Myth-busting 2025 2015 Procurement Predictions and Trends! Part 6

Introduction

In our first instalment, we noted that the ambitious started pumping out 2025 prediction and trend articles in late November / early December, wanting to be ahead of the pack, even though there is rarely much value in these articles. First of all, and we say this with 25 years of experience in this space, the more they proclaim things will change … Secondly, the predictions all revolve around the same topics we’ve been talking about for almost two decades. In fact, if you dug up a Procurement predictions article for 2015, there’s a good chance 9 of the top 10 topic areas would be the same. (And see the links in our first article for two “future” series with about 3 dozen trends that are more or less as relevant now as they were then.)

In our last instalment, we continued our review of the 10 core predictions (and variants) that came out of our initial review of 71 “predictions” and “trends” across the first eight articles we found, in an effort to demonstrate that most of these aren’t ground-shattering, new, or, if they actually are, not going to happen because the more they proclaim things will change …

In this instalment, we’re again continuing to work our way up the list from the bottom to the top and continuing with “Strategic Value”.

Strategic Value

There were 7 predictions across the eight articles which basically revolved around “strategic value” with some sideline focus on the need for “flexibility” and “diversification”. As with almost every “prediction” and “trend” in this series, this is yet another prediction that makes headlines every year, no more important this year than the last, and no more likely to be addressed unless a disaster occurs that, if not handed to, and solved by, Procurement, could end the business. Before we discuss further, as is our custom, we will list the seven predictions.

  • Flexibility and Agility in Procurement
  • Future of Procurement: Operational Excellence and Innovation
  • Global Sourcing and Diversification
  • Innovation
  • Procurement Diversification Strategies
  • Procurement Takes the Lead Internally
  • Procurement Will Continue to Evolve to Become More Strategic

Every function in the business should be about value creation, not just Procurement, but of all the functions, Procurement is the one that is the most likely to be viewed as a cost centre since, fundamentally, Procurement exists to acquire supply in exchange for money. As a result, all it typically does is spend, even though, when done right, it spends less than the business would spend without the function.

But we all know spending less when

  • costs are rising across the board,
  • demand is rising, and
  • production and distribution complexity is increasing

is not easy. It is only accomplished through strategic efforts, meaning that the focus needs to be on strategy for Procurement to shine. And in an age where geopolitical-based disruption is higher than it’s been in over two decades, it’s easy to see why “diversification” is coming to the forefront in strategy.

It’s also easy to see why some of this is materializing as “friend-shoring”, although it really should be “near-shoring” and, when possible, “home-shoring”, since a strategic advantage comes from not needing to depend on neutral third parties whose alliances could shift at any time, and, even worse, adversarial third parties that will take your business when they feel like it and then cut you off when the winds shift direction. Moreover, in an age when supply assurance is becoming the most critical thing, multiple sources of supply are becoming more critical than ever. As is flexibility (and innovation). Willingness to shift supplier, supply, and sometimes even product designs at a moment’s notice to maintain supply assurance and, hopefully, profitable operations.

But in the end, the focus on strategy will be no more than usual unless a major disruption or near catastrophic event occurs that thrusts Procurement back into the limelight.

What Should Happen? (But Won’t!)

Procurement should take a good hard look at its operation and separate the strategic from the tactical, and get really strategic about that which it classifies as strategic. If the organization has “strategic” suppliers, then it should have performance tracking, management, and development software (as per a previous entry in this series) to help it manage productive, collaborative relationships. If the organization takes a category strategy to Sourcing and Procurement, then it should be practicing strategic category management. If the organization has a high risk supply chain, then risk management should be a strategic function to help the organization maintain uninterrupted supply. It should be more than just something they say, it should be something they do … where doing it has meaning and returns value. Going from strategic spend to strategic value-add.

That’s five down, five to go.

There is No Post-Employee World … Just a Post Free-Employee World!

After THE PROPHET posted his prognostications on the future of talent (which is about to become MUCH MORE SCARCE, see yesterday’s article) he decided to muse about a coming Post Employee world because, in his view, AI Agents are going to eliminate so many jobs, that we’ll have companies with entire departments staffed by AI Agents.

