“One thing we have learned from the pandemic is supply chain is everything. I mean, if we had we not had the tools that we have and supply chain management here in this country? I think we would have been looking at a completely different picture.”

-Rebecca Costa

In this episode of Supply Chain is Boring, Chris welcomes American sociobiologist, futurist, and author, Rebecca Costa, to the podcast.

Chris Barnes (00:06):

Hey, it’s Chris. The supply chain doctor and host of supply is boring. Bringing insight into the history of supply chain management and exposing you to some of the industry’s thought leaders and driving forces. In this episode, we sat down with Rebecca Costa American sociobiologists futurist and author, to learn more about her perspective on future supply chain management trends. It all sounds pretty boring. Let’s see if Rebecca can prove me wrong. Rebecca, I learned about you through your Ted talk that I, I watched you did it in September 20, 2011 after viewing several more of your keynote presentations on YouTube, which there are plenty, I noticed you will occasionally reference supply chain topics, and you sometimes even say the term supply chain. I look forward to learning more about you and your futuristic perspective on what I call this boring field of supply chain management.

Rebecca Costa (00:54):

One thing we have learned from the pandemic is supply chain is everything. I mean, had we not had, uh, the tools that we have and a supply chain management here in this country? I think we would have been looking at a completely different picture. Once people went to stores and could get no food. I have a friend of mine who often says up an arche is five Ms. Meals away. And I think that might be true. It’s just, uh, you know, civilization is a thin veneer and it, when you get hungry, it starts to break down. So, uh, we learned a lot about supply chain and we also learned a lot about, uh, our inflexibility. You know, we had a lot of protein makers, you know, meat, packing plants and chicken plants and things like that, that suddenly that were servicing industrial clients and suddenly the need was for smaller packaged consumer goods.

Rebecca Costa (01:52):

Making that switch up was just a nightmare. You know, so, so we, we really, I think came face to face with two things. How not boring and important supply chain is in keeping the fibers of civilization moving forward when you have a disaster. But second of all, you know, confronting our individual in flexibility in terms of being able to switch gears, we, we get locked into a certain way of doing things and then we drive toward efficiency. And as you drive toward efficiency, you narrow your options and your options become fewer. And fewer efficiency is the enemy of resiliency.

Chris Barnes (02:31):

You’ve got a lot of opinions. I’d say a lot of thought provoking ideas from what I’ve seen, but before we get to those, can you just, you’re a futurist. I I’ll say that. What is it, what exactly is a futurist? And then how does one become one?

Rebecca Costa (02:43):

I have to tell you that, uh, that label was forced on me and I, uh, I often start out by telling people I don’t, I don’t talk to dead people and I have no a deck of tarot cards. I don’t have a crystal ball. I’m actually an expert predictive analytics, but that sounds so boring that I, you know, my, my father once cautioned me, he said, don’t say that because I notice people move away from you at parties. So you might not say, well, I might not want to use words like analytics, but, but the fact is is that if you have a hundred points of data, you give a pretty good shot at guessing what the hundred and first point is going to be. And when you have billions and billions and billions of points of data and, uh, artificial intelligence that can, can really come that data and look for patterns, it’s not that difficult to know what the next event is highly likely to be to some of us the speed at which the pandemic moved. The, you know, the exponentiation at which it moved was not a surprise at all. And I would say those people like myself that are futurists and really our data walks. We’re not surprised at, at how the contamination moved.

Chris Barnes (03:57):

You talk about the amount of data. I think I heard you say once that is the concept of the dilemma of over choice. You say too many options is the same as is having none.

Rebecca Costa (04:06):

Well, unfortunately we have a less than 3% difference in genomic material from a bonobo monkey. And, and so, you know, you, you take all of this data and you, and you slam us with this data, and then you say, all right, go make sense of it. We’re so far beyond being able to use the cognitive resources we have, which are, you know, almost 98% similar to a banaba monkey. That’s not going to get us to where we need to be in terms of leveraging the information we have. We have more information than we are using. And that’s why artificial intelligence is so important because it compensates for what our brains can never do. Yeah.

Chris Barnes (04:52):

And the extension of that is machine learning. You take talk about artificial intelligence, the next step. Exactly.

