AI should be used to enhance the human powers. Okay. Humans can only, humans are great at a very small subset of things, but those are things that we really need. And it note that you can’t get from anywhere else. So 11 to enhance the capabilities of humans. And then we have to leverage education so that humans can realize the value of themselves. Okay. So they can be, you know, um, self-actualized right. That hierarchy again,

Ray Wang (43:03):

W we have a seven step method to do this, right? So when you look at highly repetitive tasks, that’s going to be automation and AI, lots of volume automation and AI, lots of nodes of interaction. We can’t multitask that. Well, you know, that’s going to be automation, AI, massive time to completion automation and AI, but who are you actually inserted humans going to be interesting when we have highly complex mathematical models that can’t be modeled in math, right? They still haven’t figured it out. That’s where the human judgment is going to come into play. Uh, when we have areas around creativity, we’re really good at making the rules. Hopefully we’re better at breaking the right incentives. We get really good. And that’s where creativity kicks in. And then there’s last piece, which is where a physical presence is needed. Right. You’re not in harm’s way. You’re gonna see humans in that place. And so those are seven ways to kind of look at, you know, when you apply automation and AI, and when you actually use a human,

Scott Luton (43:48):

I love that. You know, um, one of the things that we’ve mentioned and kinda addressed, or, uh, um, touched on throughout the conversation is that focus, the intense focus on the customer, right. It’s interesting, you know, back in the eighties, voice of customer, uh, six Sigma, other methodologies really preached the value of them. And not just eighties going back shortly before that, but nowadays it’s also, it’s almost like you don’t have a choice if you’re not really lasered in on and focused in on what the customer wants, man. It’s no longer optional. Uh, and that, that’s probably a good thing. That’s probably a good thing. Um, okay. So Nerf, uh, Nerf going back to, um, he says my public weight disclosures are 6%. No problem with the values. 6%. Great to see you here. Uh, Nerf as always. All right. For the sake of time.

Scott Luton (44:37):

Thank you, Kevin and Ray, I’ll tell you getting you all together. I think we could solve some of the world’s problems. I wish we had another hour, but respecting y’all’s crazy schedules. I do want to talk about this, um, uh, well-received book, uh, that you have recently released array. Well, I guess, uh, probably a couple months back now, everybody wants to rule the world surviving and thriving in a world of digital giants. Now, transparency, we’re talking to the value transparency I have not, this is all my next, uh, next to read list. I’m still working through Dan Gingiss is a great read. Uh, he released, but Ray, tell us, give us a cheat sheet. What are some of the core messages you want to communicate with?

Ray Wang (45:17):

Yeah. I’ll give you a quick cheat sheet. What happened? Um, if you look at the market cap of the digital giants, we know Microsoft, apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, right? Uh, Microsoft. It was $2 trillion in 2017 and you know, it was pretty big companies, right? Um, if you look at the market cap today and add them up, it’s 10 and a half trillion, right? Never before in the history of capitalism or companies in general have large behemoths grown this fast, right? They quintupled, right. They quintupled in four years, right? Normally companies get big and fat and lazy and don’t get the stuff done. And that’s really what I wanted to go back and look, because I wrote a book in 2015 called disrupting digital business. We describe where digital transformation was going. We set that up. And then in 2018, I started to say, Hey, who is successful?

Ray Wang (46:04):

Who wasn’t successful? And we realized digital transformation, isn’t enough. There’s a new type of business model out there. And so we define what a digital giant is. And then we define how to actually compete against it or do line. And then we talk about how you regulate digital giants on the backend. And so there’s five things that you really have to know, right? The first thing is these companies are really good at this intermitting customer account control. They have ways of aggravating your customers in a way that you wouldn’t expect a great example, food delivery apps. Right? Right. So, you know, your door dash or Uber eats your Postmates, your delivery from the UK or swaggy if you’re in India. Right? So, so the thing that’s really interesting about them is in the middle of the pandemic, every restaurant, every business owner gave up their customers.

