Innovating, locally

Can we overcome the challenges of the digital age and restore communities as vibrant centers of human interaction, collective growth, and shared success?

Visioning Community-Scale Local Agriculture, a collaboration with ChatGPT.

With this edition, I'm shifting gears to examine the future of communities in the digital age—and searching for innovations to place them at the center of our human experience. As technology continues to drive change, I'm concerned that we're losing our commitment to improving the real-world places where we live and work, side by side, as humans. Drawing on my life's work with business leaders, supply chain innovators, and in service to our country, my goal is to offer fresh perspectives and creative ideas that can empower citizens and changemakers. Ultimately, I hope to help communities demand more from the digital world, guiding us toward a future where human connection and collaboration remain our highest priorities.

Striking a balance

In researching, writing, and discussing nearly 200 editions, I’ve discovered that a supply chain worthy of our times exists not just to sell and deliver products, but to enable our work and enrich our lives. Radical change is required, built on new models and methods designed to help workers, business owners, and communities thrive together. I’ve shared this idea with facts and logic, passion and purpose, assembling a cadre of distribution-focused innovators. But it’s not enough. We are on the fringe, achieving only marginal change from within, overwhelmed by digital technologies that are being used to reinforce the status quo—locking institutions, incentives, and mindsets in place. More is needed. I need to do something different.

From this day forward, I will write about communities and offer a new lens—a way to see the world differently, with communities at the center of innovation. By exploring the challenges and opportunities they face in the digital age, I aim to provide insights, analysis, and stories about the people and organizations driving change and leading the way. Over time, this work will shape an actionable framework for balancing the potential of digital technology with the human need for connection, shared purpose, and collective well-being.

Communities are where we come together to accomplish what we can't achieve alone—united by a shared purpose, grounded in mutual respect, and energized through human connection. They are the beating heart of society, a life force nourishing our lives and work. Communities inspire our dreams, propel our ambitions, and forgive our stumbles. They are the foundation of democracy, empowering us to shape who we can become—as individuals and collectively. But in the digital age, communities face an existential threat. Here's why.

Digital experiences deliver convenience, immediacy, and the generative potential of artificial intelligence—benefits we value as humans—driven by business platforms that compete almost exclusively on scale. Bigger is better: more profits, less competition, dominant market power, and addicted customers. While communities are not the enemy of digital progress, they represent something fundamentally different.

Communities thrive on what is small, local, unique, and slow. To the digital giants, communities are irrelevant—unless we stand together to make them matter. For communities to flourish, leaders, innovators, activists, and citizens need a framework that brings balance–where the pursuit of scale is tempered by humanity's needs, desires, diversity, and aspirations.

Innovating for good

I suggest five pillars for innovating communities in the digital age—key areas where we can focus our efforts to help communities thrive, restore human connection, and balance technology's disruptive forces with people's needs:

• Wellness. Communities face pressing wellness issues, including homelessness, obesity, substance abuse, social isolation, environmental challenges, and public safety concerns. For communities to thrive, innovations must address these diverse challenges with solutions tailored to the unique culture, resources, and capabilities of local citizens, businesses, and social organizations.

• Wealth. Traditional economic development focuses on attracting new businesses and increasing a community’s economic output, assuming that improved business prosperity will improve everyone’s lives. However, a more innovative approach would be to measure a community’s wealth by the financial, health, social, and environmental value it creates for its citizens. This pillar emphasizes wealth creation that benefits all, not just a few.

• Proximity. As highlighted in Robert Wolcott and Kaihan Krippendorff's new book, digital technologies have the power to create products, services, and experiences at the exact moment and place they're needed. By leveraging technology, we can enhance the sense of community and local connectedness, making proximity an essential pillar for empowering communities.

• Supply Chain. Distribution, an $8 trillion industry, is a network of locally embedded businesses built on products, facilities, and people. But beyond delivering goods, supply chains have the potential to help communities thrive by acting as intermediaries for knowledge, resources, labor, and shared experiences. Both startups and established businesses can innovate by leveraging supply chain data and connections to serve the greater good of communities.

• Democracy. The Digitalist Papers explores the many ways AI is reshaping our world, but one consistent message is clear: Digitally enabled discussions and debate at the community level are critical for forging the lives we want to live. Ensuring citizens and businesses have a voice and a role in decision-making is a powerful tool for designing innovations that help them flourish.

Combined, these five pillars offer a formula for progress. Wellness and wealth point to desired outcomes, customized for every community, while proximity, supply chain, and democracy point to new models and methods that might be implemented at scale for local results. While much work remains to create a fully actionable innovation framework, these five pillars serve as a promising foundation. This is my innovation hypothesis, and I ask you to help me make it better.

About the artwork

As an example of one industry’s local innovations, I asked ChatGPT to help me visualize a community-scale model of local agriculture—inspired by Santa Fe’s vibrant farmers’ market and set against a New Mexican landscape evocative of Georgia O'Keeffe’s art. This artwork invites us to imagine what local agriculture could become when guided by the five pillars of community-centered innovation. Could we replace distant industrial farms with sustainable, locally grown produce? Could we create jobs, improve wellness, and strengthen community identity in ways that reflect local values, tastes, and aspirations?

Does this image spark meaning for you? Does it raise questions or point toward answers? Or do you have something better—a photograph, story, or vision of local agriculture in your own community?

A way forward

My recent newsletters (here and here) are a call to action, sparking conversations among a focused group of business leaders, supply chain innovators, and distribution advocates. But to drive real change, we need broader participation. Moving forward, I will focus on helping communities flourish by reporting news, offering analysis, and fostering partnerships. The goal is to build a coalition of businesspeople, elected officials, activists, workers, and citizens across generations and industries—people committed to creating vibrant, thriving communities.

Your input is crucial. Whether you agree, disagree, have insights to share, or wrongs to right, I invite you to engage. These questions can help us get started:

• How do you see the role of communities evolving in the face of today's digital technologies and global trends?

• How can technology, including AI, empower communities without diminishing human connection?

• What are the most significant barriers preventing communities from thriving as centers of human interaction and collaboration?

• Do the five pillars—wellness, wealth, proximity, supply chain, and democracy—address the right priorities, or are there other factors we should consider?

• What other approaches can help communities thrive while enabling individuals to live meaningful, connected lives?

Together, we can make the world better from the ground up—one community at a time. I invite you to leave comments below, DM me on Substack, or reach out directly at mark.dancer@n4bi.com.