Radu Palamariu: 0:03

How do you take those mid-management or senior managers to the next level? How do you make sure that they're great leaders, great managers? How do you make sure that they're great influencers within the organization can tell the story, right? Can influence the other stakeholders laterally and upwards and downwards, right? And create that narrative around supply chain, that positions supply chain as a partner to the business, as an enabler

Tom Raftery: 0:26

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Digital Supply Chain podcast, the number one podcast focusing on the digitization of supply chain, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Digital Supply Chain podcast. My name is Tom Raftery and with me on the show today, I have my two special guests, Knut and Radu. Knut and Radu, would you like to introduce yourselves with maybe Knut going first in alphabetic order?

Knut Alicke: 0:55

Sure. Thanks a lot Tom, for having us. It's a pleasure to be, to be back actually. So my name is Knut Alicke. I'm a partner from McKinsey. I'm a supply chain professional working in this field since 25 years, and, always curious to improve the supply chain performance and also to make sure that we bring supply chain to the people, educate and, um, make people successful.

Tom Raftery: 1:18

Phenomenal. Radu.

Radu Palamariu: 1:20

Super, uh, to be here at Tom. Thanks for the invite. Radu Palamariu here, managing Director Alcott Global. We say that our mission is to connect and upgrade the supply chain ecosystem. We do that through end to end supply chain, executive search through, uh, training and education in supply chain. And then we also have a platform called Simplify, which connects companies to tech platforms. Delighted to be with you today.

Tom Raftery: 1:46

Fantastic. And gents, thanks a million for coming on the podcast. The reason I invited you on the podcast was because I saw you had recently co-authored a book called From Source to Sold Stories of Leadership in Supply Chain and Radu you tell me the book is doing extremely well, almost up to your wildest expectations, so congratulations on that. Well done folks. But before we get into the, the kind of meat and potatoes of the book, tell me first of all, what was the genesis of the book? Where did it come from? Why did you decide to write this book?

Radu Palamariu: 2:23

So maybe let me start. I think it, it was sometime about a year ago that me and Knut were sharing about, Look, how can we get some of these great stories of leaders in supply chain out there? How can we try to inspire one more people to join supply chain to as well make sure that people know some of these great examples that are out there. And three, try also to inspire the supply chain professionals to put themselves out there more influence, story tell, communicate more the good work that they do. So that kind of was the, the synopsis really, or the genesis really, of the book. And then it did happen that both Knut, and myself, I like to think we are action oriented people and we did really well as a corporation and partnership. So we basically said, Hey, yes, let's do it and let's see what happens. And well, one year later it seems that something pretty cool has happened, at least from the feedback we've gotten in the last one month or so since the book was released.

Tom Raftery: 3:26

Okay. Knut, anything you wanna add to that?

Knut Alicke: 3:28

Yeah. So, in my work, I, I always, challenged my clients of, Hey, do you really tell the story of supply chain? So many, many years ago? I, I asked the question, Did you put aside, a marketing, budget, so to say for your supply chain story and everyone like this, a lot. But at the end, um, no one did really kind of follow, this advice. I think bits and pieces were done. So this also then helped the conversation with Radu where we, we both kind of joked around and said, Hey, there's so much great talent. Why don't we see more of them? How to tell the story of supply chain? So then this joking led to the first interview and then we found ourself and hey, you know, we need to make something real out of it. And then we had this great 26 interviews of our contributors from different industries, different regions, telling their story of how they became successful, supply chain professionals going, into the board of their companies. And that was, uh, that was very inspiring to listen to these stories.

Tom Raftery: 4:31

Okay, so fantastic. The book is based on a series of 26 interviews with supply chain leaders. Is that the, Is that the whole story behind the book? Yep.

Knut Alicke: 4:41

Yes, exactly. And uh, it's, it's also very diverse. So we not only have kind of the head of supply chain, we also have, like a Deepak Garg for example, who is the, the founder and the CEO of Rivigo. So we have also these type of people with the supply chain background, who started their own company and then did grow their, their company

Tom Raftery: 5:02

Okay.

