The novel coronavirus has made supply chains everyone's business. On top of that, the climate crisis is forcing us to come to grips with how man-made supply chains affect the environment. Put simply; Human activity is causing climate change. All human activity is driven by supply chains. We can't solve the climate crisis until we refashion global supply chains such that they no longer harm our environment. Working on climate change without first refashioning supply chains is like treating the symptoms of a disease without curing the underlying illness. In this booklet, Lisa Morales-Hellebo and I explore why the transformation of supply chains is inevitable, and why that presents the biggest investment opportunity of our lifetime.

1. The world is a supply chain.
™

2. THE WORLD IS A SUPPLY CHAIN.™
Co-written by
Brian Laung Aoaeh, CFA & Lisa Morales-Hellebo
Co-founders & GPs at REFASHIOND Ventures
This booklet has been printed using soy and vegetable inks on 100% post-consumer waste and 100% processed chlorine free recycled stocks.

3. 21
In this booklet, we...
Whether we like it or not, current economic, political, social, and tech-
nology trends will compel more people to consciously think about the
implications of that statement.
• Share a supply chain definition
• Put supply chain challenges
in context
• Discuss why socio-cultural
forces will act as the leading
catalyst for innovations that
define the future of supply
chains
• Explain why supply chains
must be refashioned
• Explain why the digital and
technological transforma-
tion of supply chains is an
economic issue, as well as one
driven by evolving consumer
preferences
• Describe the role that early
stage venture capital can
play in the transformation
of supply chains
• Describe how individuals,
private investors, and
governments can play a
role in evolving us to the
supply chains of the future
The world is a supply chain.™
It’s that simple.
But what does that really mean?

4. 43
What is a supply chain?
A supply chain is a network of organizations
that work collaboratively to move products
and services from producers to consumers.
Digitized supply chains allow everything
to talk to everything else.
At a high level, the business of supply chain can
be subdivided into the following categories...
Supply chain management
which is about supply
chain network design
and management
Supply chain logistics
which is about the storage,
transportation, and movement
of physical goods from one
place to another
Supply chain finance
which is about ensuring that
producers, and other supply
chain participants and
intermediaries get paid for
the value they create and
deliver to consumers

5. 65
Supply chains play two critical functions:
First, they enable the flow of goods
and services from producers to
consumers.
Second, they facilitate the
transfer of information about the
movement of goods and services
between every entity that is part
of the supply chain network.
The world we’ve
become accustomed to
would not exist
without supply chains.

6. 87
We know this to be true —
“when supply chains
function, societies thrive.”
And further, the world is a
mechanism for providing
humanity with the resources
we need to survive on Earth.
The Challenges Confronting
Supply Chains
Today, we face an inflection point as our
world confronts some big crises.
If current trends hold, between 2015 and 2050
the world’s population is expected to increase
by about a third, to roughly 10 billion people.
According to Our World in Data, the world’s
population stood at about 190 million people in
the Year 0, and approximately 4 billion in 1975. In
other words, the world’s population will jump by
about 6 billion people over the 75 years between
1975 and 2050 after having only climbed to 4 bil-
lion people over the previous 1,975 years. This
is happening, according to Our World in Data,
despite the world’s population growth rate peak-
ing at 2.2% per year in 1962 and 1963, and then
declining to its current rate of about 1% per year.

7. 109
While this rapid increase in the world’s
population is occurring, global supply
chains face some big challenges.
Size of the world population over the last 12,000 years
Today’s industrial supply chains
consume natural resources
in unsustainable quantities and
generate chemical waste that
damages the environment.

8. 1211
An ongoing increase in the frequency of
severe weather events that cause large-scale
disruptions to local and global supply chains.
Trade disputes threaten to dismember
the system of world trade established
following the end of World War II.

9. 1413
The growing world population has
created a critical need for significantly
better dynamic resource allocation
throughout supply chain networks in
every industry around the world.
Changes in consumer behavior are
putting the world’s supply chains
under increasing strain and business
competitiveness is increasingly tied
to supply chain mastery.