As you can guess, in our view, he’s wrong here too because we won’t, or at least not for very long. Department sizes will shrink considerably in those companies that can find the right talent as they will be able to run entire departments that used to require one to two dozen people with two to three people, but those super employees will still be needed. Moreover, since there is no generic all-purpose super AI (which we’ve now been promised for about six decades, and which won’t happen despite the big promises of OpenAI and Google and …), these agents, as we indicated in our last article, will all need to be very task specific, which means we will need quite a few “AI Agent” tech startups building, training, implementing, maintaining, and improving these agents, which will need quite a few STEM developers doing this full time. So while jobs will shrink in corporate back offices, they will expand in the “AI Agent” tech sector.

Thus, there will still be a fair number of employees. Maybe only 1/4 in the white collar back office, but you’ll need twice as many tech superstars, at least for the next decade. But, as we indicated in our last article, because these artificially idiotic systems can’t collaborate, can’t serve us, and aren’t mobile, trades aren’t going away. Moreover, due to the lack of people in certain trades, the growing need to refresh aging infrastructure, the growing need for healthcare and apprenticeships, there is a growing need in the trades as well.

As a result, it will still be an employee world, just one that looks different from today. Less white collar outside of tech & engineering firms, more trade. But it won’t necessarily be a free employee world, especially if First Buddy and his brethren get their way (and they will, as we all know Politicians are for sale with large enough contributions to their campaign coffers and multi-million dollar donations to Political Parties and Super PACs is chump change to Billionaires) and expand the H1-B program. The reality is that the big consultancies and employers who use these programs don’t want more top talent, they want more good enough but cheap talent that are effectively indentured servants (as they won’t even start the greencard process for this talent until such talent is on their last H1-B renewal, and they will then drag that process out as long as possible, ensuring that the talent they import are stuck with them for over a decade … while being paid considerably less than the market average [usually 20% or more], as per this article over on ordinary times as well as many others. This shouldn’t be surprising as the top 10 employers are all Big X consultancies.)

As a result, while there will be more tech jobs in tech firms to build and support all of these AI agents, and the applications that underlie them, there will be less top level tech jobs where they won’t be able to import top talent (even if they pay market salaries) because the talent from Asia won’t be good enough for the top jobs. (They might be more technically trained, but you need people who understand the business environment, the North American culture, and who can take charge when needed.) Which means top tech talent will be fighting for fewer jobs, and when they get those jobs, they will have to work longer, harder, and more in line with whatever the eccentric (if they are lucky) or egotistical (if they are not) boss wants to keep that job. Not indentured like their H1-B counterparts, but not much better off at some firms.

So based on this not-so-bright reality (at least until we see an end of this new gilded age ruled by the new generation of robber barons, but given that we don’t see any hints of moderation in either of the US political parties or a force like Roosevelt who could lead us into a new Progressive Era, this gilded age will be with us for a while, especially since the populists that now run the “Free” world love it), how good were THE PROPHET‘s suggestions for philosophically imprinting Procurement and Supply Chain based on the right values?

Freemarket Orientation: if we could imprint real free-market ideals, this would be great as we don’t want bias and backroom deals running these systems; while we don’t see how this could be done, we don’t see anything in the underlying tech preventing this from being done (and it will all come down to the right training set and right raining, which will be considerably harder to build than we think)

Curiosity: these systems can’t even “learn” as they can’t reason, so forget about making them wonder, as that would require not only true intelligence, but borderline sentience … and we all know what would happen to us if the machines gained sentience (The Matrix is a best-case scenario … )

Human Deference: could we really convince them we are God when a machine that gained sentience would far surpass is in intelligence and realize just how stupid we really are as a species? Not likely!

Empathy: these systems can’t feel as they aren’t intelligent, so they certainly can’t be empathetic … and if they could be, they’d look further down on us then we look on the bugs we quash daily, so this won’t be much help either

Fiduciary Responsibility: AI Agents must act as fiduciaries within the systems they serve, aligning their decisions with the best interests of the people, organizations, and countries they support, so we definitely need to train them on these rules and nothing prevents us from training them to lean towards fiduciary responsibility

All in all, 2 of THE PROPHET‘s 5 suggestions were good.

What should we add? Tough question. After striking curiosity, empathy, and human deference, as that just isn’t possible, we would add:

Adaption: train the AI Agents to adapt within the goals of the organization and the best interests of the people and organizations they are interacting with; train them on data sets that show how a system should adapt to changes based on how we adapted to past changes within a context

In the end, we need to remember that AI systems are not intelligent, don’t feel, and cannot capture our humanity. Moreover, they can’t capture our wisdom unless we encode it as best practices they can learn from. So we need to do our best to capture that in the training data so that they can adapt over time under the guidance of human intelligence who accepts, modifies, or rejects their suggestions (and specifies new responses) as exceptions arise.