Rebecca Costa (04:57):

You know, my machines machines are better. And, and this relationship that we have with machines is changing from a sociological standpoint. Our trust with machines is getting stronger and stronger in our distrust with human beings is getting more significant. You know, you might go outside and your, your, uh, neighbor says, Hey, I think it’s going to rain. You might grab your jacket and you walk inside and you go, Alexa, you know, what’s the weather. And it says, it’s going to rain at four 29. In fact, my smartphone will say rain in six minutes. I mean, that’s how I, I don’t know a neighbor that can tell me it’s going to rain in six minutes. And so with all of these smart devices and, and our reliance on them, we’re becoming more and more trusting of what the digital world has to offer and what computing can offer.

Chris Barnes (05:49):

So let me Brett wrap some of this back around to the topic that the audience listens to or dials in for supply chain. So in some of your sessions, you talk about 3d printing, drone delivery services, a lot of those things. Is there anything specific that you’re, that you you see in the future?

Rebecca Costa (06:05):

Yeah, I believe there are four significant trends, which anybody in supply chain should already be preparing for and should already have reconnaissance on. If you are running a supply chain company, or you have a supply chain job, or you’re getting into a supply chain career, there are four areas which absolutely are going to change the way that we think of supply chain. Most of them are buzzwords, but you need to go much deeper because as we’ve discovered from this recent pandemic, you can’t react to something after it’s already happened. You know, I mean, that’s too late. The term that I’ve invented is pre dapped. You can’t adapt because change is moving too fast. Now you have to predict, and that means doing reconnaissance work and being prepared, having certain things in place that don’t cost a lot of money, but allow you to pivot very, very quickly and successfully.

Rebecca Costa (07:02):

And there are lots of examples of companies that were able to do that. So the four areas really are drones. As drones have gotten bigger and bigger and are able to carry larger supply loads. We’re going to find that drones are very, very significant. And you know, that Amazon has already launched their test drone delivery systems. Mercedes has a new van that has a delivery van that has a runway and numbers of drones on the tops of the Mercedes. And it will select the package, deliver it to the porch and then come back and find where the Mercedes is on the freeway so that the Mercedes never has to leave the freeway. The drones are leaving the delivery van and coming back to the van. So that last mile is going to be serviced by drones. We know this because in France, I happened to be speaking as a keynote speaker at a conference in France, where they dispatched an ambulance and a drone with saving medication for somebody who was having a heart attack.

Rebecca Costa (08:04):

And the drone got there 12 minutes faster than the ambulance was able to get there. And a little pocket opened up in the wife of the husband who was having the heart attack, was able to administer the medication and save his life. So we know that in emergencies, we need drones. We knew that we know that that last mile is a, is very costly to distribution channels. And so we know that drones are going to be very important. Along those lines, robots, robots don’t get viruses. They don’t call in sick. Social robots are going to become particularly important in terms of customer service. It’s going to be a lot nicer to be able to go on Skype and actually see a face that looks like a face with synthetic skin. We know that there are 53 muscles that operate the human face and give empathy cues and understanding nodding, right, blinking, smiling, all of those things.

Rebecca Costa (09:01):

And we know social robots are very effective at doing that and making a person feel understood. The interesting thing about having artificial intelligence, social robots is they never forget what that customer has told them. So five years from now, if you have a customer service problem, I can say, well, how’s your son Dan doing? Did he graduate from college? The last time we talked, he was just entering college. They will not forget any piece of data. So, so that, that is going to be really instrumental in establishing long-term customers. A third area you might look at is smart labels. We are getting to the point now where we have so many regulations and so many requirements that we can’t get them on the label. And so anybody who’s gone to a pharmacy, you get your pill bottle, and then you get this multifold, you know, uh, all the precautions, not to mix certain medicines together when to take it, take it with food or without food, so on and so forth.

Rebecca Costa (10:00):

And so similarly, um, uh, we look at products on the market and these smart labels where you can just tap your phone and you can go all the way to the original source of the ingredients that is going to be really, really key because the consumer wants to buy responsibly. We have a new generation, not people my age, but a digital generation who wants to know what the child labor laws are of that farm from which the coffee beans came and originated and what the, and what kinds of pesticides were being used. And we’re going to go all the way down to the core ingredients and where they were sourced and what the labor laws were and what kinds of chemicals were used and how people were paid. And those kinds of things. We’re really going to get very, very deep. And that’s what the digital consumer is going to be concerned with.

