Alumni Discussion Club with Diego Vega: Adaptation vs. Adaptability – How Global Supply Chains Navigate Continuous Disruptions

For decades, global supply chains were designed for efficiency and periodically adjusted to major shocks. Companies adapted to change, e.g.  financial crises, natural disasters, trade tensions, by optimizing, restructuring, and restoring stability. But today, disruption is no longer episodic; it is structural. Geopolitical fragmentation, trade wars, climate volatility, regulatory pressure, and technological acceleration have created an environment where change is continuous rather than exceptional.

This discussion explores the difference between adaptation and adaptability. While adaptation focuses on responding to individual disruptions, adaptability requires building systems capable of evolving under constant uncertainty. Drawing on insights from the humanitarian sector where operating under extreme volatility is the norm, practical principles such as modular processes, decentralized decision-making, redundancy by design, and adaptive cycles thinking will be discussed to understand what commercial supply chains can learn from humanitarian operations and how leaders can move from reactive resilience toward strategic adaptability in a permanently unstable world.

Diego Vega is Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management and Social Responsibility, esp. Humanitarian Logistics at Hanken School of Economics, Finland and Director of the HUMLOG Institute. He has over 15 years of experience working with international humanitarian organizations and advising NGOs, UN agencies, and the European Commission on supply chain strategy, resilience, and sustainability. He's the recipient of the 2023 American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) Research and Academic Achievement Award for his contributions to humanitarian logistics, he has been Principal Investigator for sevral externally funded projects and his research has been published in some of the most prestigious journals in the discipline.

Event for SSE Riga Alumni only, registration is required.