Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, one of the first humans to land on the moon, reflected, “Space is not just going up and coming back down again. Space is getting into orbit and being there, living there, establishing a presence, a permanence.” It’s about meaningful innovation that lasts.
The logistics tech sector resembles our solar system in that there are dominant planets and smaller planetary bodies orbiting together in harmony. These are profound interrelationships that work to reliably move cargo throughout the world. Global logistics is a complex interdependent system of established practices and systems. Only innovation derived from and able to be integrated with this established framework of data and legacy systems holds the most promise today.
Companies, especially the dominant players, are not going to adopt technology that is too distant from what they’re already doing. The lighter players, or start-ups, must get into a compatible orbit with those entities with the strongest gravitational pull.
Logistics tech start-ups often find it difficult to spin into the orbit of real-world practices, making disruption unlikely. It isn’t easy to intersect with the dominant, established players. The challenge is to scale and integrate in a meaningful way to address pain points, volatility, and the special cases that are so common.
At CargoSphere we’ve worked patiently with persistence, over many years, to alleviate pain points in container shipping rate management and distribution. We knew the real value would come from fully automating this process at the ocean carrier level, where there’s the strongest gravitational pull.
A direct, web-based data exchange of confidential, negotiated ocean rates that originates at the ocean carriers is like a celestial sunrise for industry rate management practices. Patience, persistence, and deep collaboration with key industry players is winning out. We’re now harmoniously orbiting with the dominant planets and delivering real innovation throughout the shipping ecosystem.