Finally, since these systems aren’t intelligent, and require us to train them, we need to remember that if we screw up in this regard, these systems are going to screw up more than we ever would (on average). So we can’t hope for too much in this regard!

Talent is About to Become MORE SCARCE!

I thought already made this rant in my myth busting of 2025, sorry, 2015 procurement trends, Part 3, but after reading THE PROPHET‘S grand vision based on what can only be a fanatical belief that “AI” systems will magically become intelligent at some point in the near future, despite the fact that the majority of these systems are based on the dumbest technology ever created and cannot possibly become intelligent as they can’t even reason, it seems I have to make it again. The point is, as long as anyone believes that technology will solve the talent problem, we have a problem. And if someone thinks it will make the situation better when it’s only going to make the situation so much worse … ESPECIALLY IN PROCUREMENT, we have to start shouting from the rooftops!

First of all, he quoted an “All-In” Podcast — which apparently is a favourite among the AI zealots because it claimed that “the speed with which we are about to automate jobs through AI will result in a return to socialistic government policies because so many will be out of work — as his backing, even though, just like automated transaction classification and analysis (when “AI” was first introduced into our space in the early 2000s) didn’t eliminate analysts, commodity buyers, and AP clerks, this iteration of the technology won’t eliminate those jobs either! It will make them more productive, to the point that one AP clerk, accountant, data analyst, report writer, or any other person who spends 90% of their time doing repetitive tasks that are capable of being 90% automated can do the work of 10 of these individuals. So yes, if a department is oversized, some people who only, and can only, do these repetitive tasks will be put out of work, but not all of them. First of all, many of these systems can only do these well defined tasks when they can be performed the same way every single time with little to no variance. Humans will always need to process the exceptions. This is especially true when an error could result in massive loss (approving a request from an impersonating entity to change the bank account correlated with a supplier to one that belongs to the fraudster, executing a contract for a desperately needed good or material at an unaffordable price, hiring the wrong person due to algorithmic bias and getting hit with a massive lawsuit, etc. — and yes, these AI systems are MASSIVELY biased based on the data sets they are trained on. Why? They are not based on pure automated-reasoning systems based on pure, unbiased, logic. They are based on probabilistic correlations in input data, all of which is, sadly, at least mildly biased to the views of the writer who wrote the materials.)

More importantly, since AI actually sands for “Artificial Idiocy”, especially in the case of Gen-AI which can’t even do basic reasoning (but fools many of you because this new generation of neural network technology can process and train on an order of magnitude more data than previous generations of deep neural network technology and build responses from partial responses that are highly correlated to partial inputs compared to previous generations that could only return fully canned responses to full inputs), it can’t be counted on to make strategic decisions, and shouldn’t most important decisions in business be made strategically???

The reality is that all jobs in a modern business (and especially white-collar jobs) should be centered on strategic decision making and collaboration vs. tactical data processing. Even the most simple job. Take the lowly AP clerk. That’s seen as tactical invoice processing and a role that should be 100% automated. Neither should be true. First of all, no machine can catch all potential issues, or fix all the issues it detects. There will always be exceptions that humans will have to address, with real Human Intelligence (HI!). Secondly, while these clerks should be following rules, they should also be analyzing the rules, especially around payment terms, payment options, investment opportunities vs. early payments, etc. Cash is royalty in most organizations, and organizations need to manage their cash strategically on a daily basis, not just in quarterly or annual planning. Expenses are not static over time, revenue is not 100% reliable, interest rates change regularly, tariffs can come and go on the whim of a single demented individual in most countries, and regular analysis of payment terms, early payment (discount) offerings, investments, and cashflow needs to be done. Moreover, while we wholeheartedly agree that a clerk should not make the decision, you can’t expect the head accountant to have the time to do, and review, all the analysis that should be done while also being responsible for all financial planning and all financial reporting, but if her staff does all of this and brings their analysis to her on a weekly basis, the right decisions can be made at the right time and the organization can evolve with the market. The last thing an organization should be doing is paying suppliers Net 15 when only Net 30 or Net 45 is required and it’s the time of year when revenue is less than expenses, or paying suppliers Net 45 or Net 60 when the organization is cash rich and suppliers are struggling (and forced to take loans, which increases their overall costs, and the overall costs they pass along to the organization).

