The Week of July 30th: 10 things eft's been reading

From supply chain visibility rearing its old head to death by AI – here’s what we’ve been reading this week.

1. Target is leaning on Arthur Valdez to secure its future. Weird metaphor in the article’s title, but I digress. ‘Former Amazon executive Arthur Valdez working to transform Target from elephant to gazelle.’ [StarTribune]

2. You wonder why supply chain visibility is still a hot topic of conversation. ‘Technology is failing to create transparent supply chains.’ [engadget]

3. Speaking of, Modelez subsidiary ‘Green & Blacks’ is shifting its organic and fairtrade products to a new ethical certification. It speaks to a) consumer demand for knowing where their products are coming from, but also the challenges of implementing that. ‘Green & Black's new UK chocolate bar will be neither organic nor Fairtrade.’ [The Guardian]

4. It’s raining money on log-tech (yes, that means logistics tech – I’m going to use it until it sticks). Great to see so many eft partners in the mix.  ‘No Blind Spots: 12 Early-Stage Trucking Tech Companies To Watch.’ [CB Insights]

5. As I was saying above. Here’s some data to back it up. ‘Venture Capitalists Flock to Truck Technology Start-ups’ [Trucks.com]

6. Here’s an interesting take on last-mile – it’s on the passenger side, but still. Food for thought. ‘Lyft partners with Amtrak for first- and last-mile trip tie-ins.’ [TechCrunch]

7. AI gets called a solution to just about everything (or our future overlords, your call). Here’s a ranking of certain doom to utopia. ‘Predictions for what robots will do to the US workforce, ranked from certain doom to potential utopia.’ [Quartz]

8. And another ‘A’ disruptor. ‘These Are The Sectors That Might Be Able To Survive Amazon.’ [Bloomberg]

9. Frequent eft collaborator XPO is eyeing up once again some big moves. Anyone looking to sell? ‘XPO Logistics May Spend Up to $8 Billion on Acquisitions.’ [WSJ]

10. It’s been regularly repeated. ‘Traditional retail needs to leverage its stores as a competitive advantage against pure-play e-tail.’ There’s a startup that might be making this job much easier. ‘CommonSense Robotics raises $6M seed round to make on-demand logistics affordable for all retailers.’ [TechCrunch]

 

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