Page 8 - Case Study Annual 2018
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Thought Leadership
Supply chain and logistics
innovation – new or refi ned?
By Doug Hunter, doug.hunter@za.syspro.com
We learn and share from case studies, so let’s look, rethink and learn from one of the earliest in
trade logistics – the VOC.
CASE STUDIES reflect innovation from able to manage their tax contribution to a far
leading companies, inspiring followers lower percentage than the innovative testers
to continuous improvement. Often these of new thinking, drivers of competition and
innovations are discovered and tested by new technology. The result they seek is
small companies first. Why? Because they higher returns, which they distribute to a
have to fight for their market share and be fraction of the population – shareholders.
competitive in markets dominated by large Great, if you’re a shareholder, but not good
corporations or restrictive government for the rest if these earnings are not used
regulation – often lobbied by the same large to fund further innovation, but rather a
corporations to help them maintain their Lamborghini or two. Is this the best wealth
dominance. The lean and mean guys also take redistribution for a growing world? You
bigger risks, including having to risk their own decide.
money and not that of shareholders, having to A case study that has always fascinated
prove themselves before the formal funding me is the original logistics ‘small guy that
community invests. seeded the first global logistics giant – the
Netherlands and VOC (Dutch East India
Company). They emerged from Spanish
rule in 1590. A nation of traders and sea
explorers. Initially, they sought new land for
their funders, extending their power and
discovering new trade routes with valuable
new products, but they saw trade rather than
annexed land as power.
Kevin O’Marah, formerly of Advanced
Manufacturing Research, now at Gartner and
a visitor to South Africa, shares this respect
for the VOC. Writing in Forbes Magazine
and quoting a book titled The Silk Roads,
he extols how the Netherlands founded its
emerging economy on global trade. It was
through engineering and sailing purpose-
built assets, sleek sailing, flat-bottomed
ships designed to carry more cargo than
competing nations’ vessels and which
One must ask the question: Are large required fewer crew.
corporations becoming less useful to broader Also, funding, not by one or two wealthy
society? I believe that whilst they employ the tycoons, but through cooperation and risk
most people, creating lives that are arguably pooling to get as broad a base of investors as
better than before, there is an element of bad possible – this venture capital or rather crowd
for all. We know that some use their power funding of the day formed the most powerful
to stifle rather than boost competition. They and successful trading enterprise – the
influence laws that favour their trade position, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC).
perhaps not always successfully, and they are With such financial strength, they formed the
6 The Logistics News Case Study Annual 2018