10. 1615
There are more conversations than ever about
de-carbonizing supply chains. At about the same
time this poll was published, Quartz reported
that two states in India have said they will not
build new coal power plants. Earlier this year,
governments in Europe called on the fashion
industry to tackle its waste and pollution prob-
lems more aggressively and some are looking at
passing legislation to that end. In Asia, more gov-
ernments are moving to address issues around
plastic waste imported from abroad. Starting in
January 2020, the International Maritime Orga-
nization will begin adopting new regulations to
curb harmful emissions from the container ship-
ping industry.
Another example of the rapidly evolving social
and cultural attitudes that will drive innovation
in supply chains and global trade is the grow-
ing movement led by young people such as Greta
Thunberg, Jamie Margolin and others like them.
Political, business, and technological leadership
is shifting into the hands of a generation of men
and women who do not want to leave a more in-
hospitable planet as their legacy to their children
and grandchildren.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
In the next half-decade or so we will see political
and business leaders facing increasing pres-
sure to adopt policies and business practices
that reflect how voters and consumers feel about
climate change. Those who do not risk losing
political power and market share to their oppo-
nents and competitors who do. As this social and
cultural movement gains strength, it will accel-
erate the economic drivers of innovation, which
in turn will propel the drivers of technological
innovation in global trade and supply chain.
In his August 2011 article, Why Software is Eating
The World, Marc Andreessen said: “Companies
in every industry need to assume that a software
revolution is coming.” The process he described
has only accelerated over the intervening 8 years,
and that statement is more true now than it was
then. As information technologies that were
pioneered in the 1950s have reached maturity,
technology startups around the world are de-
veloping new innovations to solve some of the
supply chain problems that seemed intractable
in the recent past.
Socio-cultural Attitudes Will Be The
Catalyst For Supply Chain Innovation
Perhaps counter-intuitively, innovation in global
trade and supply chains will be driven most im-
mediately by changing social attitudes towards
climate change. A recent poll of adults and teen-
agers in the United States conducted between
July 9 and August 5, 2019 by The Washington Post
and the Kaiser Family Foundation offers some
early evidence of the changes taking place.
When asked if human activity is causing climate
change, 79% of the adults polled responded yes,
while 86% of teenagers responded yes. When
asked if reducing the negative effects of global
warming and climate change would require ma-
jor sacrifices, more than 30% of adults, and more
than 40% of the teenagers surveyed said yes.
Also, at least 70% of adults and
nearly 80% of teenagers said that
technological advances will be able
to reduce most of the negative
effects of climate change.

11. 1817
Supply chains exist to connect producers and
consumers in an ongoing exchange of value.
As a result, innovations in supply chain drives
innovations in the rest of the economy. Given
that supply chains are about the back-and-forth
movement of physical goods, services, and infor-
mation, it is easy to understand why advances in
information technology must necessarily precede
cycles of innovation in supply chain.
Because innovation in supply chain acts as
an accelerant for increases in production and
consumption, supply chain innovation acts as
an economic multiplier. Every dollar of innova-
tion in supply chain innovation leads to more
than a dollar of total economic output. It is not a
coincidence that countries ranked highest on the
Worldbank’s Logistics Performance Index tend to
have the most developed economies, while those
ranked lowest tend to have the least developed
economies.
Supply chains are to human civilization what
oxygen is to life; When they work well, no one
notices them. It is only when they start to fail that
we realize there’s a problem. It is easy to assume
that there’s no room for innovation in global
supply chains and trade, but this is simply
not true.
Here are four general examples
The reader can very easily find specific startups
working on cutting edge innovations related to
each category...
• As governments and people around the world
awaken to the issues posed by climate change,
there’s a growing social, regulatory, and eco-
nomic push for innovations in supply chain lo-
gistics that will significantly reduce the amount
of pollution created by the transportation
industry. Some of these innovations involve the
application of machine learning to the analysis
of data obtained from connected devices in
transportation and supply chain networks in
order to make the operation of such networks
more efficient and optimized. This needs to
be done in a way that ensures that the trans-
portation of people and merchandise does not
destroy the environment.
Why The Refashioning Of
Supply Chains Matters
Before we can understand why the
confluence of software and hardware
engineering is going to be transformative
to the supply chains on which the world
runs, we must understand why that matters.

