A VC in Vacationland

The Omnivore's Dilemma: Our Food Supply Chains

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan is one of the best supply chain strategy books ever written.  That's a pretty strong endorsement from a guy who's read most if not all supply chain strategy books produced in the last thirty years. It's not your classic supply chain strategy book, but one that explores where your food comes from, how it gets to market and how your consumption affects and is affected by the environment in which the food as produced.

At the supply chain strategy level, the book explains in great detail how our food is sourced through four distinct supply chains--industrial, industrial organic, pastoral and personal. 

Industrial refers to how the vast majority of our food is produced, using corn as a basis for many products, along with "healthy" doses of petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides.  OK, not much new here, but the actual processes of how our industrial food machine creates and distributes so many products is fascinating reading.  Industrial organic refers to the Whole Foods supermarket world and related "organic" aisles at traditional grocers, with mega suppliers such as Cascadian Foods and Earthbound Farms providing huge quantities of "organic" (see the FDA guidelines and you will be surprised that the supply chain is only marginally different than the industrial, primarily in the use of pesticides and some fertilizers).  Pastoral refers to the "beyond organic" producers who are local providers of foods grown in a manner consonant with the environment, such as using manure and green plants as fertilizers and rotating crops to control pests. Personal refers to the "do-it-yourself" methods of hunter/gatherer food collection, including shooting your own meat, collecting your own greens and mushrooms,etc.

In spite of the fact the author is a vegetarian, he presents a very balanced view on the whole issue of animal meat consumption, mostly focused on the treatment of animals in the industrial and the industrial organic food chains.  I won't spoil the story, but it will make you think a lot about where you food comes from and under what conditions it is "harvested".

One interesting aspect of the book is that many of the industrial and industrial organic suppliers would not let him view their food production processes in detail, or at all.  Many suppliers cited national security concerns, so as not to give potential terrorists insights in where and how food is produced, as if they could not figure that one out for themselves.  The scary part is how easy it would be to disrupt parts of our food supply chains if terrorists figured out ways to poison food in process, something we manage to do quite well it seems all by ourselves--witness the latest salmonella scare with tomatoes (or is it jalapeno's?)and our inability to figure out where those vegetables were sourced.

Living Supply Chains

I have a confession to make.  Most of the supply chain strategy books I have read in the last 30 years or so are not very good.  Many times I thought that I should write the definitive book on supply chain strategy, but never thought that I understood the complexities well enough to do it. John Gattorna, a retied Andersen Consulting/Accenture supply chain partner from Australia and a good friend, has produced a very definitive book on supply chain strategy, Living Supply Chains: How to Mobilize the Enterprise Around Delivering What Your Customers Want.  And, yes, I am jealous because John has got it mostly right.

One reviewer, Paul Lim, Founder of Supply Chain Asia, has done a good job of summarizing John's research and findings:

"Sainsbury recently lost share in the market by failing with their supply chain. Wal-mart and Dell won in the market by getting theirs right. Smart supply chains can be decisive. In the J Sainsbury debacle, there was nothing wrong with the strategy, except no one thought to check if the personnel in the company were capable of delivering such complex and sophisticated plan within such a short time frame, and they are paying the price now. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated example - it is happening every day. Living Supply Chains is unique in looking beyond the systems and technology of your company, to developing the role of people and behavior in placing customer-focused supply chains at the heart of their enterprise. Based on John Gattorna’s empirical research, Living Supply Chains shows you how to drive the design and management of your supply chains by starting with your customers and understanding their ‘dominant buying behaviors’. In most cases, only 3 or 4 of these will be ‘dominant’ and should then be ‘hardwired’ into the organization’s selling approaches, performance indicators and logistics operations.  With ‘quick’ diagnostics and guidelines executives can use to rapidly identify and close performance gaps, logistics and supply chain management can finally move from the hands of the functional specialists, to the executives. Analysts and shareholders alike have recognized that taking back control of this vital area of business will have the most fundamental impact on future share price performance."

And finally, I am grateful John acknowledged that I also have some good ideas around supply chain strategy.  He cites my paper on Quick Change Supply Chains (available on my web site) as being an important contributor to his thinking on how supply chains need to evolve and innovate in the 21st century.  Thanks, John, for the plug.

A Bonanza of Good Business Books

There are a plethora of relatively new business advice books that entrepreneurs should consider reading on their next plane flight. I have not read all of them yet, but those I have not have been recommended to me by trusted friends.  Why am I an avid business advice book reader?  Besides filling up unproductive time on airplanes, you can always learn something new, reflect on how bad behaviors affect your life,or discover some new good tactics to help you be more successful.  One word of advice--no business advice book is worth perusing for more than a two hour flight.