Rebecca Costa (10:56):

And so if you’re not working on smart labels right now, you’re way behind, you really need to get on that. And then the fourth area, of course, is 3d printing. Eventually everything will be customized. There will be no generic drinks. It won’t be Coca-Cola, it’ll be Coca Cola matched to your palette. It’ll be apple juice. That’s a little bit sweeter for you, Chris, and a little less sweet for me. We’re going to get down to the consumer, being able to do, to get shoes that exactly fit their foot suits. That exactly have the kind of fabric that you like and, and, and where AI machines are driving that. And they know what fabrics you’re allergic to. And they know that you can’t use a certain type of detergent to wash that clothing. And so all of this is going to come together and it’s really going to affect supply chain because supply chain to this point has been about efficiency and mass production. How many items can you get off the line, right? And that, that means standardization and the world is moving away from standardization to customization. And so those companies that are don’t have their eyes on that right now, I think, are really going to be hurting as we get further and further into 3d printing and more and more personalization. So those would be two, four areas, there’s others, but those would be four areas that I would have my eyes on. Yeah.

Chris Barnes (12:22):

I’ve got a lot of ideas around just, just those four things that you talked about back to the first one, drone deliveries. I saw a video. I don’t know, Rebecca, if you know about warehouses are typically have a very large footprint. There are probably 30 or 40, 40 feet high, just because of the equipment restrictions, but they’re, they can be as big as a football field or, you know, sometimes four or five football fields. What I saw on his video was their high rises. There’ll be in cities, there’ll be high rises because now drones can actually go fly up to the 10th, the 20th floor and get the product. So I thought that was an interesting concept. That’s just going to change the way things are exactly

Rebecca Costa (12:55):

Right. It’ll cut down on real estate, but, but bear in mind, as we get into 3d printing, we won’t be rare housing standard products anymore. We’ll be warehousing is ingredients. We will be warehousing components and everything will be Dell computer. We’re going to get to know you the consumer and deliver to you the consumer, what you want.

Chris Barnes (13:20):

And the thing is 3d printing has been around for a long time. I mean, but

Rebecca Costa (13:23):

It really hasn’t gone into commercial production. And when we talk about 3d printing, we’re talking about 3d printing, food, clothing, ammunition, cars, car parts, we’re even talking about housing in China. They use a large Vulcan 3d printer to put up 10, 1800 square foot houses in one day. So now what that does to the real estate market and the supply chain that supplies to that real estate market. You know, if you’re supplying, if you’re just a standard lumber store, like, you know, a home Depot or Lowe’s or that kind of thing, you better be thinking about, well, what happens when the, when the construction market makes the move right to using 3d printers, to produce these massive numbers of homes in one day, 10 homes in one day on

Chris Barnes (14:19):

3d printing, do you think they’ll remain as part of the company that’s selling or will they it’ll be like a razor they’ll, they’ll give you the razor. So you’ll come back and keep buying. Then you can buy from them, just download a program. You can print something on your desk. Well,

Rebecca Costa (14:34):

That’s, what’s up for grabs right now, whether it’s a curing model, you know, by the machine. And then you got to buy our pods and we’ll license, certain people to use our pod technology. Uh, it may go that route. Uh, it may go that, you know, we, we license you the machine and update the periodically. We don’t sell it to you. It could go any number of directions. Someone will make a move on it, you know, and then everyone else will be scrambling. So this is why I think that the most important thing a company can do right now is to have a group within their company that is solely. And I mean, doesn’t have other jobs and are expected to do this between midnight and 3:00 AM, but solely are focused on reconnaissance. What’s the next disruption and how are we preparing for it? What do we have in place to make that transition

Chris Barnes (15:27):

On 3d printing? One of the, I guess, the holy grail of supply chain management, and it ties in with your, your concepts around efficiency, the holy grail is a lot size of one because now people, you know, if you have a large manufacturing plant, you want to make as much as you can for, for equipment utilization. But most of the time, people are only ordering in batches of one. And that’s what we’re trying to get to. So, okay.

Rebecca Costa (15:47):

So what, how, how are you going to be profitable making it

Chris Barnes (15:51):

That’s the grill? That’s the holy, that’s the question everybody’s pursuing. Then you won’t have to store as much. You won’t have to make as much. You won’t have to sell it at a lower profit margin.

Rebecca Costa (16:00):

I’m going to try to it wreaks havoc into our mentality. You know, ever since Henry Ford started knocking off cars off that production line, all of our mentality in terms of manufacturing, right, has been masked standard production and a drive toward efficiency. And there isn’t anything more efficient than selling one that’s so low. It’s so inefficient. So the question is, how are, what is your profit model going to look like? How are you going to do that? Because that is where the consumer is going. And we know that they’re going in that direction by, by the way that they’re behaving by their behavior. We know that, you know, they, they Y customize things. I mean, and, and, and so, you know, the people that are making custom shoes and the people that are moving in that direction will be the survivors.

