Can We Stay Ahead of the Obsolescence Curve? On Inflection Points, Proactive Preemption, and the Future of Supply Chain Management

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 MOOCs promise to change academe. We discuss adaptation challenges and proactive preemption as preludes to presenting various visions of the future of supply chain management.