Marc Levinson on Shipping Containers & Lessons for AI
Podcast: KPI Fireside: A Continuous Improvement PodcastPublished On: Mon Aug 03 2026
Description: What can a steel shipping container teach us about artificial intelligence? More than you would think.In this episode of KPI Fireside, host Keith Norris sits down with Marc Levinson, historian, economist, and author of The Box, the definitive history of the shipping container. Marc formerly served as finance and economics editor at The Economist, an economist at JP Morgan Chase, and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. 🔻 Why standardization is the hardest problem in any major innovation and how the container finally solved it 🔻 How a single change in how goods move can hollow out entire cities and create entirely new industries in places nobody expected 🔻 What Malcolm McLean's biggest wins and biggest losses teach us about betting on new technology 🔻 How to think about the jobs AI will displace before assuming everyone will simply adjust 🔻 Why the countries that handled the shift best had one thing in common that the US largely did not 🔻 What individuals working in disrupted industries can do right now to stay ahead of the wave🔗 Learn more about Marc Levinson and his books: https://www.marclevinson.net/ 🔗 Learn more about KPI Fire: https://www.kpifire.com/ 🎙 Hosted by Keith Norris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithnorris/
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