Chris Barnes (16:55):

Yeah, that’s something new I’ve seen. I’m studying is where I’ve been studying. And I’ve seen it. It’s called sensitivity that the AI or the machine learning will begin to adapt and understand what consumers are sensing either in their text messages, their, their social media chats. And they’ll know if Chris wants sweeter or if he wants faster or whatever it’s going to be,

Rebecca Costa (17:13):

And it will make the correction for you. It will make the correction. I customer service window will pop up and say, Chris, we’ve noticed that you’ve been, uh, uh, that your palette has changed. And you, you tend to like things a little sweeter this time. We, we added a little more sweetness, do your drink. If you have any problems with it, if you don’t like it, let us know. And we’ll go back to the previous formulation. Are there other things that are coming down the pike, particularly in the food area, you know, as we get closer and closer to personalized nutrition, I imagine now that you have a Fitbit type of device, right. That’s able to, Hey, you know, Rebecca didn’t get enough zinc today. And so imagine that I have a Keurig like device in my home, and that you can send a digital message and say upper zinc.

Rebecca Costa (18:03):

She didn’t eat enough to get the appropriate zinc or she’s dehydrated. So, so ping her phone and tell her to go to her refrigerator and get one of our energy drinks. I mean, we’re going to get to a point where you will be telling me what I need to eat, and I need to drink, and you will be delivering it to me in a way that my palate wants it. Because the biggest problem right now with getting people to eat and drink, right, is that the things that we should eat and drink don’t taste good. We don’t like them, but if you can figure out what my palate likes and tell me when I’m short on vitamin C or vitamin D or I’m I’m dehydrated, how do you know when you’re dehydrated? You don’t know you go, gee, I haven’t had a drink for a while. That’s not scientific. Or

Chris Barnes (18:53):

If you do know, you don’t know until it’s too late, sometimes

Rebecca Costa (18:56):

That’s, that’s correct. And that leads to heart attacks and lot of, of, uh, a lot of dangerous problems. So we’re getting to the point where the data that we can accumulate from about you physiologically and behaviorally has gotten to be so extensive. That customization is the natural, uh, you know, next step.

Chris Barnes (19:19):

Yeah. And we in supply chain, we call there’s a concept called mass customization. It’s where you’re trying to make it specific for one person, but you’re also trying to take advantage of the economies of scale and making a lot. So there’s that concept there,

Rebecca Costa (19:31):

It works to a point you start to fragment, right? Your, your markets start to fragment into lots of vertical markets, and you say, all right, uh, we have PDL light for kids, mom, and dad. And now we have Pedialyte for adults who have hangovers. Now we’re going to have PDL lot. You know, you’re going to start to like, you know, fragment your market into lots of verticals. And eventually, I suppose you will get to some semi customization. And that might be a prelude that may be the half step you have to take in manufacturing and supply chain. Lastly, I would point out that when we talk about supply chain, everybody knows that we’re, we’re talking about global supply chain. And one of the lessons that we have learned very quickly is some things cannot be subcontracted outside your country, like ventilators. Maybe that’s not such a good idea, so we can cut.

Rebecca Costa (20:29):

We can kind of now begin to see that there are going to be some government regulations that come down the pike and that we, that as a corporation, we need to begin to look at what we make and for what purpose we make it and make some decisions about what happens when we cannot source overseas. You know, what, what is our backup many times with companies? I, uh, you know, if the drive do efficiency is a drive to exclusivity. You, you know, you want to give all your business to one company because your business becomes larger to that company and is more significant. But the fact is, is in a high failure rate environment, you need diversification just as in wall street, you wouldn’t put all your money on one stock. You put your money on stocks and bonds, and maybe you have some real estate.

Rebecca Costa (21:27):

And you hope if one thing goes up, the other goes down, diversification is a hedge against failure. That that’s why in complex, fast changing environments, we diversify in order to protect ourselves. It provides an insurance. It’s the same in nature. That’s the reason we have more than one type of fish or one type of bird and the environment changes. And there’s a radical change. Some of those will have what they need to survive and the others will won’t. It will perish in that same way. It’s important to diversify your sources for in your supply chain. You might think economically, and, uh, that it looks better to narrow the sources that you’re, that you’re getting your, your, uh, ingredients from, or your primary components from, uh, because there’s an economy of scale. But in reality, when the environment changes, you are prone to become extinct. And that is particularly true if you’re over-reliant on global sources. Yeah.

