Christian Wurst - Startups, Technologies, and Investors Building Future Supply Chains

The Year 2020 will not only make the history books as the year of the COVID-19 crises, but will also be the year when Old and New Economy finally connect into one New Normal: Home offices and MS Teams become normal, city offices the exception, robots become the new bosses on the shop-floor, political conventions go virtual, Delivery Hero will climb into the DAX, and the digital platform economy replaces classical industries.

The digital infrastructure, measured in speed and capacity of the Internet, the cloud and global communication networks developed exponentially from 2000 to 2020. But in no single year in history was the speed of adoption and acceptance of digital technology as fast as in 2020, when a small almost invisible virus made it clear to old and young that the New Normal will be different, that digital disruption is the number one enabler of survival and economic growth and not a threat.

Those leaders who already drove the digital disruption during the last two decades and who were at the forefront of technology adaptionbe that in start-ups or traditional playersthose who were creative and adjusted their business models and supply chains arethe clear winners of the crises.

This book wants to inspire, wants to spark your individual creativity and therefore enables you to make the connection between old and new by sharing success stories and forces of digital disruption, new digital business models and introducing some of the key people that are shaping the New Normal.

I am honored to have been asked by the editors Christian Wurst and Luca Graf to write this Foreword. Christian whom I have got to know since joint studies at the WHU and Luca whom I have met the first time at the Lufthansa Group. They both together drove digital transformation at Panalpina, Christian in his role as regional CEO Europe and Luca as Head of Digital Innovation. This joint experience at Panalpina brought up the great idea to help others facing the digital disruption by sharing insights of practitioners for practitioners.

I hope you enjoy the reading as much as I did and that you shall also be inspired to further invest into the logistics industry, the only truly global industry and one in which I truly enjoy driving innovation since now 40 years.

is a digital expert and experienced leader with high competence in e-commerce, digital transformation and innovation. He is passionate for digital innovations, data-driven business models and digital marketing with many best practices in the mobility and transportation industry. Currently, Luca leads the global innovation practice at DSV Panalpina. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of St. Gallen and a diploma in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technical University of Berlin.