Getting Ahead of the Curve in a World of Cascading Crises

摘要

Four years ago, the threat of an avian-flu pandemic catapulted up the agenda of governments, global health agencies, and companies. The outbreak of an earlier virus, which caused a dis-ease called SARS, had illuminated what a fast-spreading global virus could do to travel, commerce, and public well-being. As a shipping company, UPS took the flu warnings seriously. The head of strat-egy assembled 20 managers from dif-ferent areas of the company for several workshops that explored how the disease might affect UPS's ability to serve its customers. The objective was to examine and rehearse responses to various sce-narios. Participants came up with five of them, each of which described the pos-sible origins of a pandemic, the conse-quences, and the contingency plans that UPS might implement.