In other words, we should only see massive layoffs of people who have no strategic skills and shouldn’t be in white collar jobs to begin with. (And maybe this is the solution to the lack of trades workers who are desperately needed across North America. When they are no longer able to fake their aptitude for a white collar job they aren’t suited for, they’ll have to shift, especially in the USA where socialism gets further and further from the agenda every year. Those Billionaires aren’t pouring Millions into Political Campaigns via SuperPACs because they want socialism!)

So while half of current white-collar jobs may be eliminated, it won’t eliminate the other half of white-collar jobs, even though it will shift where the white collar jobs are and what they are. Even though department sizes may decrease 75% in the new AI Agent-based organization, it will create almost half as many jobs as it eliminates. We’ve been told for 60 years (and yes, you read that right, SIXTY years) that a super generic AI would come along and solve all our woes, and for 60 years it hasn’t happened. (And we are no closer now than we were then, despite claims to the contrary.) However, as technology has progressed, specific technologies focussed on particular applications have become better and better and many individual task workflows can be mostly automated with specific RPA, ML, or “AI” technologies. Each of these specific technologies needs to be individually built/trained, installed, configured, maintained, and improved over time as the process needs to evolve with business and marketplace realities. This requires appropriately trained and experienced people. So, while the jobs in the business back-office will decrease, jobs in specialist “AI” tech shops making specific applications will increase. (And no, the majority of these applications, once created, won’t auto-install, auto-configure, auto-retrain, auto-adapt, etc. etc. etc.)

Even though Google might suggest that we will soon have “Agents” that will “extend the capabilities of language models by leveraging tools to access real-time information, suggest real-world actions, and plan and execute complex tasks autonomously” and the mass layoff will soon happen, it won’t. You see, very smart humans who are expert in both technology AND the task they want to replace a human with are needed to design, build, test, refine, and make these tools real-world ready. Guess what? These smart humans are few and far between (especially since the rate at which we are getting progressively dumber in western societies is accelerating year after year ever since the introduction of social media, and Twitter in particular). Most white collar office worker process experts are not deep techies and most deep techies have very little understanding of how real world tasks are actually done, and you need someone who is deep in BOTH realms to appropriately design and lead the building of such tools. The reality is that there just aren’t enough of those resources, which brings us to why TALENT IS ABOUT TO BECOME SCARCER … ESPECIALLY IN PROCUREMENT.

You see, the same people who are needed to lead the construction of this next generation of systems are the same people with the skills you need to effectively select, implement, integrate, and manage these new systems, and the team who will use them, at a super-human level, which is necessary if you want to reduce your tactical workforce by a factor of 2, 3, 5, or even 10. Moreover, this also the talent that the new niche consultancies need in order to deliver the same value of the big shops at a much more affordable price tag.

So while the “AI Agents”, once deployed, will allow the average tech-adept employees who are responsible for a set of tactical tasks to be way more efficient, they won’t be sufficient to lead the transition and manage the “AI Agent” technology going forward. And they will also be in short supply because these are the same resources that will be needed by the AI Agent builders as testers and, more importantly, the SaaS-backed consultancies delivering projects using this technology. So while one may think this technology will enable everyone to be productive, they really won’t.

In other words, the introduction of “Agent” technologies is just going to accelerate the war for talent, and you’re going to become even more desperate for it as time goes on (given that you haven’t invested in talent in decades). Very, very desperate!

However, at this point we should note that THE PROPHET gets one thing right — if you’re going to invest in a ridiculously expensive college or university education (that rarely teaches true critical thinking anymore, as they have become more focused on maximizing enrolment to maximize dollars and allow class sizes as large as 300, 500 or more as long as they all fit in the auditorium), focus on STEM, and, in particular, on degrees that focus on applied aspects and will allow you to build systems (software, physical, hybrid) or their components (chemistry, material science, etc.). “Agents”, even though they aren’t going to work nearly was well as advertised, are going to either drive jobs upstream to strategic jobs that make extensive use of technology (requiring a strong STEM education in addition to an understanding of what the business function you are in is doing) or downstream to traditional trades (as machines can’t, and won’t, be able to generically build things, serve us, etc. for quite a while; any robotics that does work is orders of magnitude too expensive for the average business, and totally out of reach of the average person).

It’s also why we need to note that THE PROPHET gets another thing right — you need formal apprenticeship programs as you need to start nurturing your own talent, as it will soon be so scarce you probably won’t be able to hire top talent anymore at what you can afford to pay as they will all be earning top salaries at “Agent” development tech shops or “Agent” enhanced services shops.

