How to Use the Living Widgets Global Supply Network

The Living Widgets Global Supply Network is a general-purpose tool, similar to the way that the Internet is a general-purpose tool. To identify ways to use Living Widgets, you need to identify how your company operates. For the purposes of Living Widgets, your company has three dimensions:

1. Offering types: products, services, information, experiences, and transformations. Initially you probably have some subset of these five types of offerings. Ultimately, you may want to provide all five.
2. Strength: innovation, customer satisfaction, operations. You would probably like to say that your company is strong on all three. Certainly you should not ignore any of these business components. However, studies have shown that truly successful companies put most of their efforts into one of these three strengths, partnering with other companies who are strong on the other two components.
3. Business models. Companies operate implicitly according to a certain set of rules. Living Widgets defines dozens of such sets of rules. You are encouraged to choose several complementary business models.

Inevitably, you can think of countless additional dimensions for your company. Under the Living Widgets Global Supply Network, however, these three dimensions determine all the other dimensions: marketing approach, logistics, human resource policies, and more.

The Power of the Living Widgets Business Models

How do these Living Widgets business models help you?

Businesses do not operate in a vacuum. As Peter Senge demonstrates in his book, The Fifth Discipline, decisions made by members of the supply networks that you belong to (including your peers) can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.

As you use the Living Widgets Global Supply Network to make increasingly more intelligent decisions, you need to agree with your supply network on a set of goals. The models provide a clear mental image of your network’s goals. Once you agree on a model, then everyone in your network can collectively apply the procedures for that model. Implicit in each model are protocols for:

• communications and relationships with suppliers, customers, and peers
• inventory management
• quality control
• logistics
• competitive maneuvers
• pricing
• evaluation of competing offerings
• distribution and servicing
• any other aspect of business that can be optimized by the collective mind of the supply network

The Living Widgets Smorgasbord of Business Models

There are countless ways to develop your business. What most companies don’t stop to realize is that you can choose several of these different ways. The key is to stop and think what’s involved in each approach, or model, and then manage each of those models.

The different models can work independently, as long as they don’t directly contradict each other. For example, it’s okay to deal with both high-end customers and low-end customers if you can explain your two models: We listen to our customer needs and then find the solution that is best for them.

When businesses initially heard about the Internet, they saw it as an either/or situation: Internet businesses would triumph or brick-and-mortar businesses would triumph. The reality is that most businesses now optimize by using a combination of both.

In this blog, we present the myriad models for making money with the Living Widgets Global Supply Network. Even without Living Widgets, most of these models can be extremely profitable if you understand them. Living Widgets simply takes each of these models in turn and then adds value by leveraging them, magnifying their returns.

What is the Living Widgets Global Supply Network?

The Living Widgets Global Supply Network is a partnership-based initiative to integrate all global supply networks into a single entity. In the absence of standards, the Living Widgets partnership offers a standard. Inevitably, there will be competing standards, and one will come up on top, with the competing standards interfacing with the official standard. When this happens—whether or not the Living Widgets standard is the official standard—the Living Widgets initiative will be a success, and businesses everywhere will win.

A 10-year initiative, now in the first of 3 phases, the Living Widgets Global Supply Network is transforming purchasing decisions in the same way that RSS feeds are transforming the publishing and broadcast industries. RSS feeds let any individual post content to the World Wide Web for computers to automatically read and present to the world. It is a form of publishing or broadcasting that is very much like what used to only be available to television and radio stations and newspaper and magazine publishers. Similarly, Living Widgets offers individuals purchasing capabilities previously available only to large multinational corporations.

Living Widgets provides members of a supply network with new tools for purchasing and selling. By adopting the published Living Widget standard, the supply network simultaneously hooks into the global marketplace. As the tools evolve, even the smallest of businesses will be able to access sophisticated tools, including comprehensive supply network management, auctions, and reverse auctions. Companies already using powerful tools like SAP and Ariba will be able to interface with a much larger network of suppliers and customers.

Wherever possible, the Living Widgets Global Supply Network leverages the existing global supply networks, building on existing strengths and adding value where needs exist. In the twenty-first century, the goal is to reuse existing resources wherever possible to maximize returns on investment. The supply network is really an integration of four distinct types of supply networks:

• Product Supply Network
• Service Supply Network
• Idea Supply Network
• Human Supply Network

Living Widgets will enhance the value of existing infrastructure wherever needs are confirmed:

• As implied by the name “Living Widgets,” a primary focus is to expand the network of global supply networks to incorporate more human-based services. Although there is a separate Human Supply Network, the human component spreads across the Service and Idea networks, and even the Product network, since people make products come to life. Humans imbue products with their tangible attributes, like guarantees and performance data, and intangible attributes, like quality and marketability.
• These supply networks will provide revenue sources as much as mechanisms to reduce costs.
• The Living Widgets network will integrate the disparate global supply networks.
• The level of automation will be increased. The universal goal is to “flip a switch” to set things in motion, and know when the requested product or service will be completed, as per specification. Even the purchasing process will be automated, with computer-driven peer-to-peer bidding. Human purchasing agents will be able to make increasingly sophisticated decisions, because the computers will do the complex calculations.
• Living Widgets will provide vehicles for laser-precise marketing. Companies will be able to target any market anywhere, like high-income consumers in Mumbai, India, or Joomla! programmers from around the world with Living Widgets experience, or third-world schools with inadequate budgets.
• Formal procedures, such as those associated with Six Sigma, will increase quality and reliability.
• Other needs will be addressed, as identified by early users.

Welcome to the World!

Welcome to the blog site for the Living Widgets Global Supply Network project! Please follow us for opportunities to maximize your presence in the global marketplace.