Radu Palamariu: 5:02

as well, I mean, I think what, what, we have a couple of, CEOs that came strongly from a supply chain background. So that also makes a very interesting story, right? How do you make it to the board or how do you make it to the CEO position from a supply chain, from an operations perspective? What did they do in their journey? And I think also what the book does well on top of the fact that it's a very easy read. So I've, know, even our family members have read it. They have nothing to do with supply chain, and they got it right. My father got it. So I think it's, it's safe to say, fairly, easy to, to read and digest. We also put together a framework, and I think that is, very useful because, the CHAIN model, which is the framework we came up with. Is the model easy to use? Each letter stands for something. We'll, we'll go through it through this, podcast. Easy to make and, and implement in your supply chain organization to up skill and upgrade the level of leadership, right? To how do you take those mid-management or senior managers to the next level? How do you make sure that they're great leaders, great managers, how do you make sure that they're great influencers within the organization can tell the story, right? Can influence the other stakeholders laterally and upwards and downwards, right? And create that narrative around supply chain, that positions supply chain as a partner to the business, as an enabler

Tom Raftery: 6:18

Okay, so as an enabler, as opposed to a cost center, which is very much how it was thought of pre pandemic, right?

Radu Palamariu: 6:27

Yes, and in fairness just today I met a very, seasoned professional in fmcg, and to my surprise, right, I mean, you would think that FMCG would be a bit more of the forefront of development because typically they are mm-hmm.. He told me very, I'm not gonna name them obviously, but he told me very upfront, Look, Radu in our organization, still manufacturing is seen as the God and, and you know, supply chain is not fully understood even up until today, even after Covid is not fully understood. So I think there's still a way to go and hopefully this, this book, and we've seen literally people buying it for their board and for the CEOs. We've had a couple of orders like that because it paints a broader picture in a very easy to follow way for everybody.

Tom Raftery: 7:06

Okay. Knut, anything to add there?

Knut Alicke: 7:09

So I, I would, I would fully agree that, so our, our dream was that, in the, in, in the pandemic and all the disruptions that we had. That, hey, now kind of supply chain is, is everywhere, right? So everyone talks about supply chain and it's very important to, to see that. it's not that there was a failure of a supply chain. The supply chains did work. It was just that the demand was so high that there was no way that we could fulfill this demand. Right? And that's why it felt like there was disruptions and reality was that there were kind of, uh, supply chain tend to be longer, longer lead time. So it, was disruptive but very important supply chains did work. and to Radu's point, kind of going back so to say, to cost cutting, inventory reduction. This indeed is something that we also hear with our clients these days, which is on one hand, frustrating. On the other hand, it tells us that we need to even communicate more, right? We need to tell more of the supply chain story. We need to kind of explain more why end to end is so important, going forward to be, to be resilient, right? To come out of this crisis uh stronger,

Tom Raftery: 8:14

Okay. Slightly left field question for a second, but you said you wrote the book in one year. That's an amazingly short time to go start to finish and have a book out in the wild available on Amazon. Can you, talk a little bit about how that worked?

Knut Alicke: 8:31

Supply chain people make things work, right? So, uh, that's, uh, that's the the secret now. So it was meant to be kind of a, a collection of inspiring interviews and stories, stories of people, and, their own career. Right. So with this, it, gave us the opportunity, to front load, right? With the, with the interviews. Then clearly Radu and I are, are not professional authors, right? So we got help, by Vishnu, who did a great job in kind of also from a style perspective, really distilling the important elements of the interviews. And then I must say that, Radu a hired colleague to push this through, and that was just amazing to see how, efficient, Claudia did do that. In kind of three months finding a publisher, we reviewed everything. It was a lot of work from our side, but we had clearly, very, very smart people, to help us, to deliver on time.

Radu Palamariu: 9:27

Though there there've been issues with stock . So, um, so funny story. Today I actually met Ilana. So she borrowed the book from a colleague of hers because she wanted to buy it off Amazon, and it was out of stock, and it, it boggles me. I have no clue why, because I thought that they do print on demand. I don't know the in because it's Amazon, but I thought, I would've thought that it's print on demand and apparently it was out of stock. So she actually borrowed it. She posted it on LinkedIn saying, Look, I had to borrow it from my colleague. Because it was out of stock. But I loved the book and I said, Okay, let me meet with you. Cause I had a coffee. Let me give you a copy. Right? Because you must be one of the most fervent learners and you know, fans to do this. So we've had some issues with out of stock, which probably we failed on that supply chain. But, um, but yeah, on the execution, we've been fortunate both, Knut and myself to have an amazing team that, that pushed it through And we're still, I mean, in, in fairness right? And whoever's listening, we're still working on distributors. It's starting to hit the book, uh, shops worldwide, but we still have a, you know, a lot of people that haven't yet, had had it in the bookshop. So we're still working on that.

Tom Raftery: 10:32

Cool. Cool. And coming back to the, the actual contents of the book. So, across the, the interviews, what kind of themes emerged? What kind of learnings can you say came outta the book?