The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness by Linda Thaler and Robin Koval

"They turn most truisms about business inside out, arguing that good deeds are returned, not punished. Warning against a me vs. you mentality, they even suggest helping opponents as a good way to boost a career." Donald Trump loved the book....really. The book reminds entrepreneurs that your poorly paid employees need a lot of emotional support from you to stick it out until they get their options and equity rewards.

Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win by William Taylor and Pally LaBarre

The best entrepreneurs are mavericks that constantly question and challenge the established order and traditions.  This book explores why a wide variety of mavericks have succeeded in business.  As the authors put it: "It is not a book of best practices.  It is a book of next practices--a set of insights and a collection of case studies that amount to a business plan for the 21st century, a new way to lead, compete and succeed." Well, not really, but it will give you some new ideas on how to innovate your business thinking.  Worth a couple of plane hours, and then give it to the fight attendant who wants to start their own business (and stop having to fill your wine glass every 10 minutes, dude).

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams

We used to have Don speak to our Partners at Andersen Consulting every year or so.  Out of all the speakers we invited--and believe me, we invited everyone who had an interesting perspective on technology--Don was always the one who got the highest marks for content.  His latest book explores a subject near to my heart--collaboration.  Mass collaboration--such as the Human Genome Project and Wikipedia--allow participants to contribute to creating knowledge that, hopefully, advances civilization. The book is very well done, but does not much explore what I believe is a key frontier for business--so called business collaboration networks.  However, entrepreneurs interesting in exploring business networks can gain a lot of knowledge from the social and related collaboration examples in the book.

Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky and Rich: Spike's Guide to Success by Richard St John

Well, this one's a great pick-me-up for all you geniuses out there whose start ups have failed miserably.  What's the old joke?  "How can you tell a Ph D's car in Harvard Square?  It's the one with the Domino's Pizza sign on the roof".  The basic premise is that smarts are not all you need to succeed.  Duh. The author details eight common sense factors underlying success in start ups.  And you know what?  The factors are on the mark and not found in many other business books.  So, if you are going to pick up one book to peruse next week on your travels, get this one.  At least it's funny.

Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart People Get People Talking by Andy Sernovitz

Wait, what do the Jaegermeister Girls (actually, the Jagerettes and Jager dudes) have to do with my technology start-up??  Just about everything in the new world of marketing, and it is why you need to read this book.  The proliferation of Blogs, analysts, chat rooms, forums, etc. in the technology world means that people will know about all your start up as it happens.  You can get lots of free publicity if you can better manage the information being created about your company and its products. You can also have a lot of misinformation spread around if you do not check what other are saying about you.  So either way, you need to participate in the revolution.

The blurb tells it all on this book:  "Master the art of word of mouth marketing with this fun, practical, hands-on guide.  With straightforward advice and humor, marketing expert Andy Sernovitz will show you how the world’s most respected and profitable companies get their best customers for free through the power of word of mouth.  Learn the five essential steps that make word of mouth work and everything you need to get started using them. Understand the real purpose of blogs, communities, viral email, evangelists, and buzz—when to use them and how simple it is to make them work."

Last, but not least, we have The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom.  How many entrepreneurs worry about their organization structure?  I'll bet only one or two in ten do to any degree.  If you read this book, however, you may find that, depending on what you need to accomplish in your first two years just may require a different structure than you originally envisioned. "Brafman and Beckstrom, a pair of Stanford M.B.A.s who have applied their business know-how to promoting peace and economic development through decentralized networking, offer a breezy and entertaining look at how decentralization is changing many organizations. The title metaphor conveys the core concept: though a starfish and a spider have similar shapes, their internal structure is dramatically different—a decapitated spider inevitably dies, while a starfish can regenerate itself from a single amputated leg. In the same way, decentralized organizations, like the Internet, the Apache Indian tribe and Alcoholics Anonymous, are made up of many smaller units capable of operating, growing and multiplying independently of each other, making it very difficult for a rival force to control or defeat them. Despite familiar examples—eBay, Napster and the Toyota assembly line, for example—there are fresh insights, such as the authors' three techniques for combating a decentralized competitor (drive change in your competitor's ideology, force them to become centralized or decentralize yourself). "  For the entrepreneur, top down management may be less effective that team oriented development in many technology environments.  The authors present lots of examples of success and failures for you to ponder.

So, enjoy any or all of these books, tell me what you did or did not like and let me know about other business advice book which you have read that might be helpful to entrepreneurs.