12. 2019
• There is an ongoing shift away from linear sup-
ply chains in which the materials that remain
after consumption has taken place are discard-
ed, and more towards circular and regenerative
supply chains that place an emphasis on using
post-consumption waste as raw materials for
new products. This shift relies on advances in
materials science - both in the creation of new
materials that did not exist before, and in the
processing of materials that we have become
accustomed to, but which we now recognize
pose a growing threat to the environment as
waste accumulates in quantities that the world
can no longer sustain. In order to reduce or
eliminate waste and pollution, the focus here is
on developing supply chains around the repair,
renewal, regeneration, and recycling of materi-
als and products.
• Manufacturing is undergoing a transformation
of its own, one which will make the changes
happening in transportation and materials that
much more impactful. With the recent shift in
political attitudes towards global trade, more
companies are beginning to consider region-
alized and localized manufacturing as a path
towards avoiding costly tariffs. Such a trans-
formation will rely on a mix of emerging and
mature manufacturing techniques in order to
keep costs within a manageable range. These
advances in manufacturing will rely heavily on
manufacturing goods to fulfill actual demand,
rather than manufacturing goods in anticipa-
tion of future demand.
• Invariably, software is being used more than
ever to create new methods of collecting,
storing, and analyzing data to augment hu-
man decision making in every industry. These
technologies are being applied in industrial
supply chains as distinct as pharmaceuticals
and industrial chemicals - to simulate new
compounds and test them more quickly and
inexpensively. They’re also used in agricul-
ture - to manage the production, storage and
distribution of food and other agricultural pro-
duce in order to minimize food loss and food
waste; and in energy - to aid in the produc-
tion, storage, and distribution of energy from
increasingly complex power grids that incorpo-
rate renewable and non-renewable sources of
electrical power.
The way we make things, the way we
consume things, the way we move things,
and the power that is required to make
all that possible is changing dramatically
thanks to advances in software and
hardware technologies. Solving the
foundational problems that plague
global supply chains is a daunting task.
Moreover, global GDP, most recently
estimated at about $88 trillion, rests on
our ability to solve these problems.

13. 2221
Technological Transformation of
Supply Chains: An Economic Problem,
An Economic Opportunity
We are often asked the question; “Wouldn’t
this be easier if the transformation of supply
chains were driven more by economic forces
than consumer needs?”
In The Supply Chain Economy: A New Framework
for Understanding Innovation and Services, Mer-
cedes Delgado and Karen Mills state that; “The
U.S. supply chain contains 37% of all jobs, employ-
ing 44 million people. These jobs have significantly
higher than average wages, and
account for much of the innovative activity in
the economy.”
Similar conclusions hold true in every other
region of the world, and there is ample research
to support that belief thanks to work by a number
of global, multilateral organizations like the World
Economic Forum, The World Bank, The Interna-
tional Monetary Forum, and various agencies of
the United Nations and others.
Furthermore; according to Growing Better: Ten
Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land
Use, a September 2019 report by the Food and
Land Use Coalition; “The hidden costs of global
food and land use systems sum to $12 trillion,
compared to a market value of the global food
system of $10 trillion.”
According to Long-Term Macroeconomic Effects
of Climate Change: A Cross-Country Analysis, a
July 2019 paper by researchers at the University
of Southern California (USA), the University of
Cambridge (UK), Trinity College (UK), the Inter-
national Monetary Fund (Washington DC, USA),
and National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan); “Our
counterfactual analysis suggests that a persistent
increase in average global temperature by 0.04C
per year, in the absence of mitigation policies,
reduces world real GDP per capita by 7.22 percent
by 2100.” Furthermore the authors state; “We also
provide supplementary evidence using data on a
sample of 48 U.S. states between 1963 and 2016,
and show that climate change has a long-lasting
adverse impact on real output in various states
and economic sectors, and on labour productivity
and employment.”
According to Impact of the Fourth Industrial Revo-
lution on Supply Chains, an October 2017 report
published by the World Economic Forum; “Dis-
ruptive technologies are transforming all end-
to-end steps in production and business models
in most sectors of the economy. The products
that consumers demand, factory processes and

