🏆 2020 BIBA® Non-Fiction: Business/Global Economics Winner!
Much has been written about Covid-19 victims, how scientists raced to understand the disease, and how governments did (or did not) protect their citizens. Less has been written about the pandemic’s impact on the global economy and how companies coped as the competitive environment was upended.
In this book, MIT Professor Yossi Sheffi maps how Covid-19 impacted business, supply chains, and society. Civilization depends on supply chains to convert the planet’s bounty into products and deliver those products affordably to 7.8 billion human beings. Sheffi exposes the critical role supply chains play in helping people, governments, and companies to manage that bounty. The book draws on executive interviews, pandemic media coverage, historical analyses, and themes from his books, “The Resilient Enterprise” (2005) and “The Power of Resilience” (2015) to suggest how companies become more resilient facing uncertainty. This must-read book helps companies and entrepreneurs adjust to a fast-evolving economic landscape.
The Stage is Set During a Global Pandemic: Part 1, “What Happened,” sees how companies fought to mend the global economic fabric even as the virus ripped more holes in it. Pt. 2, “Living with Uncertainty,” shows how companies create corporate immune systems to quickly manage large-scale disruptions. The new normal is covered in Pt. 3, “Adjustment Required.” Pt. 4, “Supply Chains for the Future,” discovers accelerated trends in technology adoption. China was the pandemic epicenter and first to recover. Pt. 5, “Of Politics and Pandemics,” explains why reports that companies are abandoning China do not reflect reality. The book is about businesses trying to create a better future – emphasized in Pt. 6, “The Next Opportunities.” Nimble businesses are using off-the-shelf cloud computing and mobile apps to level the playing field between small and large companies. Research for this book shows that flexibility and agility are vital to managing the chaos of the pandemic and the pivot toward the future.