Tripping Up Shipping The shelves are not bare before Christmas, but somethings remain in short supply. Political success means saving the day and some dream of an intervention in the global shipping industry. This is especially true for U.S. agricultural exporters who complain that containers are returning empty overseas and leaving their products stranded on the docks. Conscious of this frustration and the system of political rewards, John Butler of the World Shipping Council urged against an effort to “fight the market” with regulatory schemes when the limit is landside infrastructure. James Hookham of the Global Shippers Forum complained that the problem is national transport policy existing in “narrow modal sil...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.