Knut Alicke: 10:45

So I'm, I'm happy to start. And, and then Radu jump in. As Radu said, we have, we kind of distilled the CHAIN model, right? But if we just start from what we, after having done this 26 interviews, when, when we discussed, what did we learn? There's a lot of humbleness, right? Where people say, Hey, I'm now this person leading the company, leading the supply chain, but where they, they all feel very humble. Were very, very down to earth, very pragmatic. They all felt like very, analytical. Very interesting, right? So that is kind of what you would expect from a supply chain person. And this really proved to be the case. They all, felt like, hey, we need to work together internally, right? So with my team, with suppliers, with customers, also here, hey, silos do not work, right? So we need to make sure that we, that we get it done. And what I have found also interesting is that it's lifelong learners. Right. A lot of them said that, Hey, I'm, I'm eager to learn. I read, I go to conferences, I talk to people because there's always something that I can learn to improve, so to say, our performance. So that was, very inspiring. And last comment. We also had, a couple of, women leaders and what I found interesting is, the, the women leaders always commented on, on their family, right?

Tom Raftery: 12:10

Oh, nice.

Knut Alicke: 12:10

the male did less. It's not that they did not do that, but they did less than the women. I just keep it like this.

Tom Raftery: 12:20

Interesting

Radu Palamariu: 12:21

Yeah. And I'll, I'll maybe I'll add one layer. Usually the complexities surrounding. I would say all the time I'm gonna dare to generalize, but all the time the complexity surrounded the careers of women has been way more, or much more in, in many ways than the complexity around male careers. So that, that was a, but, okay, both me and Knut, probably don't wanna go too hard, otherwise, you know, we're gonna have some, some male executives chasing us. Right? this definitely. came through. I would want to add something that is fresh in my mind. Also from the feedback I got from one of the readers of the book this morning, and she said it was empowering for her to read all these stories because she realized that almost none of the speakers had a, the contributors had a formal education in supply chain, which is true. I mean, actually there is not a lot of formal educations in supply chain out there. Fairly new domain. And I didn't think from that perspective, cuz she had also not come from supply chain and she's about 30, mid thirties, right? So for her it was like, oh wow, I don't need to have any sort of inferiority, type of mindset. Oh, and maybe I'm lacking something from my education, right? All these people are CSCOs, COOs, CEOs and they didn't have a formal education either. And look, they made it so it was very empowering to her. Now, to expand a little bit, cause I did start chain model is, I guess the secret sourcing. There's no such secret sauce, right? The principles of what makes a supply chain leader. We specifically chose also the word chain to stand for it, right? We had to play a little bit, but basically in short, C stands for collaboration. H stands for holistic, A for adaptable, I, for influential and, N for narrative. So is the combination of this five traits that make and that came across in each of the interview. And then in the book we also give some examples of behaviors and we are go now going a step further where we are actually developing a program. With case studies, with examples, as well as with exercises, that can be a practical way to develop teams on it.

Tom Raftery: 14:27

Okay. And when you say this chain model refers to attributes of supply chain leaders, and then you're talking about, you know, a follow on that you're coming up with, is this some kind of workshop that people can attend? Is it some kind of course that people can take? Is it a, a, another book where is it on that kind of scale?

Radu Palamariu: 14:49

A little bit of everything. So, I mean, we have started to discuss about the, the, the next book with, Knut but it's, it's in the, it's in the wraps, but the first steps there is a Alcott Global academy, that we have launched with combination of other courses. But there is a specific online course on this five elements of the chain model with practical exercises that anybody can do on a, on their own pace. And then the workshop, which will be in three formats, is gonna be a four hour, one day, two days, workshops face to face, all virtual with teams of 20, 30. So this is a proper workshop format that, uh, Shoop who's our head of training and development is working on. It should be available in the next one month or so, and that's an actual workshop format. And then with Knut, we are working on a few, continuations of this we are gonna put together with the World Economic Forum. We're also working on publishing some more examples of the chain model, and we are also working on putting together a whole, methodology behind it, as well as the Competency Center, and capabilities behind this to go one level deeper.

