The secret behind achieving competitive supply chains is mastering the art of finding innovative solutions to face global challenges. In a world full of significant and rapid global changes that face the supply chain industry as well as a dynamic complex environment and due to the fact of the increased number of startups that could provide innovative solutions for existing pains in the supply chain despite the existing global challenges, it becomes indispensable to study the impact of entrepreneurship on the supply chain industry to be able to adapt and survive in the market. Therefore, the primary purpose of this research is to investigate the disruption caused by startups to the supply chain industry in Egypt and how the traditional supply chain could benefit from the entrepreneurial mindset of startups to be able to respond to the rapid global challenges as well as to improve the supply chain performance.
Top1. Introduction
Supply chain management has evolved significantly in the last 15 years and has become a “hot topic” as argued by Mentzer et al (2007). Supply chain is a well-organised production process in which raw materials are turned into completed goods and then distributed to end users. Supply chain is also defined as a broad term for the process integration that involves businesses turning raw resources into finished goods and shipping them to the end consumer. Looking for supply chain management, it is defined as the integration of important business activities from the end user to suppliers who offer goods, services, and information that give value to the customer (Janvier-James, 2012).
Although the supply chain is an important significant system to any cooperates, it faces many challenges that may retard its work. For example, Coronavirus has revealed the fragility of global supply chains. This fragility appears in scarcity of raw materials, disruptions in production and transportation, and social distancing. Accordingly, Corona virus represents an important alert for corporates must carefully anticipate the issues that may arise during the recovery process and devise appropriate solutions to secure the survival of their enterprises and supply chains through the dynamic conditions (Paul et al., 2021).
Another important challenge is related to linking the supply chain to a circular economy. Previous studies have tried hard to identify challenges facing redesigning the supply chain linked to the Circular Economy. Bressanelli et al. (2019) addressed 24 challenges that may hamper a supply chain redesign for the Circular Economy, in which these challenges were identified under seven categories, which are economic and financial viability, market and competition, product characteristics, standards and regulation, supply chain management, technology and user's behaviour.
Although the supply chain faces many challenges, it is also significant as it represents a value addition to the cooperate and helps reach a competitive advantage. Recent supply chain is connected with entrepreneurship. This connection is made due to the unneglectable role of SMEs in the economies of many countries of the world. Entrepreneurial supply chain helps connect customers and suppliers based on innovative ideas (Akbar et al., 2012). As globalisation occurs (Guo et al., 2020), the supply chain faces different challenges (Habib et al., 2021). Such challenges become greater and more difficult to control with the ongoing crisis happening, whether economically (Aday and Aday, 2020) or environmentally (Sarkis, 2020). Therefore, it becomes crucial to introduce a new innovative and risk-taking approach rather than the traditional approach of supply chain (Le et al., 2022), to face such challenges. At this point, it could be claimed that entrepreneurial thinking could provide better results for achieving the supply chain by introducing innovative and risk-taking ideas for the supply chain management.
Entrepreneurial supply chains emphasise innovation and expansion in addition to the usual focus on cost, quality, and delivery. Moreover, customers are connected to suppliers through entrepreneurial supply chains, which increases visibility throughout the whole network and allows for more growth and development. Entrepreneurial Supply Chain mainly aims to enable business development by detecting and responding to needs and opportunities that necessitate growth-oriented responses (Akbari et al., 2021).
Although the entrepreneurial supply chain is critical, not enough research have explained the entrepreneurial supply chain and its effect on the performance related to Small and medium enterprises (Akbar et al., 2012). This research aims to investigate the disruption caused by startups to the supply chain industry in Egypt.
So, this study is crucial for all stakeholders involved in the supply chain to solve the industry challenges as well as to convert the pains to opportunities by making the supply chain and its activities more agile, efficient, adaptable, and flexible.