Category: Articles

Water. I’ve always been fascinated with it. The way it sounds, the way it looks, how it feels. I have a personal relationship with water. Whether we realize it or not, we pretty much all do – it’s all around us, at times heard but not seen, felt as rain, only to be grudgingly ignored. I guess I began to realize this as a child watching my father religiously water his vegetable garden over the course of every summer with endless yards of green hose, improvised receptacles and containers, and the occasional hardware store appurtenances that no industrious 1970s city dweller could do without.

Many of the things that we do in our careers as entrepreneurs come from an urge to act.

We act when we see that something is missing in the market. Or when we see that something can be done better. Or in a whole different way. That urge germinates into an idea, grows into a concept, and develops into a vison and mission that we work toward actualizing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to draw a lot of attention as companies and technology vendors look at how machine learning could improve supply chain operations. In particular demand planning, understood here as the process of developing forecasts that will drive operational supply chain decisions, is being touted as the next potential field for innovation. Technology giants like Amazon and Microsoft have announced AI tools for improving demand planning, and several consulting companies are promoting their skills to bring AI to companies’ demand planning processes. In fact, a recent survey by the Institute of Business Forecasting and Planning (IBF) identified AI as the technology that will have the largest impact on demand planning in the next seven years.1

“If people had to pay the real cost of their #ecommerce, we’d have less of it.” – Innovobot’s supply chain expert Richard Markoff, PhD discussing Amazon Prime’s impact on cities in the Boston Globe.

“The driverless truck revolution has begun.” Innovobot’s Richard Markoff, PhD discusses the risks, benefits and supply chain impacts of self-driving trucks.