14. 2423
footprints, and the management of global supply
chains are being re-shaped to an unprecedented
degree and at an unprecedented pace. Industry
leaders who were consulted believe that new
technological solutions heralded by the Fourth
Industrial Revolution – such as advanced robotics,
autonomous systems and additive manufacturing
– will revolutionize traditional ways of creating
value. As the costs of deploying technology con-
tinue to fall, international differentials in labour
costs will no longer be a decisive factor in choos-
ing the location of production.”
Other research about the potential economic im-
pact of supply chain transformation is not difficult
to find. There is also ample research about the
adverse economic impact of climate change on
economic productivity.
A company’s supply chain is an integral part
of that company’s customer experience, and
consumers all over the world will continue to
become more demanding, not less.
The supply chains of the future will become a
reality precisely because the refashioning of global
and local trade infrastructure is an economic
issue that is driven by consumer preferences.
That being said, it is important to recognize
why conversations about the transformation of
supply chains are less straightforward than one
might hope.
In Disaster Mitigation is Cost Effective, a world
development background note by Ilan Kelman,
he states that it is easier for politicians who tend
to seek visibility for themselves to pursue after-
the-fact measures rather than pursue prospective
and preventative measures related to disaster
risk reduction. After-the-fact measures are more
visible, while prevention is intangible and difficult
to quantify, resulting in less of a boost for the per-
sonal ambitions and ego of individual politicians.
We observe a similar pattern of behavior among
corporate executives, who tend to pursue highly
visible and customer facing, short-term, tactical
initiatives at the expense of long-term strategic
initiatives that will help their companies develop
and gain mastery over their back-end supply
chain operations.
On the other hand, we observe that the companies that have become
globally dominant are also those that have developed superior supply
chain mastery within their respective markets and industries.
We believe that companies with inferior supply chain operations continue
to fall victim to a degraded customer experience.
We also believe that companies with
inferior supply chains will lose market
share to established, and new, competitors
with superior supply chain capabilities.

