About
An independent research institute for global supply networks
Symbiosis United Analytics is an independent research institute. Our mission is to make global supply networks legible — pairing human judgment with machine analysis to give companies and policymakers a fact base for decisions on trade, production and investment.
Our mission
Making global supply networks legible
Supply networks now carry decisions that used to sit with trade specialists: which products a tariff reaches, where a critical input comes from, which suppliers stand between a plant and a single country. The data to answer those questions exists, in customs records and input-output tables, but it is too large and too fragmented to read by hand.
We turn that data into findings a decision-maker can act on and check. Each report states what we measured, how, with which sources, and where the evidence stops.
Independence
Independent and self-funded
Our public research is independent and self-funded. No report is commissioned or funded by any company, government or client.
- Every report is free to read, download and cite.
- We choose research topics ourselves, on the questions we judge most material to decision-makers.
- Advisory work uses the same methods and data, but it does not set the public research agenda.
- Corrections are published with the report, as a new dated edition.
Our name
Why “Symbiosis”
In 1960, J.C.R. Licklider proposed that people and computers work as partners: people set the goals, frame the questions and judge the results; computers do the routine work that prepares the way for insight and decision.
Our summary of J.C.R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis”, IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, HFE-1, no. 1 (March 1960), pp. 4–11. The paper at the publisher (IEEE Xplore)We take our name from that idea. Research on global supply networks needs both partners: computation to read millions of trade records and input-output linkages, and people to decide which questions matter and what the evidence means.
Computation
Extends the evidence
Processes customs, input-output and policy data at a scale no analyst could read, so the evidence base is complete and reproducible.
People
Set the questions
Frame the decision, choose the products and definitions, test the assumptions, and judge what the evidence means.
Decision-makers
Get a fact base
Findings with their sources, methods and limits stated, ready to act on — and to check.
Our symbol
A leaf drawn as a network
A leaf is a living network: it moves what a plant needs along a branching system of veins. We use it as the picture of a supply network.
- Veins
- Trade corridors that carry goods between economies.
- Nodes
- Hubs where corridors meet: ports, production centres, suppliers.
- Midrib
- The axis of intelligence that runs through the whole network.
- Core
- The point of symbiosis, where human judgment and machine analysis meet.
What we study
All researchTheme
Trade policy
How tariff actions change sourcing, costs and supplier resilience.
Trade policy researchTheme
Critical minerals
Dependence on rare-earth and other critical inputs, and how far it travels into production.
Critical minerals researchTheme
Technology supply chains
Where the hardware behind AI and automation is made, and who supplies the U.S. market.
Technology supply chains researchMore about the institute
Our approach
Data sources, the research pipeline, exhibit standards, editions and corrections.
Research standardsWork with us
Decision-specific analysis that applies our methods to an organisation's own question.
Advisory work