Unlocking the value of supply chain data across industries

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

MIT Technology Review Insights: “The product shortages and supply-chain delays of the global covid-19 pandemic are still fresh memories. Consumers and industry are concerned that the next geopolitical climate event may have a similar impact. Against a backdrop of evolving regulations, these conditions mean manufacturers want to be prepared against short supplies, concerned customers, and weakened margins.

For supply chain professionals, achieving a “phygital” information flow—the blending of physical and digital data—is key to unlocking resilience and efficiency. As physical objects travel through supply chains, they generate a rich flow of data about the item and its journey—from its raw materials, its manufacturing conditions, even its expiration date—bringing new visibility and pinpointing bottlenecks.

This phygital information flow offers significant advantages, enhancing the ability to create rich customer experiences to satisfying environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) goals. In a 2022 EY global survey of executives, 70% of respondents agreed that a sustainable supply chain will increase their company’s revenue.

For disparate parties to exchange product information effectively, they require a common framework and universally understood language. Among supply chain players, data standards create a shared foundation. Standards help uniquely identify, accurately capture, and automatically share critical information about products, locations, and assets across trading communities…(More)”.

Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Anu Bradford: “The global battle among the three dominant digital powers—the United States, China, and the European Union—is intensifying. All three regimes are racing to regulate tech companies, with each advancing a competing vision for the digital economy while attempting to expand its sphere of influence in the digital world. In Digital Empires, her provocative follow-up to The Brussels Effect, Anu Bradford explores a rivalry that will shape the world in the decades to come.

Across the globe, people dependent on digital technologies have become increasingly alarmed that their rapid adoption and transformation have ushered in an exceedingly concentrated economy where a few powerful companies control vast economic wealth and political power, undermine data privacy, and widen the gap between economic winners and losers. In response, world leaders are variously embracing the idea of reining in the most dominant tech companies. Bradford examines three competing regulatory approaches—the American market-driven model, the Chinese state-driven model, and the European rights-driven regulatory model—and discusses how governments and tech companies navigate the inevitable conflicts that arise when these regulatory approaches collide in the international domain. Which digital empire will prevail in the contest for global influence remains an open question, yet their contrasting strategies are increasingly clear.

Digital societies are at an inflection point. In the midst of these unfolding regulatory battles, governments, tech companies, and digital citizens are making important choices that will shape the future ethos of the digital society. Digital Empires lays bare the choices we face as societies and individuals, explains the forces that shape those choices, and illuminates the immense stakes involved for everyone who uses digital technologies….(More)”

How Will the State Think With the Assistance of ChatGPT? The Case of Customs as an Example of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Public Administrations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Thomas Cantens: “…discusses the implications of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) in public administrations and the specific questions it raises compared to specialized and « numerical » AI, based on the example of Customs and the experience of the World Customs Organization in the field of AI and data strategy implementation in Member countries.

At the organizational level, the advantages of GAI include cost reduction through internalization of tasks, uniformity and correctness of administrative language, access to broad knowledge, and potential paradigm shifts in fraud detection. At this level, the paper highlights three facts that distinguish GAI from specialized AI : i) GAI is less associated to decision-making process than specialized AI in public administrations so far, ii) the risks usually associated with GAI are often similar to those previously associated with specialized AI, but, while certain risks remain pertinent, others lose significance due to the constraints imposed by the inherent limitations of GAI technology itself when implemented in public administrations, iii) training data corpus for GAI becomes a strategic asset for public administrations, maybe more than the algorithms themselves, which was not the case for specialized AI.

At the individual level, the paper emphasizes the “language-centric” nature of GAI in contrast to “number-centric” AI systems implemented within public administrations up until now. It discusses the risks of replacement or enslavement of civil servants to the machines by exploring the transformative impact of GAI on the intellectual production of the State. The paper pleads for the development of critical vigilance and critical thinking as specific skills for civil servants who are highly specialized and will have to think with the assistance of a machine that is eclectic by nature…(More)”.

