Biomimicry: How Honeybees Can Inspire Supply Chain Design

This episode explores:

• An overview of Gartner’s Maverick program. (1:04)
• The concept of biomimicry and how honeybees can inspire supply chains. (2:20)
• What supply chains and CSCOs can learn about the role of autonomy from honeybees. (4:45)
• The role of swarm intelligence and how it can influence supply chains to operate like a hive. (11:19)
• Key actionable advice supply chain leaders can take away from honeybees and biomimicry. (16:40)

In this podcast, host Thomas O’Connor and Gartner senior director Claudia Clemens dive deep into Claudia’s Maverick Research: Biomimicry: How Honeybees Can Inspire Future Supply Chain Design. They explore how the humble honeybee hive’s individual worker autonomy, nonlinear task structure and swarm intelligence can inform real-world supply chain practices like decentralized governance of autonomous workers and collective actions toward sustainable growth.

Thomas and Claudia close the show with recommendations for supply chain leaders, including empowering both human and machine supply chain elements through clearly defining purpose and leveraging autonomy, flexibility and democratized data to create true diversity of thought.