Knut Alicke: 15:51

And to, build on this, we, we tested the, the idea when we, in McKinsey, we do every two, twice a year. We, we call it Supply Chain Executive Academy, where we basically gather a group of 30 40 supply chain executives and have two days discussions, exchange, networking, and so on. So Radu, and I, basically presented the idea of the book and the, and the chain model and had very good discussions on, communication skills, right? And everyone, more or less kind of, signed up for, Hey, I need to train my supply chain people on the chain model and how to communicate it better. How to tell the story. And, that was amazing. There was an amazing feedback. It was overwhelming, positive, so that is clearly something that, that we need to develop and we need to also make sure. So I'm, I'm also next to McKinsey, I'm teaching as a professor at the University of Cologne. And, here, what, what I always see is that, university education is often too theoretical. I try to bridge that gap with me teaching, but that's not enough. So here, kind of to really bring more practical knowledge, pragmatic knowledge, to not only students, but also to professionals is super, super, important.

Tom Raftery: 17:02

Yeah, sure. I, I get that. But I wanna challenge you on the supply chain communication because having published around 270 episodes of the Digital Supply Chain podcast, I've not found any problem finding supply chain professionals who are good communicators. You know, it's, to me, it's been amazing how, phenomenally good the supply chain professionals are at communicating. So have I just been lucky or am I missing something or am I misinterpreting what you're saying or where are we there?

Knut Alicke: 17:34

Let me, let me tell you a story that, that we heard during this session. One of the participants, said that, Look, I was in sales. And then I wanted to change jobs, right? So, and I found that supply chain is probably interesting. So joined supply chain did not understand a single word. And then after, six, nine month or so, he got into the topic and now he's 18 month into the topic. He said that, look, um, I was invited by my sales colleagues, to join their global sales meeting with a couple of hundred sales people and to explain supply chain. So, then I looked back and thought that, hmm, if I now give the, the nerdy supply chain talk, no one will understand. Right? So he then started to, to communicate with pictures, right? So he, for example, used, a picture of the EverGiven stuck in the, in the channel to explain that, hey, this is a disruption, right? And it was very interesting, that he said that there were a couple of supply chain colleagues in the, in the audience and they was like, Oh no, what is he talking about? That's so simple. And all the sales people came over and said, Yes, that's exactly what we needed. Now we understand. So, there is people out there who can communicate very, very clear. If I look into my client work on a day to day basis, I still see that there is the majority of people who know a lot. They have a hard time if they need to explain their COO or ceo, what they're doing and why this is super, super, important.

Tom Raftery: 19:02

Couldn't you say the same for any discipline that you know, you have people who are so deep down in the weeds, it's very hard for them to step back and see the big picture and explain it that way?

Knut Alicke: 19:14

I would say, that is true and not true. So we have, we have this, saying in the, in the book where, if you have 10 orders, right, and out of this 10 orders you deliver nine, the supply chain person would say, Oh no, I missed this one. That's so bad. The salesperson that out of this 10 delivered one would celebrate this one and not mention the other nine. Right. So there is clearly a kind of a, a, a natural way to, communicate differently, which I would say is in sales and marketing, and not in supply chain.

Tom Raftery: 19:50

Okay, Radu,

Radu Palamariu: 19:52

We are obviously biased in some ways. I mean, we, we don't talk financing, neither Knut nor myself and I'm sure that there's other, there's other functions, right? in the organization that may struggle. I don't think that communication is necessarily only a supply chain issue, but by and large, we both activate in supply chain and by and large, we see that as one of the main problems of why one supply chain professionals don't manage a lot of times to get their perspective across in a way that the business understands or their stakeholders understand speaking their language plainly put. So, you know, 270 guests that you've had, I'm sure that great communicators. The, the key is, can you communicate to whom you are sitting in front? And if you're standing in front of supply chain is one thing. If you're standing in front of sales, another finance, another r and d CEO board, another thing. Recently I met, a good friend of mine who I think, I believe he's a good communicator, and he himself told me, Look, Radu , during this old covid, I actually got a seat of the board. I got a seat. They called me in to explain to them what is going on. And he gave me this example of where he was sitting and explaining to them some situation with, with was China and you know, he had some over overflow of stock and he ended up talking to them about bonded warehouses and all of that. And he actually said, Look, brother, I could feel myself having an outta body experience looking at myself, talking, all of that feeling I'm rambling and I'm completely boring these guys that have no idea what I'm talking of. And I couldn't stop myself from doing it. And you know, in short, now he's not called into the board meetings again. He's a guy that I actually think he's a good communicator. But it's sometimes the crux of it and the subtlety, I don't know if it's subtlety, but again, of it is, can you communicate to the audience that you speak to in their language? That I think is the piece that a lot of times is missing. And that's where I think by and large, generalizing broadly. Right. And there's some fantastic leaders out there. We have a lot of CEOs that come from supply chain. Yeah. And it's increasing, but by and large, the general population of supply chain practitioners because they're pragmatic, they get stuff done, they are focused on results they fail at, or they fail to allocate enough resources or attention to, to speak the language of the different stakeholders they are faced with.

