There's a natural tendency toward complacency after a project is successfully completed or a couple of good consecutive quarters have been reported. But that all-too-human reaction can have debilitating business consequences over the long term.

The true market leaders, the companies that have built a steady track record of increased customer share and market value, never seem to let up after a win. In fact, they only get hungrier for even bigger wins. These leaders are continually innovating to build on past successes, using them as the springboard to future gains.

That's certainly the case with Cisco Systems, whose story is related in this issue. Long recognized as a supply chain leader, the company has embarked on an initiative designed to further enhance its supply chain capabilities. This latest innovation, called eHub, will electronically embrace key trading partners across Cisco's manufacturing supply chain. eHub participants will benefit from a single demand signal, end-to-end supply chain visibility, and a greatly reduced planning cycle.

Imation Corp. showed a similarly innovative spirit in its implementation of CPFR (collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment). This producer of data storage technology decided to map the CPFR process to the Supply Chain Operational Reference (SCOR) model, developed by the Supply-Chain Council. The reasoning (which turned out to be right on target, by the way) is that you can't realize the full benefits of collaboration without first having a sound supply chain foundation in place.

It's interesting that the innovators seem to understand inherently the importance of that foundation. Robert Handfield of North Carolina State University notes this in his piece on building a B2B network. He points to General Motors and Nortel Networks—two innovators in the B2B space—as companies that are investing both time and resources in building the supply chain underpinning to support their Internet initiatives.

Innovative thinking is not necessarily limited to Internet-based initiatives. New product introduction—an activity that has become routine in so many companies—can benefit from a fresh approach, too. As consultant Stephen Todd of PRTM points out, however, most companies adopt a business-as-usual attitude when it comes to marshaling the supply chain resources needed to support a product introduction. This is unwise, Todd argues, because the business case for closely integrating the product development process with supply chain management is far too compelling.

Most human instincts are good. But, in a business sense anyway, that human tendency to "do things the way we've always done them" is an exception. As the articles in this issue underscore, the light of innovation must always burn intensely.