15. 2625
Early-Stage Technology Venture
Capital Will Play An Important Role
technology, the technological innovations that will
transform global supply chains and trade interact
with the real world. As a result, it is not enough for
policies and regulations to lag innovation by years.
Instead, regulators and policy makers must work
hard to create regulatory frameworks that help to
nurture innovation rather than assist in suffocat-
ing it through inaction. Correspondingly, venture
capitalists and entrepreneurs must partner with
community organizations, politicians, and regula-
tors to help them keep up with advances in tech-
nology and innovation.
One might ask: “Are there really enough opportuni-
ties for early-stage investments in supply chain?”
Yet, once one understands what a supply chain is,
a few minutes spent thinking about that question
illuminates the misconception.
The recent success of funds like Lux Capital -
which announced that it raised a billion dollars
distributed across two funds, and DCVC - which
announced a $725 million fund, suggests that there
are significant financial returns to be harvested by
limited partners who have the foresight to invest
in the small handful of venture funds that are
now choosing to focus on funding early-stage
startups solving the sorts of problems we have
already described.
The longevity of Supply Chain Ventures, estab-
lished in 2001 by Dave Anderson, also suggests
that this is a market that is ready for more early-
stage venture capital, not less. This assertion is
based on how many advances in computational
and information technologies have occurred since
2001, and how much easier it is now for such
technologies to be implemented in physical supply
chains. The observation is also based on the rising
interest, relatively speaking, in issues surrounding
supply chains within the general population.
Our conversations with corporate executives
responsible for meeting demand from customers
suggests that there’s a growing appetite for new
technology that enables companies to meet the ex-
pectations of ever more impatient and demanding
customers. Also, our conversations with govern-
ment officials point to a growing desire by public
servants to seek new innovations geared at solving
the problems that plague large and growing urban
communities, and the suburbs that surround them.
The men and women who set out to tackle these
problems usually find a lack of sufficient early-
stage venture capital to support their efforts at the
earliest and riskiest stages of their work - as they
take that work out of academic research labs, or
small apartments and houses, and start the often
arduous process of commercialization.
That is when there is the greatest need for ven-
ture capitalists who understand the nature of the
problems, who recognize the potential commer-
cial opportunities, who have a willingness to do
the necessary hard work required to help some of
these entrepreneurs succeed, and who have devel-
oped relationships with prospective commercial
partners willing to investigate new technologi-
cal innovations for long-standing supply chain
problems.
This is changing, but it is not changing fast
enough. The world needs much more risk-
seeking capital to fund these entrepreneurs -
the market opportunity is enormous. As we have
already pointed out, global GDP rests on a
foundation built entirely on supply chains.
For these innovations to succeed, governments
and traditional industry must become more open
to partnering with venture capitalists and technol-
ogy startups. Unlike innovations in information

16. 2827
What Can You Do?
There is a lot that one can do
to participate in the coming
transformation of supply chains
relationships with their physical communities.
The study also suggests that understanding and
knowledge play a contributory role in forming
these attitudes, therefore supporting the value in
education and information strategies for sus-
tainably run businesses.”
Sources of Private Capital
As we have already stated, investing in early-
stage innovations in supply chain transformation
is an opportunity that remains largely under-
exploited in terms of risk-seeking capital relative
to the size of the opportunity. It is an area that is
ripe for increased allocations of capital within the
private equity allocation targets of family offices,
endowments, foundations, and pension funds.
Governments
During #SCIT2019, The Worldwide Supply Chain
Federation’s inaugural global summit on supply
chain, innovation, and technology held in NYC on
June 19 - 20, 2019, Samuel Chan, Regional Vice
President, Americas, at the Singapore Economic
Development Board provided attendees with a
sense of how the Government of Singapore is
thinking about the role that supply chain, in-
novation, and technology can play in Singapore’s
economic development. Supply chain occupies
a central position in Smart Nation Singapore,
and specifically in its Smart Logistics initia-
tive. As we have stated previously; It is not a
coincidence that countries ranked highest on
the Worldbank’s Logistics Performance Index
tend to have the most developed economies,
while those ranked lowest tend to have the least
developed economies. Increasingly, the coun-
tries and regions of the world that will continue
to experience the strongest economic growth
will be those that are quickest to embrace and
deploy the still nascent and emerging engineered
systems that result from a tight integration of
computation and physical supply chains in every
area of economic activity.
If by now, the reader is beginning
to conclude that the future of sup-
ply chains will be driven largely by
supply chain enthusiasts, we agree.
Individual Consumers
As individual consumers we can all continue to
become more active and engaged about under-
standing how our consumption affects the finite
world around us. Social media and information
technology makes it easy for attitudes and beliefs
about consumption, production, sustainability,
the environment, and climate change to spread.
In Consumer attitudes towards sustainability and
sustainable business: An exploratory study of New
Zealand consumers., a 2015 master’s thesis by
David Anthony Thompson at Lincoln University
in New Zealand, he states; “From a purely prag-
matic perspective, this study has indicated that
consumers are generally likely to be supportive
of not just purchasing sustainably produced
goods and services, but that they feel positively
towards companies that demonstrate sustainable
social and environmental behavior. This has im-
plications for reputation building for organisa-
tions and in turn hints at benefits when it comes
to securing supply contracts, recruiting staff and