Ray Wang (46:44):

They handed them over to these food delivery app companies who then took the credit card information. Now got all the transaction information. And the first place you’d go is not, you don’t call the restaurant up anymore. Or you go to the food delivery, that’s customer account control disintermediation. And they’re really good at that Expedia trying to take that from the travel companies, right. Airbnb trying to take that from disparate rooms. They aggregate really well. And that’s the customer account control. The second thing they do really well is they build the biggest network, right? And they go from like hundreds or thousands of like mom and pop companies have a thousand customers, right. Maybe 10,000 at best. These companies have millions through that aggregation. So they build the biggest network. So it’s either your members, your subscribers, any connected device or machines, right. You want to figure out what your biggest network is because that’s how they actually take the data and start using that data to be successful.

Ray Wang (47:32):

And that’s what we talk about. Competing on data. Supremacy data is so important to them and it’s not just data. They’re building what we call the business graph. Just like social networks have a social graph. It’s the intersection between a supplier, a customer partner, and employee with an object, like an invoice, an order, or even a campaign or ad and location time. Right? What’s the weather like outside? What part of the process were you in? Where were you stuck? Right. What was your sentiment? Like they even want to know your heart rate, all that information and they use it to pry what they want to do next. And so let’s go back to the food delivery app companies. They did a really good job, right. To the point where they’re building ghost kitchens, because they know that maybe in Kevin’s neighborhood like Italian food is doing better than like, you know, Greek food.

Ray Wang (48:14):

Okay, great. Right. So let’s go build a ghost kitchen here and serve that market. Right. Or Scott, like where you’re living. Maybe they do a better job. Like, you know, OTP and OTP folks are gonna order more. One thing versus something else. I get the idea, like all comes together, right? And so they take that then and they win. But then it’s the digital monetization that comes into play. And that’s important. It doesn’t matter who you are. Right. Google dominant player in search, Facebook dominant player in social business. Right. So Google has, you know, 4.2 billion people, you know, and terms that they cover, right. Facebook has 2.8 billion members, right? Well, they’re monopolies in their own right or dominant business models, but you know what? They’re competing fiercely for digital ads, right? 130 billion for Google, 70 billion for Facebook. But guess who’s number three in the ad business.

Ray Wang (49:04):

I wanna take a guess. Kevin, Amazon, Amazon 0.1 billion, 14.1 billion last year. If you look at 12 month trilling, it’s about 24 billion. Wow. So they’re now in the ad business. So we just took three different business models in the digital era, commerce search, social, but they’re all competing for advertising. Right. And that’s what the crazy thing is. People don’t realize the business models are just there. Right? It has nothing to do, right. I mean, you only have six ways to compete in the digital world, ad search, good services or memberships and subscriptions, that’s it. Wow. Right. And Amazon is firing on all six of those, like anybody else, right? So that’s the digital monetization. And then the last piece, you gotta have a long-term mindset. You have to invest money. You have to, you can lose money for 10 years, lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ray Wang (49:53):

And nobody cares selling you’re growing and you’re going to escape loss. So you’re getting to the biggest membership. Remember Facebook was losing money. People are out. They’re going to go bankrupt. Amazon was losing money. Oh, they’re going to go bankrupt. Right next Lex was losing money. They’re going to go bankrupt. Well, they got to escape velocity and now no one else can beat them. Right. And that’s a very, very important point. So those five things come into play. Now, the reason I brought this up around the food delivery app companies was because the number one performing stock between 2009 and 2019 was what? Google, Netflix, apple, Microsoft ticket guests. What do you guys think? Uber eats?