Chris Barnes (22:30):

And supply chains definitely today, or are global entities

Rebecca Costa (22:33):

Agreed, but you said supply chain was boring. Boring. I can talk for hours.

Chris Barnes (22:43):

Well, just let me go back to your third point here, because I think it’s super important, important today. Smart labels. And specifically as you look at where things came from, and I, and I apologize if this wasn’t you or I didn’t see this on one of your sessions, but the banana label was that you, that, did you show something that, where it starts aging, the label goes away?

Rebecca Costa (23:01):

Yeah. So that was me. I happened to again, be at a technology conference in France and a venture capitalist came up to me and he says, I, I ha we haven’t shown this yet, but I needed that. You would appreciate it. And it was a prescription bottle then, uh, it was a funny looking prescription bottle because it was orange. Like most prescription bottles are with the safety cap on it, but it had black spots on it. And then he had a bunch of them and eventually they all turned black and he said, sometimes the labels wear off. And sometimes people don’t read them, but you need to know when your medication has expired, because we don’t want people taking expired medication. And so using an aging banana, as an example, we’ve made these pill bottles and they start to get black spots on them as they get older and older. And when they get completely black, they’re no longer viable as a medication. And I thought that was so brilliant to take these design ideas out of nature, and to be able to incorporate them in, to make things easier and safer.

Chris Barnes (24:07):

Yeah. In the, in the supply chain world, we call that, uh, actually it’s the lean world it’s called a pokey pokey yoke. It’s a Japanese term for mistake proofing. And it’s just something to make it easier or make it where you can’t do something wrong. That’s a neat idea.

Rebecca Costa (24:19):

Yes. And we need that.

Chris Barnes (24:21):

And I liked it and I like saying pokey Oak. So,

Rebecca Costa (24:25):

So on

Chris Barnes (24:25):

That, on the smart labels, that creates issues on supply chains, especially now, because you have to be, well, there’s one thing, conflict minerals, obviously in the U S we can’t sell things that are sourced under, under armed duress or slaves or slave labor, things like that. But then it even gets, goes into something we talk about with supply chains is corporate social responsibility, where people want their products coming from more sustainable sources. And I think SmartLabel,

Rebecca Costa (24:51):

They want clean sources. They want sustainable sources. They want to know that what the labor laws are. They want to know, you know, and that is going to have an every year. It gets more and more important. There’s not going to be any covering it up because once everybody goes to smart labels, people can click on it. And then the next thing will be aggregators because this is what always happens when there’s too much data. The aggregators come along and the aggregators are going to go out of the top milk producers. The most socially responsible is a, B, C, D. And all of a sudden, you find yourself number 25 on that list and you’re toast. So brands are going to get rated by aggregators of data on a smart labels. And that’s, that’s coming. It’s almost like a Yelp for, it’s going to be a Yelp for social responsibility. And there’s not enough smart label information right now, but that’s going to change lickety split.

Chris Barnes (25:52):

Well, this is also, this is similar to blockchain, which we haven’t spoken about yet, but that, that whole traceability, do you have opinions on blockchain?

Rebecca Costa (25:59):

Well, blockchain is here to stay. I didn’t mention blockchain because I think that’s on everybody’s radar right now, as, you know, immutable tr uh, ability to do, uh, tracing back to where the original issues are. But one thing, let me, let me switch gears here for just a moment and just bring up one thing that I think is really, really important. And that is, you know, I was talking about reconnaissance doing reconnaissance about what is coming down the future, because it’s too hard to try to react once the change is upon you. But I also think it’s really important for supply chain folks to step outside of their industry. Sometimes we’re, we’re, you know, we’re in the poultry industry and we’re looking at what other poultry companies are doing, you know, or maybe we’re in the computing on your screen, we’re looking at what other competing, but sometimes you really have to step out and look for like types of industries.

Rebecca Costa (26:55):

And I’ll give you an example. I was working with Dole, fresh foods, the largest producer, agricultural producer of fruits and vegetables in the world. We were looking at how to, you know, make their prop, their process from the field to the grocery store, more efficient so that we have less loss on the, on the grocery store end. And as I was really studying, you know, I went out into the field and Salinas’s, and was really just tracing heads of lettuce and, and, uh, you know, and, and fruit and berries in particular that spoiled so quickly. And I was really watching all of it. And then, you know, I brought all the executives together and I said, we’re going to go on a field trip to an ER. And they said, what? And I sit in an emergency room and they said, why are we going to an emergency room?

