How transparency and traceability are reinventing the future of business

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.







The concept of transparency in business is not new. Companies have long had to share information with shareholders and suppliers. Consumers and employees, too, are asking for more data and accountability from brands and employers. Some businesses open up only when required by law—and they do so grudgingly. Nearly a third of CEOs say regulation and compliance inhibits their ability to reinvent their businesses, according to PwC’s most recent Global CEO Survey.



But a growing number of companies view transparency in their supply chains and manufacturing processes as a competitive advantage, and they’re not waiting for regulators to mandate disclosures. Instead, they’re mining that data for the value it brings to their businesses.



Power in origin stories



As consumers demand information about the products they use and how they were created, companies are responding. Earlier this year, bedding brand Boll & Branch launched Origin Track , which lets consumers trace how their sheets are made, from raw materials to finished product. EON, a winner of Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas award in the beauty and fashion category, helps luxury brands such Chloé deploy digital identification technology, giving clients access to an item’s origin, repair, and cleaning information. EON even facilitates reselling the product—a huge plus as the luxury secondary market expands and interest in circular economy processes grows. “There’s already a business case for traceability,” founder Natasha Franck tells my colleague Elizabeth Segran.



Indeed, companies are coming together to help facilitate and guide the inevitable move toward more transparency in products and their life cycles. Last week, GS1 US, a member of the GS1 standards-setting organization, convened its annual supply chain conference. There, business leaders discussed, among other topics, best practices for collecting and sharing data. (Fast Company is a GS1 partner, and I moderated a panel at the conference.) 



New data from an old-school tool



GS1 is known as a source for UPC barcodes, that ubiquitous, 50-year-old symbol that identifies products and helps businesses track and sell inventory. The organization, which is not a lobbying group, is now facilitating a migration to two-dimensional (2D) barcodes, which can contain additional information about ingredients, components, or details about where or how a product is made.



Consumers can benefit from such added levels of detail and transparency. Take food safety: a shopper could scan a QR Code, which is a type of 2D barcode, before buying a product to determine if it contained even trace amounts of an allergen. Retailers could use the technology to easily know whether an item expired before putting it on the shelf. And food makers could be more efficient and targeted in contacting retailers, or even customers, in the event of a product recall.



“We think there’s an opportunity for us to run our food supply chain and our general merchandise supply chain in a way that provides much more visibility and that’s safer and more efficient for the shopper,” says Bob Carpenter, president and CEO of GS1 US. 



Trust in transparency



Businesses stand to gain, too. Brands that offer more information may earn deeper loyalty and engagement from consumers. Manufacturers can use the traceability enabled by 2D barcodes and other digital tools to suss out counterfeits. (Fake items cost the global economy more than $500 billion a year .) And retailers will get more information about products when they scan an advanced barcode at the point of sale. “Data is not a cost of doing business. It’s an asset and an accelerant for growth,” Carpenter says.



He adds: “The message I share with CEOs is that you could be doing more to use data in a more effective way to drive growth, whether it’s a faster adoption of 2D or a more enlightened compliance with regulation that’s coming—both in the United States and globally—to better compete.”



GS1 US has an initiative called Sunrise 2027 aimed at ensuring that retailers can scan 2D barcodes at checkout by the end of 2027, and GS1 says companies throughout the supply chain and business ecosystem have agreed to adopt 2D to help provide consumers with more information. In parallel, regulators and lawmakers continue to pursue new traceability rules in certain foods and textiles.



I asked Carpenter about his experiences managing the transition to 2D barcodes, which he called an exercise in “balancing vision and principle with pragmatism.” He adds: “Leaders are dealing with the realities of existing infrastructure, existing equipment, CapEx needs, [and] demand from shareholders,” he says. “What we try to do as GS1 is to strike a bridge between moving from a current state to a destination that’s accretive for your company.”



How does your company use transparency?



Of course, information and data are only valuable to consumers and companies if stakeholders can act on it. Does your business see transparency and traceability as a business opportunity? If so, how are you surfacing data and information to help your business grow? Send examples to me at [email protected]. Your insights could form the basis of a future newsletter.



Read and watch: supply chains and sustainability 



How HP is using a supply chain reset to advance the circular economy 



Smart ways business owners can solve supply chain woes 



Why it’s so hard to eliminate plastic from the supply chain 



It will take a team of rivals to save the planet