17. 3029
We Should All Be Supply
Chain Enthusiasts
A Supply Chain Enthusiast is someone who
recognizes that the world is a mechanism for
providing humanity with the resources it needs
to survive.
Someone who recognizes that each of us has
a responsibility for ensuring that this supply
chain that we are part of is managed in a way
that ensures that humans continue to thrive.
Someone who understands that collectively, we
must summon the political will to begin the effort
of arresting, and then reversing, the harm that we
have caused to the environment.
We will all become supply chain enthusiasts, not
because it is the fashionable thing to do, but be-
cause with every year that passes it will become
an issue of increasing and critical necessity.
As more people become aware of, and start to
understand that how we produce, store, trans-
port, and consume things has a profound impact
on our environment, enthusiasm about supply
chain, innovation, and technology will become
more socially and culturally mainstream.
At that point,
“The world is a supply chain,”
will become a rallying cry
everyone innately understands.

18. 3231
About The Authors
Brian Laung Aoaeh and Lisa Morales-Hellebo are co-founders of
REFASHIOND Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund that is be-
ing built to invest in startups that are refashioning global supply chains.
They are also co-founders of The Worldwide Supply Chain Federation,
a growing network of grassroots-driven communities focused on supply
chain, innovation, and technology.

19. 3433
About REFASHIOND Ventures
We get you.
You won’t need to spend the first few
meetings with us explaining supply chains.
We are enthusiastic supply chain nerds who have
dedicated the rest of our lives to enabling mean-
ingful change by directing our energies where
supply chains, technology, innovation, and com-
munity intersect.
Brian grew up in Northern Ghana, where most of
his family and relatives are peasant farmers who
live on less than $2 per day.
Lisa is one generation from the farmers and
seamstresses of Puerto Rico, where 44.9% of the
population lives in poverty.
We believe in the power of technological in-
vention and innovation in global supply chain
networks to drive competitive advantage for
individual companies, and to fuel economic
development for entire countries.
In the developed world, supply chain optimiza-
tion and localization are combining to create new
personalized and customized experiences for
consumers. This is changing their expectations,
and creating new opportunities and challenges
for incumbent companies as well as startups
across various mature industries.
In the developing world, supply chain innova-
tion can drive increased trade, increased con-
sumption, and higher economic output. Taken
together, these contribute to improved lives and
increased prosperity.
There is nothing either of us could do with the
rest of our lives that could have a higher impact
on the world as championing, and investing in
the entrepreneurs, innovators, and technolo-
gists building the supply chain networks of
the future.
We are enthusiastically obsessed
with technology, innovation, and
supply chain. We’re not ashamed
to admit that.
Supply chain people are our people.

20. 3635
OUR THESIS
The world is a supply chain.™
Software is eating the world.
Disruption creates opportunity.
OUR CORE BELIEFS
• Innovation in supply chain is
the foundation for all other
sustainable innovation.
• Supply chain innovation is an
economic multiplier.
• The future of global supply
chains is more collaborative.
• We’ve reached the tipping point.
WHY ARE SUPPLY CHAINS
BEING REFASHIONED?
• Unprecedented convergence is
occurring due to digitization.
• Global trade and consumption
are increasing.
• We have a little over a decade
left on our collective countdown
to save humankind.*
(source: U.N. General Assembly, 73rd
Session, High-Level Meeting on Climate
Sustainability)
Contact Us...
To speak with us about investing
in REFASHIOND Ventures,
consulting projects, or speaking
engagements.
Lisa Morales-Hellebo
GP Co-founder
REFASHIOND Ventures
lisa@refashiond.com
@lisahellebo
Brian Laung Aoaeh, CFA
GP Co-founder
REFASHIOND Ventures
brian@refashiond.com
@brianlaungaoaeh

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© REFASHIOND Ventures 2020 / “The world is a supply chain.” is a trademark owned by The New York Supply Chain Meetup