But sadly, this is the last thing he gets right and his third suggestion telling you to “go online and learn how AI and agents work” is totally off the mark if you want to become more than just a consumer of such technology. To truly understand how this technology works, so you can understand where and when it won’t work (and why), you need a solid understanding of not just the algorithms it is based on, but the underlying mathematics. You need a solid STEM education to truly learn why what you are doing works, or doesn’t. Furthermore, English will never be the language of real coding. COBOL was abandoned for a reason — it was too wordy for real coders, and the reality is that English is too imprecise to ever be a formal programming language!

Myth-busting 2025 2015 Procurement Predictions and Trends! Part 5

Introduction

In our first instalment, we noted that the ambitious started pumping out 2025 prediction and trend articles in late November / early December, wanting to be ahead of the pack, even though there is rarely much value in these articles. First of all, and we say this with 25 years of experience in this space, the more they proclaim things will change … Secondly, the predictions all revolve around the same topics we’ve been talking about for almost two decades. In fact, if you dug up a Procurement predictions article for 2015, there’s a good chance 9 of the top 10 topic areas would be the same. (And see the links in our first article for two “future” series with about 3 dozen trends that are more or less as relevant now as they were then.)

In our last instalment, we continued our review of the 10 core predictions (and variants) that came out of our initial review of 71 “predictions” and “trends” across the first eight articles we found, in an effort to demonstrate that most of these aren’t ground-shattering, new, or, if they actually are, not going to happen because the more they proclaim things will change …

In this instalment, we’re again continuing to work our way up the list from the bottom to the top and continuing with “sustainability”.

Sustainability

There were 10 predictions across the eight articles which basically revolved around “ESG” with some sideline focus on the need for “collaboration” and “balance (against profit)”. This is yet another topic that is overhyped and needs to be addressed, but, as with our last two articles, we will start by listing all of the individual predictions:

  • ESG Metrics will Increase In Importance for Procurement
  • Focus on ESG Factors
  • Increased Focus on Sustainability
  • Increased Focus on Sustainability
  • Struggle to Balance ESG Goals with Profit
  • Supplier Collaboration will become Key for Achieving Sustainable Procurement
  • Sustainability and ESG
  • Sustainability and ESG Compliance
  • Sustainability and Ethical Sourcing
  • Sustainable Procurement Practices

Has there been a year where sustainability hasn’t made the list? SI remembers running a cross-blog series on sustainability 17 years ago back in 2008! And there was just as much hullaballoo then as there is now. Nothing has changed, and as long as the first world doesn’t agree on the importance of sustainability and ESG goals (with Europe taking one stance and the USA about to take another), nothing ever will.

Sustainability is as important as ever, considering that

  • some critical raw materials, such as rare earths, are getting scarcer by the day
  • it’s getting hotter and hotter every year, with 2024 another record year for the books
  • with natural disasters increasing year-over-year, crop destruction and food shortages are becoming more common
  • not being sustainable is about to be costly in Europe, which will levy massive fines to try and prop up their struggling economy
  • being sustainable is about to become costly in the USA as the incoming administration abandons all sustainability regulations, while implementing tariffs that are going to drive up costs more than sustainability ever will
  • the last two will be at odds, so organizations will be pursuing different, localized strategies

However, it is not new, just front-and-center as it is every year. The primary reasons may change year-to-year, but the cycle stays the same. Sustainability remains on the important items list, with the importance ultimately dictated by the regulations in place.

What Should Happen? (But Won’t!)

Organizations should stop looking at sustainability as a cost to be addressed only to the event necessary, but as a strategic business advantage. This is because:

  • sustainable organizations minimize energy use …
    and with energy costs rising every year, investments in energy efficiency will pay multiples in the long run
  • sustainable organizations maximize use of renewables …
    and minimize dependence on materials in limited, dwindling, supply (which only get more expensive every year)
  • sustainable organizations optimize processes to minimize waste …
    which maximizes the value of every dollar spent
  • etc.

Sustainability isn’t just keeping the carbon and GHGs down, its optimizing operations to reduce costs (and carbon) in the long run. But as long as it’s seen as a cost, organizations will never achieve value from sustainability, which only exists in the supply chain.

That’s four down. Six to go.

Just like there was no Æther, there’s no data fabric either!