Tom Raftery: 22:22

So is that why we don't have as many supply chain people on the boards of companies?

Knut Alicke: 22:28

That's one of the reasons. Another reason that, I found interesting when I talk to a big company, is that they even don't open up, so to say, the channel to the board for supply chain people, right? So for them it was like, hey, the future board will be recruited from, manufacturing. Or from r and d right, in their specific environment. So there was even not an, not an option for supply chain people to, to get in. Right? And with this, you could also see that the, the supply chain was underdeveloped. So it was, it was siloed. It was not end to end. It was not seen as, as important. So this is clearly also something that needs to change. And here to create this awareness for the board that, hey, here we have a super interesting and important topic. The last two and a half years did help a lot, but now we need to continue with this push through that, hey, end to end is an important topic, supply chain is an important topic and it can really, really, really create value.

Tom Raftery: 23:24

And so the target reader for this book is not necessarily supply chain professionals. It's people outside the profession to show how important supply chain is?

Knut Alicke: 23:39

I would say it's, it's both.

Radu Palamariu: 23:41

Yeah, It's both. So, so if you, if you're struggling to get through to somebody Tom and you want to, I mean, uh, maybe your case is, is not the best because you, you are a great communicator, but, there are people like, uh, even Yossi Sheffi, you know, from mit, he was saying that for a long, long, long time, up to last year or so, or two years ago, his family didn't, or you know, his wife even didn't really understand what he does in he's 70 And then all, with all these news, she started to get, okay, supply chain, this supply chain that, okay, I kind of get an idea. I think the book would pretty much explain that. We've had parents that bought it for their kids. My daughter is reading it, right? She gets it right. So the book is at that level of a 10 year old would understand what's, what's it about. But at the same time, I think the biggest difference it's going to make, or we hope at least what I hope at least it is going to make, is in the current practitioners in supply chain to give them examples. Very concrete case studies and, very specific situations and how to deal with it, how to deal with the board, how to tell and to make a case, right? Even have somebody, I love that particular story, right? Sascha Menges,, who's a, a ceo, and he says that he used to be a magician when he was a student, and that helped him tremendously in his, MD and CEO roles. And I'm like, But what's the connection, right? And he says, Well, as a magician, you learn how to direct attention. Direct the crowd to what you want them to see. That's extremely useful in a board setup, in a management meeting, right? When you do a presentation and you want to influence people. This type of connections, I believe, And that's why also on purpose Kunt and myself did the book in a very easy to read format because people remember stories. They don't remember data. If data convinced anyone, nobody would smoke on this planet. Data does not convince people, right? So we hope that by having 26 stories, they will remember 1, 2, 3, that will stick in their minds. Maybe they read the book again and depending on the stage that they're at in their career or questions or development, some other stories will stick with them and that will provide them in inspiration, right? To move forward.

Knut Alicke: 25:47

And it's very important if, if you just reflect a bit on the feedback we get, so the reviews and also what we hear from, from friends and family. People like this idea, I can pick a story, right? And I, I read that story and um, maybe they even know the contributor, right? Oh, that was interesting. I learned something. And then I can read another one and another one. And this is completely different from a, a classical textbook, right? So I also wrote a classical textbook, 450 pages full of formulas, which is interesting for, PhD students. But, for the pragmatic stuff, this interview formula and then also the, the chain model that, Radu explain, kind of brings it all together and with this you also have a framework, right? Where you kind of allocate all the different interviews in, and this is super, pragmatic, super helpful.

Tom Raftery: 26:33

Yeah, sure. And I can imagine. When you're comparing a book of 450 pages, which is a textbook versus, I'm not sure how many pages is in your guys book, and it probably depends on whether it's hardback or soft back or whatever. But when you compare that to, 26 reasonably short stories, you know, it's probably a lot easier to digest than a a to of 450 pages written for an academic audience.

