In a moment when global supply chains are being reshaped by geopolitical fragmentation, AI disruption, and the energy transition, A Century of Plenty offers something rare: a rigorously data-driven case for optimism.
Written by senior researchers at the McKinsey Global Institute, this sweeping work examines a century of economic progress and argues that the conditions for another century of broadly shared prosperity are within reach; if we choose to build it.
The book is structured around a central metaphor: the “progress machine,” driven by six interlocking engines: workers, skills, investment, invention, energy, cities, and trade. For supply chain professionals, this framing is immediately recognizable.
The authors are essentially describing the inputs and throughputs of a civilizational supply chain, and much of the book reads as a long-horizon view of the forces that have shaped and will continue to shape how goods, people, and ideas move around the world.
What Supply Chain Managers Will Find Valuable
Infrastructure and logistics as progress drivers. The authors trace how the shipping container catalyzed a cascade of complementary innovations that slashed lead times, enabled just-in-time manufacturing, and made deep integration of global supply chains possible. Container ships that carried 500–800 TEUs in the 1960s now carry 24,000 TEUs; port infrastructure has evolved from manual dock workers to AI-driven robotic handling systems. This history is not mere nostalgia. It is a template for the transformative potential of physical standardization and a reminder that today’s AI-enabled logistics systems represent an equally significant shift.
The fragmentation of the global trade order. The authors are candid about the risks ahead. They identify rising multipolarity, trade tensions, and deglobalization as one of the five major disruptions defining the current era. For supply chain managers already navigating nearshoring, friend-shoring, and tariff uncertainty, the book provides a useful analytical framework: these are not temporary shocks but structural shifts that demand strategic re-evaluation of sourcing footprints and supplier networks.
Capital investment is the productivity multiplier. The book’s data point that capital per worker has grown ninefold over the past century (accounting for 70–80% of productivity growth in the past 25 years) directly speaks to investment decisions supply chain leaders face today. The authors argue that a failure to invest in infrastructure, automation, and intangibles (R&D, software, digital twins) is one of the central risks to future growth. Aging and under-maintained infrastructure are highlighted as a particular concern.
AI and next-generation robotics are the next frontier. The authors position AI as potentially the most transformative technology humanity has witnessed, and unlike electrification or ICT, one that spreads faster, costs less to adopt, and penetrates service sectors far more broadly. The implication for operations and logistics leaders is significant: AI-driven demand forecasting, autonomous warehousing, and real-time supply chain visibility are not distant possibilities but near-term imperatives.
Food systems and raw materials supply. Dedicated chapters examine whether humanity can produce sufficient food for 12 billion people and whether critical materials are available to sustain the energy transition. The findings are cautiously encouraging — agricultural productivity gains, precision farming, and supply chain improvements (including cutting the current 30–40% food loss rate) could close the gap. On materials, the authors find that extractable reserves of key transition minerals have historically grown at rates consistent with the demands of abundance.
Critical Assessment
The book’s greatest strength is its empirical grounding: it draws on a century of data across dozens of economies to challenge both techno-pessimism and naive triumphalism. Its greatest limitation, for a practitioner audience, is that it operates at the civilizational level. It describes macro-forces admirably but offers limited operational guidance. Supply chain managers seeking tactical playbooks will need to do the translation work themselves.
The authors also acknowledge that net-zero by 2050 is “in all likelihood out of reach”: a sobering admission that has direct consequences for supply chain decarbonization planning and long-term risk assessment.
Verdict
A Century of Plenty is essential reading for supply chain leaders with strategic responsibilities. It provides an intellectually honest, data-rich framework for thinking about the forces (trade, technology, energy, demographics, and institutions) that will reshape global operations over the coming decades.
The book’s core argument that growth, sustainability, and inclusion are more complementary than contradictory is a useful corrective to the zero-sum thinking that too often dominates boardroom conversations about resilience and risk. Read it not for operational prescriptions, but for the long-view strategic orientation it provides.
Walther Ploos van Amstel.
Also read: Five Domains That Are Reshaping Supply Chain Management