Supply chain sustainability: What a fish can teach you
Today we kicked off the first day of a three-day training called Building a Sustainable Supply Chain. It's part of Smeal College of Business Executive Programs supply chain portfolio.
It's a great group of participants from industry and the military. We have Dell, GlaxoSmithKline, Wegmans and more.
On the first day we play The Fishing Game to learn about the tragedy of the commons. It is always an incredibly simple and insightful activity. We play for 30 second rounds and the fishery is usually almost completely depleted by the third round. Then their teams are given an opportunity to develop a system by which the fishing companies are profitable and the resource is sustained. It's always fascinating to hear what the group's come up with.
It is clear that a limited resource held in common will usually be depleted because the incentive is to use as much as you can before others do the same. This is central to our global challenges with water, conflict minerals, the atmosphere, labor, soils, oceans, etc.
If you don't know about the fish game yet, I invite you to check it out. I learned about it primarily through the cloud Institute but it's also used at MIT in their Executive Education Program plus many other places
Tomorrow morning is on sustainable procurement and the afternoon is closed-loop supply chain and the circular economy.