About CAPSI

What is CAPSI's core message?

        “Whenever I hear that we need a national dialogue, as in, we need a national dialogue on gun control, police reform, or voter rights, I wonder, where exactly would we have that dialogue? In the newspapers, on social media, in our courts? These venues are ill-suited for substantive national dialogues. So, my team set out to develop an effective forum and methodology to answer the call. CAPSI is that urgently needed institutional model for governments, businesses, and citizens to co-create policies, plans, and investment strategies for a sustainable world. Our IntelliSynthesis® method optimizes participants’ time by gathering collective intelligence across sectors, stakeholder groups, and jurisdictions while preventing any vested interest from controlling or narrowing the dialogue or its outcomes. Now, we have an effective forum for having national dialogues.”

-Michael Sussman

Too often, industrial sectors operate in fragmented silos striving to reach arbitrary and, at times, conflicting goals. Supply chain shortcomings came into public view during COVID-19 when goods were stalled for months at ports and intermodal transfer points. The Biden administration responded with a massive public investment in infrastructure. Unfortunately, this precious capital is allotted for individual competing projects while overall system inefficiencies remain. Consequently, we continue to stimulate more highway-centric supply chain activity and underutilize railroad's energy, space, and capital efficiencies for moving heavy weight over land. Future economic growth and sustainability require a multimodal, balanced logistics network.

Consider how transportation has typically been planned, or more accurately, not planned. Supply chains have evolved as a chaotic response to individual shippers’ and developers' indiscriminate land transactions, regardless of the transportation inefficiencies those choices impose. Railroads, ocean carriers, freight forwarders, ports, trucking companies, distributors, and shippers operate in a competitive, and in some cases monopolistic, mode, neither of which allows for the collaboration needed for supply chain efficiency. Creating sustainable industrial systems compels us to transition to comprehensive supply chain, land use, and transportation planning that uses the most efficient mode for each step.

As a society, we aren’t lacking intelligence. What we lack is a communication framework that builds solutions without being derailed by excessive competition, mistrust, or vested interests focused on short-term profits and maintaining power. Over thirty years as trusted advisors working with thousands of partners from industry, government, academia, and community organizations, OnTrackNorthAmerica has developed a powerful tool for mobilizing the knowledge, intelligence, and goodwill all around us.

Some claim we lack the trust and cooperation to overcome our overly competitive economic system. Yes, a profound shift is needed. If not transformed, this mistrust will cost us and our children the chance of a sustainable and profitable future. Fortunately, when we approach conversations in an open and accepting way, we inspire that trust and cooperation. In co-creating CAPSI, stakeholders envision, articulate, and commit to shared principles, protocols, and desired outcomes. When people shift from a competitive to a collaborative mindset, they can create policies, programs, and commercial opportunities that provide for the collective good.

Using this collaborative method, we can create profitable and sustainable industrial systems. Despite preconceptions, addressing all elements of a system makes it easier, not more difficult, to build consensus and develop action plans. The more elements of a system we identify, measure, and consider, the more we turn its interactions into positive synergies rather than unintended negative consequences. New solutions appear that would have otherwise been concealed. The more voices included the greater and more lasting the return on stakeholders' investments.

Clean air, clean water, natural resources, transportation, and land must all be considered integral parts of industrial supply chain systems. Climate change is teaching us that the energy driving all supply chains must not only be clean but also used more efficiently if we are to survive. As individuals, we can only go so far; together, we will reach our highest potential by tapping into our collective intelligence.

         “These are powerful ambitions. Thankfully, we now have the tools to produce action plans for success. Time is of the essence. We live in a critical moment of potential environmental collapse alongside the need to expand economic vitality to more people. Redesigning industrial systems will deliver both environmental and economic sustainability. Join us in CAPSI for a brighter future!”

-Michael Sussman