Rebecca Costa (27:42):

And I said, because you have the same problem that emergency room has from the moment that you cut a, a, a head of lettuce out of the field, it’s dying. And your job is to get it to the grocery store before it dies in good health. So it can be saved. And so we need to look at what are the tools the ERs use to communicate to the ambulance driver. And then what are the questions they ask on intake and how do they treat that patient? And what are the software tools they’re using? And they said, we don’t, we don’t refer to our products is dying. And I said, but they are their patients. You have billions and billions of patients dying from the moment you pull them out of the field, the moment you pick a Berry it’s dying. And, and, and it was an eye opener, and they began to study what EPRs were doing and what kind of software tools and what kind of communication systems they were using. And, uh, and code words and categorization of products. And it really had a major significance on them. So that’s just one example of step outside your, your own industry and look at your problems differently. You might not think that in your, if you’re in the agricultural business, your products are dying, but they’re dying.

Chris Barnes (29:06):

If I can, Rebecca, to that example, look outside your industry. Something I, I talk about to my students in classes, supply chain classes is, is trying to minimize dwell time. That’s when the processes, isn’t doing something to earn money. The example I give is Southwest airlines. You’re familiar with them. They, they looked at their, their turnaround times at the gates, and rather than comparing it to Delta American airlines, they went to an end, the indie car, uh, uh, pit crew. And they said, what are they doing? What are the types of things that they are doing to make their turnaround times quicker? And that’s kind of where I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s the lower that I’ve always heard about. So I think you’re, you’re spot on.

Rebecca Costa (29:40):

Exactly true. You have to look outside your industry in order to be a pioneer and a leader and whatever problem you’re solving has been solved by another industry.

Chris Barnes (29:52):

No, we haven’t talked about what’s popular these days. At least in the marketing spiel is driverless cars or autonomous vehicles could relate to moving freight around the country, but any, any perspective there,

Rebecca Costa (30:03):

Thank you. No, that’s going to be largely dependent on 5g where trucks and cars can communicate to each other. Right now, you’re still being controlled by central dispatch, largely. And in terms of routing and so forth. But once 5g comes into play, because we just haven’t had the bandwidth. Once 5g comes into play, imagine that you’re in a delivery van and you need to move to the right lane. And your delivery van tells the car to the right of you open up a space. Cause I gotta, I have to make a right turn in the next block. You’re not going to be putting on a signal and you’re not going to be looking for an opening. All cars will be talking to other cars on the road. All trucks will be talking to other trucks and there’ll be no human intermediary. And that’s what 5g will allow to come to fruition. But it’s going to take awhile for that 5g infrastructure to build out. And I did a panel discussion for the New York times. I think it’s on our website on the build-out of 5g and why it’s going to knock the 5g. That’s you see on advertised on TV, but I’m talking about the real 5g that’s needed for machine to machine communication.

Chris Barnes (31:24):

It all requires data. That’s the key thing. And that’s one thing I, I saw in a recent presentation that not necessarily yours, but person said data is the new oil. Whereas, you know, the industrial economy was driven by oil and now the new, the future economy is going to be driven by data. That’s an interesting space, interesting concept, right? And, and

Rebecca Costa (31:42):

Bear in mind, you know, we started out talking about this label. That’s been foisted on me, futurist, which I’ve never been comfortable with, but, but think about it. The more data you have, the better, the more accurate your predictions are about what’s coming. And when it’s coming, we launched those GOs weather satellites just last year that gave us, uh, you know, six times more data. And suddenly six months later, it’s pinging my phone and saying, it’s going to rain in six minutes, that six fold increase in data is making our weather forecasting much more accurate, which means that hurricane paths will be more accurate. The time that we can give people to evacuate entire cities from floods or deadly tornadoes is going to be much more accurate. So the more data you have, the more likely you can predict what the next event is going to be. And you’ll be, you’ll be accurate. You know, I don’t have a crystal ball, but I have a great track record, but only because I study the data and

Chris Barnes (32:49):

