From predictive supply to cognitive retail: The future of intelligent manufacturing-to-market systems

This chapter explores some new theories about the answers to these questions. It attempts to map the future, to describe what the future will be; and therefore how to approach strategic planning, forecasting and making critical business decisions today given that future. In discussing the future, it discusses how business is likely to change and what will be the elements of this change. It also discusses why business will change, debates the key sequences of drivers of the future business path. The vast and rich research in many disciplines through which these futures discussed come is rich, ongoing and growing (Min, 2010; Lee et al., 2015; Wamba et al., 2017). The purpose of this book chapter is to put this body of work into a framework with which a business concerns use it. In this sense, this book chapter is not a self-supporting work; rather it is a map of a possible world. Its primary contribution is as a proximate cause of more intelligent and prescriptive thinking and busying acting about the future.