Are cryptocurrencies that next big thing in monetary markets? Or are they the next big bubble, just waiting to burst?

There’s nothing new about the idea of demand planning. Phoenician wine traders, 2,000 years ago, were savvy about staying ahead of fluctuations in demand via a network of merchant informants, and planned supply accordingly. The advent of vastly expanded computer data-processing power, along with the connectivity of the web, has been offering for 20 years or more the attractive proposition of using technology to track and predict demand for goods more accurately.

The term "sustainable development" was coined in Our Common Future, released in 1987 by the Brundtland Commission, a UN-backed organization created to unite countries in the pursuit of sustainable development. As defined by the Commission, there are three main pillars of sustainable development: economic growth, environmental protection and social equality.

At the end of my last call, I put down my headphones and smiled. It just happened again. What was it? I heard business buyers string together a set of "belief statements." These are commonly held as "truths" in the industry.

Conversations with supply-chain executives about the innovative technologies that are already shaping the way that product is moved to market.