The Four Ds of Disruption in Logistics Industry

Based on Peter Diamandis, the growth cycle of disruptive technologies goes through six stages: digitization, deception, disruption, demonetization, dematerialization, and democratization. Although not all stages can be applied to the disruption of business models related to physical processes such as the movement of goods, their argument, especially that of digitization, disruption, demonetization and democratization, still holds true and can be used as a valuable framework to analyze the future of logistics industry.

Digitization: The first stage of the disruptive process, digitization, has a big impact on transport and logistics industry. The most obvious impact is the migration of letters to email, reducing the number of documents sent through postal and express parcel service providers. The more transformative impact is the digitization of documents that carry the “metadata” accompanying goods throughout their storage and movement, which provides far greater level of supply chain visibility. If logistics companies can capture the data effectively, they can use it not only as a way of making their existing operational processes more efficient, but as an opportunity to replace outdated business models.

Disruption: The transport industry is currently very inefficient, partly because the sector is split into silos of private fleets of…