On June 18, 2023, the OceanGate TITAN, a submersible on its way to the Titanic wreck site, imploded, killing all five passengers, including OceanGate CEO, Stockton Rush.

There were a number of factors leading to this tragic event, including a horrible disregard of basic safety measures, a deliberate effort to work outside of regulatory and inspection protocols, and a toxic company culture.

While many of these issues were internal, OceanGate did not make the TITAN or its predecessors in-house. This means that they had suppliers, and those companies had a front row seat to what was unfolding.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner covers the OceanGate operation from a supply chain point of view:

• OceanGate's evolutionary journey – first to buy and retrofit their submersibles and then to build them
• The different suppliers that played a role in manufacturing the TITAN, and signs that the company was looking for alternatives
• The challenge presented by innovation that seems to defy convention. When is an idea truly groundbreaking, and when is it just reckless?

Links:

• Marine Board's Report Into the Implosion of the Submersible TITAN in the North Atlantic Ocean Near the Wreck Site of the RMS TITANIC Resulting in the Loss of Five Lives on June 18, 2023
• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement

"No trucking company in the history of trucking companies has ever made money if their wheels aren't moving basically all the time." - Sean Devine, Founder and CEO, XBE

When costs are high and competition is tight, how companies think about opportunities and challenges determines how successful they will be.

They must deal with the never-ending push and pull between procurement and sales, the role of operational planning, and demand that alternates between peaks and troughs, but the big question is always the same: Is your core business as profitable as it could be?

Sean Devine is the Founder and CEO of XBE, and Sean Correll is their General Manager of Heavy Logistics. XBE is an operations platform focused on heavy materials, logistics, and construction. Their customers build and maintain roads, manufacture with concrete and asphalt, and mine and transport aggregate – expensive, asset-intensive activities.

Starting with the need to maximize asset utilization, and then transitioning into how the most strategic business decisions are made, this conversation applies far beyond heavy logistics.

Kelly, Sean, and Sean discuss:

• How to optimize owned v. hired logistics capacity
• The many different levers that can turn a good operation into a great one
• Understanding the cost of an opportunity, as well as buy-side competition
• Why we all need to resist the temptation to run towards even the best answers

"Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary." - Austrian Economist Joseph Schumpeter (1950)

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics was recently awarded to Joel Mokyr, an economic historian at Northwestern University, Philippe Aghion, who is affiliated with universities in France and the U.K., and Peter Howitt, a professor of economics at Brown University.

Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt worked together for decades to develop and publish a model that makes it possible to better understand business growth - but not just any growth. The growth fueled by Creative Destruction.

Creative Destruction was first described by Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 in response to ideas from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. In fact, Marx thought, and Schumpeter agreed, that it would lead to the end of capitalism… they just didn't agree on why.

In this episode of the Art of Supply podcast, Kelly Barner covers:

• What Creative Destruction is, and why it is no ordinary form of growth
• How the idea is connected to the potential end of capitalism
• Why it is so fascinating that this idea is being highlighted at this moment in time, with the rise of AI right before us.

Links:

• Kelly Barner on LinkedIn
• Art of Supply LinkedIn newsletter
• Art of Supply on AOP
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement