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Michael Brenner<\/a> of the SAP Business Innovation Blog <\/a>interviewed me as part of a series of\u00a0interviews with thought leaders on the topic of the Future of\u00a0Customer Experience<\/a>, Work<\/a> and Resource Optimization<\/a>.<\/p>\n This kickoff interview was about the future of business and social networks<\/a> and how they are transforming the future of business<\/a>, and was first published on the SAP Innovation Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n Supply \u201cchain\u201d makes modern commerce sound more linear than it really is \u2013 especially with deep customization and consumer co-creation. It has to be as easy to work with a partner or supplier as you could with a department of your own company. Crucially, what has changed is that information flow between companies is now vastly more sophisticated.<\/p>\n Consumer sharing of information has certainly forced a lot more transparency in terms of the quality of goods and services \u2013 if you have a bad product, you can no longer hide it. Consumers now expect lots of deep information to be available online for any product. But this doesn\u2019t (yet?) necessarily extend to the companies themselves \u2013 for example, Apple has thrived on a culture of almost total secrecy.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure about the wording \u2014 I certainly don\u2019t think people sat around looking at their social connections and wondered how they could monetize it. Rather, a culture of sharing information naturally extended to physical goods, and reduced the perceived dangers of sharing with \u201cstrangers\u201d. In the future, more and more products will turn into services \u2013 but companies will fight back for their part of the market. For example, there are now companies that let you rent out your car when you\u2019re not using it \u2014 but there are also car companies that will efficiently let you use a car whenever you need it. The net result might look very similar.<\/p>\n History shows that as soon as you make the supply chain more efficient, people find new ways to make it even more complex. The ability to do things in real time will above all result in much more customized products and services.<\/p>\n It\u2019s just part of modern business, like struggling with your supply chain or financial systems. How do you change that? You decide it\u2019s a priority.<\/p>\n The ability to use the wisdom of many suppliers to do things in brand new ways is now increasingly cited as a reason to have a supplier network in the first place \u2013 e.g. Airbus reaching out to suppliers for the next generation of their planes, co-innovating with those who have the most expertise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SAP Innovation Blog interviews me on the future of business and social networks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[100,160,618,619,736,763,911,984],"class_list":["post-12360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts","tag-analytics","tag-bi","tag-innovation","tag-innovation-blog","tag-michael-brenner","tag-networks","tag-sap","tag-social"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3dm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}As the economy becomes more global, supply chains become more complex. How can companies manage this growing network of suppliers and partners?<\/h3>\n
Will the increasing inter-connectedness of people around the world push companies and governments to become more open and transparent?<\/h3>\n
The \u201csharing economy\u201d has emerged from the monetization of our social connections. How do you see that evolving?<\/h3>\n
What are the implications of having a truly networked supply chain where everyone is connected in real time?<\/h3>\n
Many companies are struggling to find their voices in social networks. How do they change that?<\/h3>\n
As companies outsource more and more to their supplier networks how will this affect their ability to innovate?<\/h3>\n