The ART Of Business

Why No One Will Ever Understand the Supply Chain

Aug. 22, 2014

The daily struggle of keeping things moving forward makes it difficult to take a step back and appreciate the wonder of business and the supply chain.

In 1958, Leonard Read published a short and elegant essay about a nondescript pencil.

"I, Pencil" is written in the first person from the point of view of the pencil.

The essay is famous for the claim that despite its apparent simplicity ”…not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.”

It further details how it literally requires the work of millions of people around the world to create this most common of all writing devices.

Check it out. It’s worth a few minutes of your time.

About the Author

Andrew R. Thomas Blog | Associate Professor of Marketing and International Business

Andrew R. Thomas, Ph.D., is associate professor of marketing and international business at the University of Akron; and, a member of the core faculty at the International School of Management in Paris, France.

He is a bestselling business author/editor, whose 23 books include, most recently, American Shale Energy and the Global Economy: Business and Geopolitical Implications of the Fracking Revolution, The Customer Trap: How to Avoid the Biggest Mistake in Business, Global Supply Chain Security, The Final Journey of the Saturn V, and Soft Landing: Airline Industry Strategy, Service and Safety.

His book The Distribution Trap was awarded the Berry-American Marketing Association Prize for the Best Marketing Book of 2010. Another work, Direct Marketing in Action, was a finalist for the same award in 2008.

Andrew is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Transportation Security and a regularly featured analyst for media outlets around the world.

He has traveled to and conducted business in 120 countries on all seven continents.