Companies can innovate their business models to increase nonoperational profits, which helps reduce their sensitivity to supply–demand mismatches. Such companies have different supply chain priorities. Instead of focusing on perfectly matching supply with demand, they aim to improve cash flow management and reduce the cash conversion cycle. They can also benefit from supply chain finance solutions to offset the negative impact of their strategies on supply chain partners. This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of innovative business development with a focus on (1) inventory financing, (2) inventory securitization, (3) vendor-put insurance, (4) reverse factoring, (5) dynamic discounting, and (6) the letter of credit.

There exist various risks and uncertainties in supply chains. This chapter begins with conceptual sources of risks and uncertainties such that operational risks, and epistemological and ontological uncertainties emerge from the tension between organizations’ knowledge and the truth about operational dynamics. Then, it looks at the information, operational, and capital flows in supply chains to identify practical sources of risks and uncertainties. It proposes a supply chain framework for manufacturing and service industries that link critical lead times to supply chain risks and uncertainties.

Whereas operating globally once meant penetrating and exploiting markets around the world, in today’s knowledge-based economy the challenge is to innovate by learning from the world. Sustaining competitive advantage now requires a firm to be able to sense, meld, and thoughtfully leverage the knowledge that is available throughout its global footprint.

The basic principle of transcultural ethnography is to follow a topic of study across globally dispersed spaces that are separate yet profoundly interconnected. The recontextualization framework developed in the previous chapters establishes that no matter what the object of transfer, it will undergo reinterpretation and change as it is implemented and experienced in new contexts. The more the object of transfer is based on people-dependent deeply socialized understanding, the more susceptible it will be to recontextualization. The process of recontextualization is especially important to understand for theorizing in international business (IB) because it responds to a chief concern of transnational organizations, namely, whether and how they can keep the core of their business model intact as they expand their global reach. As such, the key activity of the transcultural ethnographer in IB is to document and make sense of the effects of changing cultural contexts on their topic of interest. Interaction between cultures can be chaotic or “fuzzy” and difficult to decipher. The following tools and practice opportunities are designed to consolidate your learning from the previous chapters, using practical aids for following the flows of culture across national boundaries.

A brief review of the major offerings of the book is discussed in this chapter.

This chapter provides a detailed account of the implementation of digital solutions in supply chains. It first presents four elements of sales & operations planning (S&OP): demand planning, supply planning, supply–demand consolidation, and profit and loss (P&L) analysis. Next, it details all crucial aspects of sales and operations execution (S&OE) such as demand forecasting, supply management, inventory management, and order and fulfillment management. Finally, it shows five classes of digital applications and links them to S&OP and S&OE.

Strategic ethnography requires managerial capabilities for reflexivity and casting a critical eye back on their home organization as well as abilities to sense and assess learning opportunities from throughout their global footprint to facilitate innovation, growth, and renewal. The following exercises are designed to help you hone these skills so that you can carry out, lead, or manage a project of strategic ethnography for a company, organization, or global team you would like to assist.

This final chapter discusses implications of the book’s findings for firms’ growth strategies, governments’ tax policies, corporate social responsibility, and capital investments.

Companies must integrate their supply chains when their business models are driven by markets given their exposure to supply–demand mismatches. The value of supply chain integration increases with product variety and/or the complexity of logistics networks. This chapter delves into three critical aspects of supply chain integration: (1) capacity management, (2) lead-time reduction, and (3) delayed differentiation. Then, it discusses how to achieve cost efficiency in integrated supply chains through a hybrid strategy of reducing both costs and lead times systematically.