Kevin L. Jackson (50:29):

Yeah. I would guess

Ray Wang (50:30):

The Google, you know who it was. Domino’s pizza. Domino’s pizza. That would have been that last

Kevin L. Jackson (50:37):

Guest talked about that these

Ray Wang (50:40):

Guys won the battle for digital transformation. 17 ways to order a pizza. You can track the order, the pizza, it tells you where it is. 10 days, 10 minutes away, five minutes away, it gets delivered. You take a picture of the pizza, run it through the AI bot and they can tell you the quality of the franchisee. I gave me, they did everything right. They’re getting their there, but they’re getting their butt kicked by the food delivery app companies. They actually had the first year on your loss in terms of rep not loss, but decline in same store revenue, same store sales, right. It hasn’t happened to wines because you order pizza maybe once a week, maybe once a month, right. You order from the food delivery app. Some people order three times a day. Well, you know, it’s really interesting. Domino’s has really transformed many things. They’ve also, if you’ve had dominoes, you know, years ago and had it recently, they’ve also, uh, improve their pizza taste better. Yeah. It’s not, I don’t want to bash anybody. Uh, but at least it’s better. It’s better. So re it’s it’s fascinating. And I got to tell you, according to the chief digital evangelist at little company, salesforce.com, but everybody of course has heard of him. He says, Wong’s new book may be the most important business book of 2021. And that’s Valla AF Shar. I believe. So. That is high praise. Kevin, how about that? Yeah,

Kevin L. Jackson (51:59):

Absolutely. And you know, what right is, is highlighting is the power of the network, right? That’s these are being driven. These all of these digital business models are being driven by the network network of information and data, right? That’s at the heart of all of these, there is always say there are no industry verticals anymore, right? Every business is about the data source and the data sync. And if you can manage and identify the source, provide that conduit from the source to the sink, you will become one of these digital giants

Ray Wang (52:42):

Agreed. And that’s what we call data driven digital network. These are the multi-sided platforms, these hundred year platforms that actually trade on that insight. And you’re building multiple monetization models off of that. And that’s why having the biggest network is important because you want to bring the data into the network and the volumes there right now, everything that’s being done, piecemeal, you know, you have your own planning, software, supply chain soft, or something, you know, demand planning software in your own environment. Right. Useless. Yep. And back to your point on where people are, I mean, we’re collapsing data, value chains, not industries. And so examples, comms, media entertainment, and tech is really the same business. Whether I sell you a live stream or I sell you a piece of software or if it’s games or if it’s a movie or music, it’s the same thing. I have a digital asset. I sent it through a technology platform. I have partner networks that push that stuff out. And I’ve got customers that come back and consume it with a digital monetization model. Wow. And that’s, it they’re really the same business. Right. And retail, manufacturing and distribution are now the same business. Right. We see that as well. Right? Healthcare insurance, hospitality, hospitality, really the same business. So we get crazy things like this popping up.

Scott Luton (53:51):

So folks check out the book, uh, Ray Wong’s book care. Everybody wants to rule the world. We’ve already dropped the links, uh, Barnes and noble Barnes and noble, Amazon, you name it, drop those links in the comments and make it easy. Um, I want to share man. Nerve keeps it coming. Never says he even gets the name of the person who made his pizza from Domino’s and he agrees Domino’s pizza is a lot better now than it was a decade ago. And Avinash is looking to benchmark. Hey, what about pizza hut? Well, We’ll have to have the pizza hut, supply chain, customer experience a battle.

Ray Wang (54:26):

The future Chick-Filet the real question is Chick-fil-A the best frequent drive-thru ever in the middle of pandemic and the best mobile app.

Kevin L. Jackson (54:33):

The question for you, Ray. So why isn’t Chick-fil-A open on Sunday?

Ray Wang (54:40):

Well, the seventh day Adventist. That’s why, but I want to point out something Kevin, on your end, the training is so incredible over there. The people training that you were talking about, that human supply chain on their end is the best. I mean, they tag team to help each other. Like I’ve never seen. And it’s like, they’re not like, I mean, this is high school training. I mean, they’re so organized. It’s not like this is like professionals on it. They took people off the street, train them and got them to this level of customer experience. It’s amazing.

Kevin L. Jackson (55:11):

No short lines and drive through are always long. Every day they move.

Scott Luton (55:17):

They do. And the, and the product is so consistent. We could talk about the Chick-fil-A model for hours on it.

Kevin L. Jackson (55:26):

[inaudible] digital transformation.

