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Under the co-direction of John Hagel, Deloitte’s Center for the Edge has been publishing important new studies of disruption with an ‘outcome-based approach to disruption.’ This research is discovering patterns that may help leaders institute defenses against threats and identify opportunities for innovators

Deloitte research is focusing on patterns of disruption that hit more than one market, but not all markets. It is examining: what are the characteristics of markets that would make them vulnerable to a particular pattern?

After six months of research, Deloitte has identified nine patterns that meet its outcome-based criteria. A number of the patterns are based on creating network effects that grow so quickly they become hard to compete with if the rival firm does not already have an established market position. Another set of the patterns identifies ways to fundamentally transform the value-cost equation, but without network effects.

More patterns may be discerned as the research proceeds.

For example, if incumbents and innovators just think about driverless cars as the auto industry, they are never going to fully see the disruption that is coming. By contrast, by thinking about it as a mobility ecosystem, then many other key players, risks and opportunities become apparent

The patterns identified by Deloitte research may provide leaders with insights into how to defend against specific disruptions and also offer innovators inspiration for new opportunities in established markets and Blue Ocean ventures.

The COVID-19 pandemic and recent disruptive events are affecting firms’ operations and supply chain networks on a large scale, causing disturbances in supply, demand, production and logistics activities. Although supply chain resilience (SCR) research has received large attention in recent years, the purpose of this paper is to offer an original contribution by exploring how complex configurations and interactions between SCR strategies and capacities can lead to resilience.

This study investigates the configurations of SCR strategies and capacities using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.

First, the findings reveal different SCR strategy configurations through the lens of absorptive, reactive and restorative capacities to achieve resilience. Second, this study applies the contingent resource-based view (CRBV) perspective to interpret how organizations can achieve resilience before, during and after a disruptive event. Third, it offers an analysis of different groups of organizations, based on the adoption of different SCR strategies and capacities.

This study identifies a set of equifinal SCR strategies and capacity configurations that can be implemented to cope with a disruptive event and lead to resilience. It also enriches the research addressing the consecutive phases of SCR investments, developing the CRBV perspective. In our results, five solutions describe organizations that invest in absorptive capacities, representing an ex ante readiness.

This study aims to analyse whether the presence of supply chain complexity (SCC) influences firms to improve their supply chain (SC) resilience and SC robustness capability. This study also examines an important paradox: whether investing in both exploitation and exploration practices is conflicting or complementary to enabling SC resilience and robustness in the presence of SCC.

The authors used a survey-based approach to collect 242 useful responses from SC professionals of Pakistani firms, an important emerging economy context. The data were analysed with covariance-based structural equation modelling to statistically validate the model.

The analysis reveals several key findings: the presence of SCC has a direct, positive influence on SC resilience and SC robustness; while exploitation practices only partially mediate the nexus between SCC and SC resilience, they fully mediate the relationship between SCC and SC robustness; while exploration practices partially mediate the nexus between SCC and SC resilience, they do not mediate the relationship between SCC and SC robustness and SCC has a significant influence on SC resilience and SC robustness sequentially through exploitation and exploration (i.e. one after the other).

These findings help to reconcile the exploitation versus exploration paradox in cultivating SC resilience and SC robustness in the presence of SCC. The findings assist SC managers in determining how to deploy their limited resources most effectively to enhance SC resilience and SC robustness while facing SCC.

The authors devise and empirically validate a unique framework that demonstrates how the presence of SCC works as a stimulus to build SC resilience and SC robustness.

Resilience in agri-food supply chains (AFSCs) is an area of significant importance due to growing supply chain volatility. While the majority of research exploring supply chain resilience has originated from a supply chain management perspective, many other disciplines (such as environmental systems science and the social sciences) have also explored the topic. As complex social, economic and environmental constructs, the priority of resilience in AFSCs goes far beyond the company specific focus of supply chain management works and would conceivably benefit from including more diverse academic disciplines. However, this is hindered by inconsistencies in terminology and the conceptual components of resilience across different disciplines. The purpose of this study is to use a systematic literature review to identify which multidisciplinary aspects of resilience are applicable to AFSCs and to generate a novel AFSC resilience framework.

This paper uses a structured and multidisciplinary review of 137 articles in the resilience literature followed by critical analysis and synthesis of findings to generate new knowledge in the form of a novel AFSC resilience framework.

Findings indicate that the complexity of AFSCs and subsequent exposure to almost constant external interference means that disruptions cannot be seen as a one-off event; thus, resilience must concern the ability to not only maintain core function but also adapt to changing conditions.

A number of resilience elements can be used to enhance resilience, but their selection and implementation must be carefully matched to relevant phases of disruption and assessed on their broader supply chain impacts. In particular, the focus must be on overall impact on the ability of the supply chain as a whole to provide food security rather than to boost individual company performance.

The research novelty lies in the utilisation of wider understandings of resilience from various research fields to propose a rigorous and food-specific resilience framework with end consumer food security as its main focus.

Over the past 50 years computers and software have become indispensable parts of business, commerce, and government. Almost all major corporations now use computers and software as primary tools for accounting, finance, sales support, personnel records, and to a significant degree, manufacturing and distribution. Banks and service organizations use computers and software for virtually all financial transactions. Government agencies use computers for all vital records and for keeping track of data on almost every citizen. The year 2000 software problem would have been invisible if it had occurred in 1950 and only a minor annoyance if it had occurred in 1975 since computers and software were not, at that time, key business tools. But when the problem occurs in 2000 it has at least the potential to damage the economies of every industry and every industrialized nation. Reviews the kinds of damage that might occur from the year 2000 problem and currently understood by software specialists, but not yet widely understood by corporate executives, government officials, and the international press.

Because most observers ordinarily view the future as an extrapolation of current trends, they are unprepared for discontinuities. The paper aims to urge that leaders foster a culture of open mindedness to better imagine and prepare for discontinuity.

Based on best practice experimentation the authors suggest five “tools” that are useful for achieving a discontinuous mindset.

To achieve a discontinuous mindset, managers need not turn their back on current forecasting activities, but they do need to balance them, intellectually, with considerations of longer‐term uncertainties.

Although the authors appreciate the value of innovative planning techniques – scenario planning, diversity planning, reverse‐engineering the future, developing a 25‐year business plan and culture‐based planning – they propose that a discontinuous mindset and the five tools to develop it are the best defenses against unanticipated disruption of markets.

The five tools for developing a discontinuous mindset offer a fresh take on how leaders can come to grips with an uncertain future.

This paper aims to show how proper risk management capabilities can lead to competitive advantage for a company. There is much evidence that suggests that the current very high level of volatilities in the business world is going to get worse in the years and decades to come. This trend of increasing uncertainties and the resulting risks for businesses, demands a strategic‐level attention to risk management. This strategic‐level attention is warranted by the fact that proper risk management capabilities can lead to competitive advantage.

The work is conceptual in its approach. The paper also provides many examples from a wide range of industries, as well as the results from other research works to support the finding of the paper.

The paper first shows how firms' perspective of risk management is evolving. It then characterizes the main drivers behind the trend of increasing uncertainties in the business world which results in higher levels of risk exposure for companies. Finally, the paper characterizes four different ways through which proper risk management capabilities can lead to competitive advantage (depending on different risk categories).

Although the importance of risk management and its potential strategic role has been widely studied in the literature, the question of how risk management capabilities can turn into a competitive advantage has received less attention. The answer to this question might help firms to better understand the strategic role of risk management and the importance of developing a proper set of risk management capabilities. This paper tries to identify the relationship between risk management capabilities and competitive advantage under different types of risks.