Let me, as, as we ramped down, I’ve got one last concept. It’s actually your concept that I’m a big fan of. And I’m a big enough fan that I actually use it in my own presentations. And people think I’m spectacular by the way, is because I use your words, the pre deputation. And I, and I say that because I like the word, but I believe it’s happening, especially in supply chains. Because if you look at supply chains as global entities, their network to network, pretty much. So if Kroger, for example, I don’t know if you have Kroger’s out west Kroger, grocery stores, they’re depending on hunts Del Monte Dole for their, their supplies. So they need to understand what their supply what’s happening to their supply chains as well. So predestination and supply chains is becoming critical, whether it’s, you know, my supplier left, left their dock door late. So they, they have a new predictive ETA, hurricanes coming, whatever it’s going to be. Those things need to be accounted for and, and supply chains through the use of data and neural networks are beginning to make those predictive decisions before anybody even has to go in and solve the problems.

Rebecca Costa (33:45):

Well, think of how much reliant on supply chain we’ve become. It used to be, you know, I remember when big stores like Walmart, you know, or, or Costco used to have a giant warehouse behind the actual retail store where they stock their inventory. But now just think about it, you know, air Walmart’s ideal situation is they’ve scanned it, uh, a can of tomato soup and that can, that they just sold will be replaced by the next morning. So there’s that, that real estate space that used to be there that had contingent inventory and it is completely gone. We’re completely dependent on supply chain running like clockwork.

Chris Barnes (34:32):

Yeah, that’s the key thing is, and again, it goes back to a lot size of one, one can, is all I need for that shelf space. So let’s

Rebecca Costa (34:37):

Get it in that’s right. I need that one can. Now, where is that one? Can, is there a weather event that’s coming? Is there a pandemic underway, you know, is that one can coming from overseas? The actual can, but the ingredients themselves are going to be Delmonte, but the materials to make the can are coming from overseas. So we can actually make the can to put the tomato soup in, you know, you, you really have to get deep, deep, deep into sourcing with your partners, your key partners, and know if they’ve got the diversity in their supply chain to be able to make good. Otherwise you’re left holding the bag.

Chris Barnes (35:19):

Last thing I think I just I’ll attribute this to you as well, but maybe tell me what this means. Insight is the spontaneous organization of chaos. It sounds cool. I just, w what does it mean? Is that your attorney

Rebecca Costa (35:28):

Well, many, many years ago, you know, I’m a great study, a student of neuroscience, and many years ago, they discovered this process in the brain that they labeled insight, where a lot of data that you have in your brain, all of a sudden comes together in a solution. And they said, everybody’s had moments where you’ve been looking at a problem. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you say, oh, I know what to do. And everyone else around, you says, how’d you come up with that? And you can’t find a logical process. Well, I did thought about this, and then I did this, and then I did this, and then I did this. It’s not like that. It’s just spontaneous. But the problem is we see that, uh, you know, when in studying what goes on inside the brain, that a lot of parts of the brain sort of shut down almost as though they’re saving up to be able to put unrelated pieces of data together into this elegant solution.

Rebecca Costa (36:25):

And then once you have an insight, you might not have one for years or months or ever again. And so, um, it’s kind of this spontaneous process where a lot of data that doesn’t seem related comes together into a very elegant solution and scientists are really studying how to get people, to be able to have more insights. And we’ve made no headway meditating beforehand. Doesn’t do it. Your diet doesn’t affect it. It’s almost as though our brains just have not evolved to be able to have that capability on an ongoing basis. Yet you give us a couple million more.

Chris Barnes (37:04):

Sure. Thank you for that. Now, if you have a, if you have a minute or two, can you tell us just about your books? I know you’re, you’re a prolific writer as well. You have two books, which I, as a, as a bad host, I haven’t read yet, but what are your books about?

Rebecca Costa (37:16):

I would suggest everybody start with the watchman’s rattle. And the watchman’s rattle really is a book about what happens when there’s mass confusion inside of organizations. And also in spite of societies between an unproven belief and opinion versus a pro a an empirically proven fact, it really traces through a number of societies and organizations of what happens when there’s confusion. And eventually policy is based on an unproven belief. It really sets the organization or the society up for a sudden event to cause them to collapse. That book is a really easy read. And it’s, uh, it really kind of will give you a different perspective of what’s happening in the world of business and also government. The second book is called the on the verge, and that’s more about pre deputation. It’s about, uh, how we can look at nature and see the different strategies in nature that have allowed, uh, less than 0.0, zero, or 1% of the species to survive. I mean, 99.9999% of all species that have walked the earth are no longer here, but there’s a very, very small percentage that, that didn’t it. And they use very, very specific adaptive strategies. And so I talk a little bit about how you can pre daft by learning what these strategies are and making yourself ready for change. The most important thing is to be ready for radical pivots.

