Risk and Resilience

MIT Professor Yossi Sheffi has just published, along with Edgar Blanco of Amazon, the definitive book on sustainability in business. For supply chain enthusiasts like me the topic is endlessly complex and compelling, but arguably too big to pin down systematically. This new book, Balancing Green, does it. It is deep and technically credible, but also readable and loaded with familiar names and stories. Most importantly, it tackles the question of sustainability without a preconceived agenda.

Yossi Sheffi, Director of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics, has done it again. He recently published a must-read book on sustainability. Balancing Green: When to Embrace Sustainability in a Business (and When Not To) is a well-researched book that cuts through many of the fallacies and wishful thinking that surrounds sustainability.

As a serial entrepreneur in the logistics field and director of MIT’s Center for Transportation and Logistics, Sheffi has spent a lot of time thinking about how complex networks of people, products, and vehicles operate. In his latest book, “Balancing Green: When to Embrace Sustainability in a Business (and When Not To),’’ Sheffi brings this perspective to the push for corporate responsibility, analyzing the challenges and benefits of “going green” in a multilayered global economy.

MIT's Yossi Sheffi writes that a focus on technology has left workers and key companies short of abilities critical to organizational success, and schools need to fill the gap.

Low-spend items may be a lesser priority for suppliers, yet critical components for the companies buying them. 

When safeguarding their supply chains against disruptions, companies commonly assign the highest priority to events that happen relatively often and hit hard. Focusing on those with the highest likelihood and the greatest potential impact certainly seems like a logical approach to risk management.

Except that these are not the worst perils that companies face.