Rethinking the Role of Nudge in Public Policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sema Müge Özdemiray: “The view of achieving the desired results in public policies depends on steering individuals, with decisions and actions incompatible with rationality, in a predictable way has pushed policymakers to collaborate with psychology methods and theories. Accordingly, in the recent policy design of public authorities, there is an increasing interest in the nudge approach, which is considered a less costly, more liberal, more citizen-focused alternative to traditional policy instruments. Nudging, which has produced effective solutions for different social problems, has also brought with it many criticisms. These criticisms have led to questioning alternative and advanced new policy tools in the field of behavioral public policy. In this study, the “nudge-plus” approach is discussed as one of these policy tools, which was put forward by Peter John and Gerry Stoker and which argues that the criticisms directed to nudge can be overcome by incorporating a citizen-oriented perspective into the nudge approach. This study aims to draw attention to the prediction that the use of the nudge-plus method in public policy design can produce more effective results in line with today’s participatory and collaborative administration approach…(More)”.

Informing the Global Data Future: Benchmarking Data Governance Frameworks

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sara Marcucci, Natalia González Alarcón, Stefaan G. Verhulst and Elena Wüllhorst: “Data has become a critical trans-national and cross-border resource. Yet, the lack of a well-defined approach to using it poses challenges to harnessing its value. This article explores the increasing importance of global data governance due to the rapid growth of data, and the need for responsible data practices. The purpose of this paper is to compare approaches and identify patterns in the emergent data governance ecosystem within sectors close to the international development field, ultimately presenting key takeaways and reflections on when and why a global data governance framework may be needed. Overall, the paper provides information about the conditions when a more holistic, coordinated transnational approach to data governance may be needed to responsibly manage the global flow of data. The report does this by (a) considering conditions specified by the literature that may be conducive to global data governance, and (b) analyzing and comparing existing frameworks, specifically investigating six key elements: purpose, principles, anchoring documents, data description and lifecycle, processes, and practices. The article closes with a series of final recommendations, which include adopting a broader concept of data stewardship to reconcile data protection and promotion, focusing on responsible reuse of data to unlock socioeconomic value, harmonizing meanings to operationalize principles, incorporating global human rights frameworks to provide common North Stars, unifying key definitions of data, adopting a data lifecycle approach, incorporating participatory processes and collective agency, investing in new professions with specific roles, improving accountability through oversight and compliance mechanisms, and translating recommendations into practical tools…(More)”

The Crowdless Future? How Generative AI Is Shaping the Future of Human Crowdsourcing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Leonard Boussioux, Jacqueline Lane, Miaomiao Zhang, Vladimir Jacimovic, and Karim Lakhani: “This study investigates the capability of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in creating innovative business solutions compared to human crowdsourcing methods. We initiated a crowdsourcing challenge focused on sustainable, circular economy business opportunities. The challenge attracted a diverse range of solvers from a myriad of countries and industries. Simultaneously, we employed GPT-4 to generate AI solutions using three different prompt levels, each calibrated to simulate distinct human crowd and expert personas. 145 evaluators assessed a randomized selection of 10 out of 234 human and AI solutions, a total of 1,885 evaluator-solution pairs. Results showed comparable quality between human and AI-generated solutions. However, human ideas were perceived as more novel, whereas AI solutions delivered better environmental and financial value. We use natural language processing techniques on the rich solution text to show that although human solvers and GPT-4 cover a similar range of industries of application, human solutions exhibit greater semantic diversity. The connection between semantic diversity and novelty is stronger in human solutions, suggesting differences in how novelty is created by humans and AI or detected by human evaluators. This study illuminates the potential and limitations of both human and AI crowdsourcing to solve complex organizational problems and sets the groundwork for a possible integrative human-AI approach to problem-solving…(More)”.

The Age of Prediction: Algorithms, AI, and the Shifting Shadows of Risk

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Igor Tulchinsky and Christopher E. Mason: “… about two powerful, and symbiotic, trends: the rapid development and use of artificial intelligence and big data to enhance prediction, as well as the often paradoxical effects of these better predictions on our understanding of risk and the ways we live. Beginning with dramatic advances in quantitative investing and precision medicine, this book explores how predictive technology is quietly reshaping our world in fundamental ways, from crime fighting and warfare to monitoring individual health and elections.

