Digital Supply Chain Resilience: How Companies Can Meet the Supply Chain Challenges of an Increasingly Turbulent and Challenging World

The Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) today launched its new white paper, Digital Supply Chain Resilience: How Companies Can Meet the Supply Chain Challenges of an Increasingly Turbulent and Challenging World, during the Digital with Purpose Global Summit Shenzhen 2026. 

Developed in collaboration with GeSI’s global Supply Chain Working Group and leading technology companies, the publication explores how digital technologies, trusted data ecosystems, and cross-sector collaboration can help organizations strengthen supply chain resilience while advancing sustainability and long-term competitiveness. 

Against a backdrop of geopolitical uncertainty, climate impacts, regulatory complexity, cybersecurity threats, and accelerating digital transformation, the white paper argues that resilience can no longer be achieved through isolated action. Instead, it calls for a new model of ecosystem-wide collaboration, enabled by artificial intelligence, cloud computing, digital twins, IoT, advanced analytics, and shared digital platforms. 

“For more than 25 years, GeSI has demonstrated that the most complex sustainability challenges cannot be solved by one organization alone,” said Luís Neves, CEO of GeSI. “Resilient supply chains require trusted partnerships, shared data, and collective action. This white paper provides both a practical roadmap and a call to action for organizations committed to building more resilient, sustainable, and digitally enabled value chains.” 

The publication highlights how organizations are already delivering measurable results through digital innovation. Featuring real-world case studies from IBM, NEC, Alibaba, Globant, CATL, and FiberHome, it demonstrates how AI, digital platforms, circular economy models, and intelligent infrastructure are improving transparency, reducing risk, increasing operational efficiency, and strengthening environmental performance across global supply chains. 

The white paper also identifies the major forces reshaping global supply chains, including geopolitical fragmentation, critical material shortages, climate change, cybersecurity, evolving ESG regulations, and the rapid deployment of artificial intelligence. It examines how these challenges are affecting different regions—including Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific—and outlines practical strategies for organizations seeking to build greater resilience while meeting increasingly complex regulatory and sustainability requirements. 

Central to the report is the conclusion that collaboration is the single greatest enabler of resilient supply chains. By sharing data, aligning standards, developing supplier capabilities, and co-investing in innovation, organizations can reduce costs, improve transparency, accelerate compliance, and create more agile and future-ready value chains. 

As part of this initiative, GeSI announced a series of collaborative workstreams that will bring together industry, policymakers, and technology partners to develop common frameworks for sustainable supply chains, expand supplier capability-building programmes, and accelerate the adoption of trusted digital platforms that improve transparency and resilience across global value chains. 

The white paper was developed under the leadership of John Spear, Director of epi Consulting, and Tim Feng, Senior Vice President and Head of APAC at GeSI, with strategic guidance from GeSI’s Supply Chain Working Group, which includes senior executives from Deutsche Telekom, Verizon, e&, NEC, SAWACO, IBM, AT&T, T-Mobile US, and Globant. 

The launch of the publication reinforces GeSI’s commitment to the Digital with Purpose movement—demonstrating how digital technologies, when deployed responsibly and collaboratively, can strengthen business resilience while creating measurable value for society and the planet. 

For Members:  

• You can access the full version of the guide accessing member portal.