Expanding our horizons in 2023
My work to innovate B2B will take a broader focus in the New Year, with an expanded audience, new media channels, and deeper conversations. Will you help me further the cause?
Let’s talk about building a better future
I have made tons of progress this year, and I thank all of you for your support. I've spoken with many of you about your ideas, foresight, and innovations. And I've listened to your suggestions for my writing and work. In this edition, I share my plans for 2023. Please leave comments, or if you prefer, reach out at mark.dancer@n4bi.com.
As I continued to write about ideas for the future of distribution, 2022 was also a year of engagement. I worked with several industry associations to help their members innovate. That work fueled my research and writing, and I discovered something fundamental, a problem that needs to be solved: When making progress through innovation, distribution is held back by two critical barriers. First, distribution does not have a seat at the table on the leading edge of innovations reshaping our work, society, and economy. Second, distribution's innovators suffer from a lack of shared purpose, one that can help them apply technologies, trends, and unfamiliar ideas to create system-changing innovations.
These barriers work together, blocking distribution from achieving its fullest potential. Innovators outside distribution don't seek help from distribution to design solutions and drive change. And lacking a shared purpose, distribution’s innovators fail to communicate their power to reshape the business world for the digital age.
This is a problem, because every company in every industry has distribution, and every customer is served by distribution. To be clear, when I say distribution, I don't mean just distributors; I mean everyone who is in some way connected to distribution. And I don’t mean just moving boxes. Distribution has always been about adding value to products—and digital technologies are creating new opportunities for robust customer experiences, offering data-centric services, helping skilled workers thrive, and more. Distributors are innovating, but we all have a stake in the future because distribution helps us all live our lives and do our work.
And so, I am launching an ongoing “conversation about the future of distribution” as my primary focus for 2023. My goal is to find people who are thoughtful, curious, and driven to do business in a modern way. I am looking to gather wisdom from experienced leaders and share it with the up-and-coming innovators that must own the future of distribution.
I'll talk with people everywhere: customers, distributors, manufacturers, technologists, humanists, policymakers, owners, institutions, community leaders, and more. I'm looking to foster a robust and impactful conversation, create foresight for the future of distribution, and make a difference. These conversations will shape my writing and, as I build momentum, develop and empower a community of next-generation leaders and innovators.
My work will also create more value for subscribers. I am shifting my perspective from writing to distributors to writing for every business person with a stake in distribution's future. And since distribution serves every business, that means every business. By doing so, I aim to create ideas and solutions that resonate with all customers, suppliers, distributors, and intermediaries as well as the entire business ecosystem to help, guide, and enable businesses that serve other businesses.
I am also expanding to add new media. I will record many of my conversations about the future of distribution and share them as podcast episodes on my media platform, Substack. I will also host live events for subscribers as conversations with guests, panel discussions, and workshops. Substack has a new chat feature. I will use it to share updates, distribution stories, distribution coverage in the media, and more—timely tidbits that all distribution leaders and innovators should know. All this will help me write for the next generation of innovators, wherever they work, at any business that is a customer, provider, or enabler of distribution for the modern world. I also have some early opportunities for taking our conversation global.
Finally, I need to improve my writing skills as a businessperson in the coming year. That means treating my work as a media company and better executing marketing, operations, technology, channels, and brand. In this, I am inspired by
, a substack publication launched to “highlight the fundamentals missing from many economic and policy decisions” and written by a team of anonymous writers with experience in “heavy industry, private equity, and the hard sciences.” From its beginning, launched as a media company to communicate passionately and make a difference. I subscribe, and their work will help guide where I take my work in 2023 and beyond.Your suggestions?
If you'd like to talk live, I would love to schedule a call. My subscribers are my future, and it would be great to hear your aspirations and talk about the future of distribution. Or share your comments below or reach me at mark.dancer@n4bi.com.