Chain Reaction Ep. 13: Rebuilding Procurement on Shared Intelligence

Carwyn Jones, Founder of Ekarnia, confronts a procurement problem that pharmaceutical and healthcare industries know too well: traditional buyer-supplier relationships are adversarial. Buyers hide demand signals. Suppliers hide costs. Information asymmetry creates inefficiency. Shortages develop. Prices spike. Everyone loses except those exploiting the gaps. Carwyn's thesis is that shared intelligence creates better outcomes. Suppliers given genuine demand signals can plan production more efficiently. Buyers given cost transparency can make smarter decisions. The catch: this requires trust and transparency that traditional procurement actively destroys. Ekarnia is building systems where intelligence flows both ways. Real demand visibility. Shared cost data. Collaborative planning. It sounds utopian until you realise how much waste exists in systems built on mistrust. For supply chain leaders in pharma, healthcare, or other sectors building supplier relationships, Carwyn's perspective on what happens when you replace adversarial dynamics with shared intelligence is valuable. The conversation covers both the structural barriers to transparency and what's beginning to change. Understanding how procurement is being remade around data sharing and collaboration matters for anyone thinking about supply chain modernisation.