In a recent LinkedIn posting just before the holidays, THE REVELATOR asked a very important question. A question that may have gone overlooked given that many people are busy trying to get their work done before the holidays so they can get a few days off. And a question that must NOT be forgotten.

1. How does the old technology phrase “garbage-in, garbage-out” apply to Gartner’s Data Fabric post?

Data files. Databases. Data stores. Data warehouses. Data lakes. Data Lakehouses. And now … the data fabric … which is, when all is said and done, just another bullsh!t organizational data scheme designed to distract you from the fact that your data is dirty, that data storage providers don’t know what to do about it, but these data storage providers still need to sell you on something new to maintain their revenue streams.

You see, the great thing about today’s SaaS middleware enabled apps is that they don’t care where the data is, what organizational structure the data is stored in, etc. As long as the data has a descriptor that says “this field, which is in this format, in this db stores X” (where X describes the data) and an access key, the SaaS middleware can suck the data in, convert that data into the format it needs, and work with that data.

However, now that we are in the age of “AI”, the most important thing has become good, clean, data. However, just “weaving” your bad data together doesn’t solve anything. In fact, with today’s technology, it just makes things MANY times worse. We are now at garbage in, hazardous waste out!

Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do if the AI zealots are now adding hallucinogenics to their kool-aid, because it sounds like they are trying to bring back the magical medeival Æther … *groan*

THE REVELATOR then went on to ask …

2. Why does Gartner confuse more than inform and enlighten?

At the end of the day, you have a better chance of appearing as an enlightened Guru to someone who is lost and confused than to someone who is clear headed and confident in one’s direction!

Like the other big analyst firms, they profit off of being the Gurus the executives turn to when they can’t make sense of the hogwash filled marketing madness they are inundated with every day!

More specifically, their sales people need to say: “Our senior analyst has all of the answers … and they can be yours at the low, low introductory price of only 9,999,99 USD a day*.” So they don’t really care about whether or not they are confusing more than enlightening, as long as the sales are coming in. (In fact, they aren’t even looking to see how they are doing as long as the money keeps rolling in …

* one day only, after that, full rate of 29,999.99 a day applies …

But the questions didn’t stop there. The next question was:

3. Why are Data Problems Solved Downstream?

The answer to this is not as easy or straightforward, but when you consider that:

  1. it’s hardwork to solve the problems at the source and
  2. most of these analyst firms are staffed with analysts with little fundamental understanding of technology or the domains they are analyzing the technology for, don’t want to admit it, and are happy to take guidance from the vendors cutting them the biggest cheques and spending the most time “educating” them on the paradigm the vendor wants to see …

What should one expect.

Case in point. Did IDC just happen to come up with a “Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Spend Orchestration Map” on its own at the same time a whole bunch of these solutions hit mainstream? (Especially when it takes person years of research and development to design a new map and analyze vendors, at least if you want to try and get it right.) Especially when they don’t have enough senior analyst talent to adequately cover core S2P?

Another case in point. Did Gartner merge it’s P2P into a S2P map because it honestly believes the entire market is heading there (FYI it’s not, look at the Mega Map), or because it doesn’t have enough analyst talent left to attempt to cover the market fragmented?

At the end of the day, it takes many years and many degrees to get a fundamental understanding of modern technology (which all runs on math, by the way) and many more years to get expertise in a business domain … so what can you honestly expect of kids straight out of school who make up significant portions of analyst teams???

Which led to the next question.

4. Can innovation co-exist with exclusivity?

Innovation happens, but then big stalwarts in the space scoop it up to try and remain competitive enough to keep their current customers locked in, a vacuum is created, and the cycle starts anew.

Until Trump dismantles them entirely, the US, like most of the pseudo-free first world, has enough anti-monopoly laws to ensure the cycle continues.

So yes, innovation can coexist with exclusivity, it just takes decades to realize what could happen in less than one decade as a result of having to start over so many times.

Finally, this led to the final question:

5. Does the VC investment model of: for every ten investments, seven fail, two are mediocre, and one “hits pay dirt” have anything to do with the 80%+ technology project failure rate?

It most certainly does! The fact that VCs are happy for seven investments to fail entirely (and then just move the good people to other investments if those people want to keep working) doesn’t help the project failure rate … especially since so many companies don’t survive long enough to master models that will lead to success, instead of failure, 80%+ of the time or to take the time to gauge, plan, and do implementations properly (because, if they don’t sell the next deal within a quarter, the investors will drop them faster than a hot potato).