Other than inventing the scale-based supply-chain-squeeze model of retail, which must go down as one of the great business innovations of all time, Wal-Mart is hardly known as a foresight-based player.

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This evolving model needs several new ways of managing the creative chain.

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As a business model, there is a lot of inefficiency built into the supply chain and replenishment process for these street vendors, since they reside a few notches down in the distribution system from the regular brick and mortar merchants with whom they compete.

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Such limited customisation encourages a build-to-order model, without the need for a supply chain drowned by a huge number of parts.

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What gives these pictures a higher likelihood of authenticity than previous leaks and mockups is that, as a repair service provider, iLab has the connections to the full range of parts manufactures in the supply chain, and the motivation to be prepared for dealing with the inner working of the next model.

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That Europe hasn't realized the same type of productivity gains is partly a result of its reluctance to embrace the big-box retail model, one that allows a company to take full advantage of the world supply chain to obtain and sell goods cheaply.

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However, such a model has placed tremendous stress on the supply chain and left companies with greater exposure to a range of unforeseen, disruptive risks.

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But generally speaking the retail chain model is having trouble, hampered by factors like work rules set by state licensing boards, the cost of employing a nurse practitioner, getting private and public insurance to pay for it, and opposition from doctors groups that tried to get the chains thrown out of states like Illinois and New York.

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