Scott Luton (55:27):

I agreed. Chick-fil-A Charles heater says this session was worth the price of emission Scotland and great lessons. Fact-based examples. I appreciate that. Charles always bringing the heat and glad you could make it today. Eric, I think he’s talking about our Chick-fil-A discussion. Don’t get me started, but it’s so funny. It is so funny. Spicy Chick-fil-A has created w we’re we’re we’re attesting to it, raving fans that we so believe in their, as much of their product as their processes as how they do business. Um, it’s really, it’s, it’s an amazing, uh, just, you know, uh, folks started all kinds of companies the decades. Right. But, but Chick-fil-A, I think folks who were studying that for decades and decades to come okay. Right. We have run out of time with you and Kevin, hard to believe heart. Let’s

Kevin L. Jackson (56:19):

Start again.

Scott Luton (56:24):

Uh, but let’s make sure folks know how to connect with you Ray, beyond the book, which we talk perishable products. That’s right. Perishable products. How can folks connect with you, Ray? Oh, simply

Ray Wang (56:33):

And check out the constellation website. DubDubDub dot constellation. our.com personal website, Ray wong.org. Ari Y w angie.org. Twitter at RWA and G zero and LinkedIn. Same as well. R w a and G zero.

Scott Luton (56:44):

Wonderful. And you know, he is in demand. He’s a sought after keynote, uh, uh, principal analyst, uh, author, you name it, uh, I’m convinced you’ve got several clones knocking out all the work. You do great. But

Ray Wang (56:57):

To

Scott Luton (56:57):

Supply re a pleasure to have you here. Kevin Ray was run guest, huh?

Kevin L. Jackson (57:03):

Absolutely. We will have to have him back again. The next time it’s going to be a two hour show.

Ray Wang (57:10):

I’m so humbled. Thank you for having me. It’s been an honor. I’ve got to have you guys on our show as well. We’ll bring them in with a Vala as well and different.

Scott Luton (57:17):

Thank you, Ray. Have a great rest of your week, man. Ray was incredible, you know, Kevin, um, that was first time. Of course he appeared on supply chain now and did transformers, but man, he’s got a vibrant energy, uh, that has come part of, of who he is. Part of his communication. He gets ready to run through walls.

Kevin L. Jackson (57:36):

Oh, absolutely. But the, um, the knowledge that he has, I mean, his sort of laid back character, belies the network that he has, the knowledge that he has and what insight he has been able to draw from all of these disparate industries. Uh, I mean this, this is fascinating. Yeah.

Scott Luton (57:57):

I agree with you. I agree with him. Glad we could get him booked today and look forward to reconnecting with him soon. All right. So Kevin, um, of course talking about busy folks, you’ve got a tons of things. Tons of things going on. How can folks connect with you though?

Kevin L. Jackson (58:11):

Oh yeah. Always on social media, Twitter, Kevin underscore Jackson and Kevin Jackson on LinkedIn. But the best way is via subscribing the digital transformers on supply chain now or on, on the, uh, podcast of your choice. We’re on apple, we’re on, uh, Google, Amazon, all of them, wherever you hear your podcasts, you can find digital trends before.

Scott Luton (58:43):

Well, uh, it is a pleasure to collaborate with you and learn from you. Kevin, I’ll tell you, you bring so much to the table and getting you and Ray together. Holy cow, we could really solve lots of words. World’s problems. Hey, connect with Kevin of course, connect with digital transformers, check out the latest episodes there. Um, make sure you check out Ray’s book. Everybody wants to rule the world. Uh, but most importantly folks appreciate all the great comments we’re getting in the sky boxes. I’m so glad that, uh, you had a lot of folks tune in here today and I hate that we couldn’t get to everybody, uh, Kevin, but that’s kinda the nature of the beast these days, but Hey folks, uh, most importantly on behalf of our entire team here in big, thanks to Allie and Amanda and clay behind the scenes helping to make production happen. Do good, give forward, be the change that’s needed. And with that said, we’ll see you right back here on supply chain out really soon. Thanks Kevin.

Intro/Outro (59:33):

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