The Intersection of Digital and Physical Transformation

This chapter explores two categories of companies: those changing entire systems and those blending digital and physical transformation. It examines Amazon's success in integrating both models and the initial cost and benefits of investing in software and hardware elements like Rivian.

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Amazon and DoorDash take different approaches to bridging the physical and digital worlds. Amazon has built an extensive infrastructure of warehouses, logistics networks and data centres to directly control its operations. DoorDash instead relies on partnerships with restaurants and stores for deliveries, limiting its capital investment. In this podcast, Baillie Gifford investment manager Kirsty Gibson analyses the advantages of each model and how both approaches can pose a disruptive challenge to more traditional businesses.

Amazon and DoorDash exemplify two distinct approaches to rooting a business in both the physical and digital worlds. Amazon has done so by investing deeply in physical infrastructure, including its vast logistics operations and data centres. DoorDash, by contrast, has focused on partnering with others to offer meal and grocery deliveries. Baillie Gifford investment manager Kirsty Gibson explores the merits of each approach and discusses how the two companies and others like them can pose a disruptive challenge.

Background

Kirsty Gibson is an investment manager in Baillie Gifford’s US Equity Growth Team and is joint manager of the American Fund and US Growth Trust.

In this episode of Short Briefings on Long Term Thinking, she explores how a growing number of companies are posing a challenge to incumbents by innovating in both the digital and physical realms. The podcast draws on an interview she gave as part of Baillie Gifford’s Disruption Week 2023 event.

In addition to discussing how Amazon and DoorDash put this into practice, Gibson also discusses the chemicals maker Solugen, self-driving lorries pioneer Aurora and electric car maker Rivian, among others.

Resources:

Where software meets steel

Disruption Week 2023 articles and videos

Growth waves: supporting companies and spotting opportunities

Past podcasts

Timecodes:

00:00 Introduction

1:30 Historical background

4:21 Capital-intensive and capital-light approaches

5:31 How Amazon blends its physical and digital operations

8:33 Rivian’s electric pickup trucks

9:57 Solugen: making chemicals with software