ADAM BEN-YOUSEF
SUPPLY CHAIN TECHNOLOGY
“ I see tariffs as more symptomatic of the real underlying factor: unpredictable, isolated shocks that fundamentally test resilience,” Adam says.
“ We’ ve built incredibly complex supply chains and most businesses that haven’ t invested in true end-to-end visibility across all tiers struggle to understand bottlenecks and dependencies, because that knowledge is highly decentralised.”
He highlights the relative calm from the mid-2000s to late 2010s, when the supply chain was treated mainly as a cost centre focused on efficiency.“ If you optimise for efficiency too tightly,” he warns,“ you start to take resilience out of the system.”
Addressing these challenges requires two key elements: board-level commitment and the capability to bring decentralised knowledge together.
“ I would put real primacy on having an open conversation with your board about investing in resilience. This literally means committing capital. If your supply chain spends several billion a year, meaningful resilience investment could run into the hundreds of millions,” Adam stresses.
On the operational side,“ companies must build the capability to stitch that knowledge so it’ s accessible instantly. Use cases constantly evolve from an annual plan that’ s the‘ north star’, to unpredictable scenarios.”
This is where o9’ s platform brings value. Its Digital Brain technology integrates diverse data and tribal knowledge from across a company, enabling agentic AI models that not only analyse but recommend and execute adjustments autonomously.
ADAM BEN-YOUSEF
TITLE: SVP OF REVENUE GROWTH MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
COMPANY: O9 SOLUTIONS
INDUSTRY: SUPPLY CHAIN SOFTWARE
Adam leads efforts to transform commercial planning by integrating advanced analytics and AI, bridging commercial and supply chain investments to drive smarter growth decisions.
“ Anyone can use a general-purpose LLM like ChatGPT for casual queries – it’ s an incredible innovation. But enterprise use cases require robustness and specialised knowledge frameworks,” Adam adds.
When silicon meets the living cell While AI and machine learning increasingly automate and optimise planning tasks, a radical new solution is emerging – one that blends digital with living biological systems. o9 Solutions may lead the practical edge of software-enabled resilience, but Cortical Labs ventures into something entirely different: experimental“ wetware” computing. This pioneering approach seeks to blend biological intelligence with traditional silicon systems.
144 December 2025