As prediction grows more robust, it also alters the nature of the accompanying risk, setting up unintended and unexpected consequences. The Age of Prediction details how predictive certainties can bring about complacency or even an increase in risks—genomic analysis might lead to unhealthier lifestyles or a GPS might encourage less attentive driving. With greater predictability also comes a degree of mystery, and the authors ask how narrower risks might affect markets, insurance, or risk tolerance generally. Can we ever reduce risk to zero? Should we even try? This book lays an intriguing groundwork for answering these fundamental questions and maps out the latest tools and technologies that power these projections into the future, sometimes using novel, cross-disciplinary tools to map out cancer growth, people’s medical risks, and stock dynamics…(More)”.

To measure social impact, we could start by using the tools we already have

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Shamina Singh: “…To measure social impact, we could start by using the tools we already have.

In the environmental context, companies have adopted the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, which tracks the full spectrum of a company’s carbon emissions. The first scope accounts for direct emissions from its operations, the second relates to indirect emissions from energy purchased by the company, and the third tracks indirect emissions from a company’s entire value chain.

At the Center for Inclusive Growth, we have been thinking about how to capture social impact in a similarly methodical way. Just as the environmental framework is tied to the level of control over the source of emissions, we could account for the level of control in social impact. I’ll offer up the following framework to show how our team is thinking about this challenge, so we can help spark a dialogue using the following as a conceptual starting point.

The first scope could cover each company’s approach toward its own employees, since companies have a direct influence on this stakeholder group through workplace investments, programs, and corporate culture. This category could assess pay equity, diversity within leadership ranks, talent development and career progression for underrepresented groups, labor standards, and more. Many companies already track these metrics.

Then, the second scope could look at how companies leverage their core competencies, deploy their products and services and work within their supply chains to help address societal challenges. Companies have skills, technologies, and capital that can create widespread social benefits, and many are already leading the way. The activity in this second category involves stakeholders at a level of control that is less direct than the first, such as customers and suppliers.

Finally, philanthropic giving, volunteering, and other community investments would comprise the third scope. This level of control is distinct from the second scope because company resources are entrusted to other entities that make decisions about how it’s spent. These efforts, while indirect, can strengthen a company’s brand and reputation, cultivate innovation and opportunity, and generate significant societal value.

From there, it’s about measuring the outputs of our investments in all three scopes. A system of accountability for follow-through is vital because when it comes to improving people’s lives, communities, and futures, outcomes matter-not just effort.

There is so much good work happening in the social impact space, but much more work to be done to measure it. To incentivize continued progress, we have to start quantifying the impact, even if the best way to do that looks different across companies or industries…(More)”

The adoption of innovation in international development organisations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Addressing 21st century development challenges requires investments in innovation, including the use of new approaches and technologies. Currently, many development organisations prioritise investments in isolated innovation pilots that leverage a specific approach or technology rather than pursuing a strategic approach to expand the organisation’s toolbox with innovations that have proven their comparative advantage over what is currently used. This Working Paper addresses this challenge of adopting innovations. How can development organisations institutionalise a new way of working, bringing what was once novel to the core of how business is done? Analysing successful adoption efforts across five DAC agencies, the paper lays out a proposed process for the adoption of innovations. The paper features five case-studies and concludes with a set of lessons and recommendations for policy makers on innovation management generally, and adoption of innovation in particular…(More)”.

The Legal Singularity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Abdi Aidid and Benjamin Alarie: “…argue that the proliferation of artificial intelligence–enabled technology – and specifically the advent of legal prediction – is on the verge of radically reconfiguring the law, our institutions, and our society for the better.

Revealing the ways in which our legal institutions underperform and are expensive to administer, the book highlights the negative social consequences associated with our legal status quo. Given the infirmities of the current state of the law and our legal institutions, the silver lining is that there is ample room for improvement. With concerted action, technology can help us to ameliorate the problems of the law and improve our legal institutions. Inspired in part by the concept of the “technological singularity,” The Legal Singularity presents a future state in which technology facilitates the functional “completeness” of law, where the law is at once extraordinarily more complex in its specification than it is today, and yet operationally, the law is vastly more knowable, fairer, and clearer for its subjects. Aidid and Alarie describe the changes that will culminate in the legal singularity and explore the implications for the law and its institutions…(More)”.