Chris Barnes (38:54):

Where would you prefer people to get these books from your website or

Rebecca Costa (38:57):

Somewhere else? The best thing is to go to our website, which is really easy. It’s Rebecca costa.com. It’s very easy to find. So

Chris Barnes (39:05):

My last question has to do with

Rebecca Costa (39:07):

Two last questions. That’s true. My last, last question,

Chris Barnes (39:14):

I’m not allowed to say this because this is a boring topic, but I’m excited people, maybe students I have, it seems to be, I have a percentage of people that listen, that are trying either graduating from college or going to college, or are trying to transition their careers. Do you have any suggestions on anybody at that level? Maybe if they’re going to college, what should they be studying to help them get a better job or get a job if it relates to supply chain? Great, but just in general, any suggestions there,

Rebecca Costa (39:36):

The most important thing is going to be, you know, looking at the trends that I talked about, drones, robotics, robots, don’t call in sick and, you know, and they become cheaper and cheaper. Um, and particularly social robots. I would, uh, aim them toward that smart label technology, um, blockchain technology, 3d printing. I would look, I would look at those areas as areas where, you know, you might specialize, I believe that in terms of supply chain, you want to be a specialist, not a generalist

Chris Barnes (40:13):

On that topic. Where did you go to university?

Rebecca Costa (40:15):

I went to the university of California, Santa Barbara, and

Chris Barnes (40:19):

I, I knew that I just, I just want to make it gotta be one of my favorite universities. I just, the, where it is is it’s a fantastic location. That’s a great

Rebecca Costa (40:25):

Spot. Well, it was. And I, and I was, uh, back in those days, I w I think I was more interested in surfing then I was cool, but, you know, uh, it was, uh, it was a wonderful time. They had a, an amazing, uh, biology and, um, uh, engineering department, and it was kind of a best kept secret. So, uh, it was, it was just absolutely wonderful education that I had there. And what did you study futurism or, or with, and those days I, you know, I’m, I’m older, we didn’t have hybrid degrees. So I studied sociology and biology, uh, because I was interested in becoming a biologist. I was very influenced by the work of a Harvard professor, Edward O. Wilson, the greatest naturalist in the world. He’s been a mentor of mine ever since I was an undergrad there. I had had the good fortune several years later to meet him and to have him graciously endorsed my books, which I was just flabbergasted.

Rebecca Costa (41:31):

It was funny. I took my, my first book to him as a manuscript. And I said, I think I’ve written a book. And of course he’s written hundreds of books. And I took my first manuscript to him. And, and I said, would you mind looking at this? And just making sure I’m not making a fool of myself, because I’d rather do that privately than publicly. And, and he said, it would be my pleasure. And he said, I have one question. What took you so long? You know, and I say, well, we’re not all this prolific rusher. She will. But, uh, he has been, uh, the biggest influence in my life. And for people who were studying, thinking about supply chain, uh, as an area of study, or as an area of their career, I would say it is really, really important to find a mentor, uh, who has, you know, um, uh, carved their way in that profession. Find someone who has that job and allow them to, um, make a bridge for you as you come out of school.

Chris Barnes (42:35):

Yeah. That’s one thing I’m learning through my podcast, part of my career is, is people have mentors. That seems to be a common theme. I hear

Rebecca Costa (42:42):

People. Yeah. Yes, it is. It is. I would be nowhere without a Edward.

Chris Barnes (42:47):

Well, your books and looking at your website, you’ve got some very influential people review making good comments on your books. So that means they’re either good. Or you have a good publicist, perhaps both. But so again, Rebecca, I appreciate anything else. Parting words.

Rebecca Costa (43:00):

No, not at all. Yes. I do have a parting word. Supply chain is not boring,

Chris Barnes (43:09):

Rebecca. I appreciate your time. Thanks for investing in with me today.

Rebecca Costa (43:12):

Thank you. And keep up the good work

Chris Barnes (43:15):

Supply chain is boring as part of the supply chain. Now network the voice of supply chain, interested in sponsoring this show or others to help you get your message out. Send a note to chris@supplychainnow.com. We can also help with world-class supply chain, education and certification workshops for you or your team. Thanks for listening. And remember supply chain is boring.