Radu Palamariu: 26:56

We've had people that read it in two days. So it's, an easy read. Yeah. I don't come from supply chain. I tell the story of the book , I kind of stumbled across supply chain myself. So I did some reading because I just felt like a fraud when I began. Right. I still do sometimes, but less and less. And it was very heavy for me. It was like some of the jargon is like God, but then I I felt very relieved because I read some of the best, in my opinion at least, you know, Yossi Sheffi. And then I read the, this, John Gattorna, who wrote a book on dynamic supply chains. And then I realized that well, supply chains are mostly basic principles. It's about deeply, it's about some systems and it's about some common sense. And then, you know, I realized this is not so complicated if we don't get into the jargon and the buzz words and the whatnot. Right? It's actually a lot of common sense. So that was the intent of our, our book. And, you know, we, we, funnily enough, we had this discussion with, Knut, when we began and said, We don't want to make it as a, academic type of a read. We specifically want to make it as an easy read.

Tom Raftery: 27:53

Nice. I don't come from a supply chain background either. I fell into it through an accident of reorganization, and so the way I decided to learn about supply chain was to set up a podcast about supply chain and invite people who did know about supply chain to come on the podcast and then I could learn about it through osmosis. And so 270 episodes later, here I am. I know something about supply chain now,

Knut Alicke: 28:15

Exactly.

Tom Raftery: 28:16

So why, Why is now a good time for this book?

Knut Alicke: 28:21

So we, we talked about the, ongoing disruptions. So supply chain is in the press and we talked about that. Hey, it's kind of in the press as, hey, it's not working. actually, we discussed that it is working. So what we felt is, companies are now forced to discuss supply chain and to improve their supply chain performance or their setup, or how they plan or educate their people. So this would now kind of, help them to even accelerate the, the transformation to a, a good supply chain company, right? Because it, a hot topic now and, we, should leverage this, this hot topic idea. that we improve the majority and the understanding of supply chain. And this is where, where the book clearly contributes.

Radu Palamariu: 29:08

And I think that the beauty of it, Tom, is that it's extremely diverse. We, again, made it on purpose that we interviewed very diverse people from all industries. All backgrounds, right? You, you'll find leaders from really, not only gender, but you know, really backgrounds and race and you name it, right? We have, we have pretty much, from China to India, to us to, uh, you know, Latin America to whatever Middle East. That also makes, gives a pretty broad palate, right? Because you can't really say, and sometimes we do say that, Oh, FMCG is this, or Pharma is this, or automotive is this, or whatever. Industrial is that. We have examples in pretty much all, sectors of the industries and, and, and backgrounds where they say, Look, you can build a successful story line in supply chain wherever you are. And, uh, it's just maybe if you putting your own limits , that that's your problem, right? But ultimately you, it's been here, been done. Some had big budgets, some didn't. and they made it work.

Tom Raftery: 30:10

Nice. Okay, cool. Gents, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question that I haven't asked you that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Knut Alicke: 30:24

I think we covered, everything. The, the main message is, hey, supply chain is important. And, as someone with a supply chain background, you can make it to the board, for the better of the company.

Tom Raftery: 30:35

Hmm.

Radu Palamariu: 30:36

Absolutely, and definitely if you haven't, check out the book from Source to Sold, get a copy and, and, and have a read, or, ping Knut and, and myself, and we, we'll see what we can do about it. If you're from, you know, a country where you can't afford it. But, I do believe that this ripple effect that it, it is already creating and we've started to get requests from universities, from different, companies that are also looking at their entry level to, to get this book. I think that chance there is a possibility that this will be one of those triggers to Okay, early on in the, in their careers to also plant the seeds of what is possible out there that will hopefully inspire the next generation of supply chain that will make it to the board or to the CSCO, or to just being amazing professionals in their specific functions and give them this, examples of what is, you know, what is really potential, great potential for a supply chain leader.

Tom Raftery: 31:29

Okay, cool. And if people would like to know more about either yourself, Radu, or Knut or the book, where would you have me direct them?

Radu Palamariu: 31:39

The book has a website right From Source to Sold. So that's the easiest. And then, uh, I think both for, for myself and for Knut, we, we are easily to be found on, uh, on LinkedIn and happy to connect.

Knut Alicke: 31:49

Exactly. So reach out, reach out to us and we always enjoy discussions, on how to tell the story of supply chain.

Tom Raftery: 31:58

Fantastic. Great, and I'll put links to both your LinkedIn accounts and also to the book on the notes for this podcast so people can find them easily. Great Radu, Knut,, that's been fantastic. Thanks a million for coming to the podcast today.

Knut Alicke: 32:12

Thanks lot for having us. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about digital supply chains, simply drop me an email to TomRaftery@outlook.com If you like the show, please don't forget to click Follow on it in your podcast application of choice to be sure to get new episodes as soon as they're published Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find a show. Thanks, catch you all next time.