Business
Priorities
Customer ambition, commercial priorities and enterprise value.
Essays, research and perspectives
One Business.
In Flow.
47°N explores how organisations connect Supply Chain, Commercial, Finance, data and technology—from strategy to execution.
Point of alignment
47°N · A line of perspective
One latitude.
Multiple perspectives. Zürich is our reference point. The world becomes the field of views.
Multiple perspectives. Zürich is our reference point. The world becomes the field of views.
Coordinates
01Zürich
Local time--:--
02Cape
Town
Local time--:--
Position01 / The 47°N Position
Thomas
LemaireSwitzerland · 47°N
Ideas shaped by practice.
Much of my career has been spent working at the interfaces—between Supply Chain and Commercial, strategy and execution, people, projects, processes, data and tools.
Thomas Lemaire
Those are the places where transformation succeeds—or quietly breaks down. I am passionate about solving these business challenges, but equally fascinated by stories from sport, culture, navigation and human performance. They offer a different way to look at familiar problems—and often make complex ideas easier to understand, remember and act upon.
LEGENDS, APPLIED. turns that curiosity into a monthly editorial practice. Each Edition starts with one defining moment, goes beneath the visible result to examine the evidence and the mechanism, then translates what matters into a practical business perspective.
The perspective
Different contexts can reveal the same underlying mechanisms. 47°N is an
attempt to find them, make them visible and connect them back to business.
Perspective02 / The 47°N Perspective
Leadership perspective
Where I build
Where I build
perspective.
Transformation rarely fails because one function lacks expertise. It breaks down where business priorities, operating systems, decisions and people stop moving together.
I explore these four transformation frontiers through a focused lens of seven leadership territories—where I continue to build experience, challenge assumptions and develop perspective.
The 47°N leadership framework
4Transformation Frontiers.
7Leadership Territories.
North, one Direction.
04Transformation Frontiers
Four frontiers that repeatedly determine whether transformation becomes operating reality.
Business
Operating
Systems
Processes, planning, governance and execution.
Data &
Decisions
Information turned into visibility, choices and management action.
People
Ownership, trust, capability and ways of working.
07Leadership territories
Seven recurring leadership territories where functions, systems, information and people have to connect to create business flow.
01
Commercial × Supply Chain
Where customer ambition meets operational reality.Connecting commercial priorities, customer commitments, capacity,
inventory
and service so growth decisions can move through the organisation without losing speed, clarity
or
value.
02
Data × Decision Systems
Visibility matters when it changes a decision.Turning ERP data, analytics, KPIs and business intelligence into
management
signals that make complexity easier to see, prioritise and act upon.
03
Cross-functional Transformation Leadership
Transformation needs more than projects.Connecting governance, decision rights, process design, technology and
performance measures with shared outcomes, explicit ownership and leadership discipline.
Performance
lives between the functions—transformation succeeds when those interfaces work as
one
system.
04
Integrated Business Planning
From planning cycle to management system.Connecting demand, supply, commercial priorities and financial
consequences
into an operating rhythm that helps leadership make earlier, clearer and more explicit
trade-offs.
05
Customer Centricity × Supply Chain
Design the supply chain from the customer backwards.Building Customer Supply Chain as an operating capability—connecting
customer
priorities, service choices, governance, KPIs and end-to-end execution so customer centricity
becomes part of how the business operates, not simply an ambition.
06
People × Ways of Working
Workflows only flow when people do.Designing transformation around the human system as well as the process:
trust, clarity, capability, incentives, communication and routines that allow people to connect
across organisational boundaries and make new ways of working stick.
07
AI × Operating Model
The question is not where to add AI. It is what should work differently because AI exists.Exploring where AI and agents should augment judgement, redesign decision
flows, remove unnecessary handoffs and reshape roles, controls and governance—without automating
complexity for its own sake.
Across the Frontiers
Transformation creates value when decisions cross every frontier and
leadership
territory—and keep the business moving in one direction.
01NOne direction
03 / The 47°N Journal
LEGENDS,
LEGENDS,
APPLIED.
True stories from sport, culture, exploration and human performance. Practical lessons for business transformation.
Calgary ended at zero for Norway
How Olympiatoppen turned Calgary’s zero golds into permanent learning—and what transformation teams need to influence the whole business.
Read Edition →LEGENDS, APPLIED. archive03 / Editions
The archive.
Explore the latest Editions, return to earlier stories and rediscover the ideas that continue to shape 47°N. The archive is ordered from newest to oldest.
Edition 003
Sep 2026
Calgary ended at zero for Norway
Olympic Winter Games · Norway
How Olympiatoppen turned Calgary’s zero golds into permanent learning—and what transformation teams need to influence the whole business.
Edition 002
Aug 2026
The Race Is Won in the Handoff
Athletism · Relay
Japan’s Rio 2016 relay silver reveals why supply-chain transformations are won—or lost—between Commercial and Operations.
Edition 001
Jul 2026
The Tour selection came before the career conversation
Cycling · Road racing
Tom Dumoulin was named for the 2021 Tour de France hours before he paused his career. His results explained the selection. They could not answer whether it was still his direction.
Edition 003Newest first · Monthly publication