Working on the future in 2023

Many voices are needed to shape distribution’s future. Will you join the conversation?

Setting the stage 

Last week, I shared my content and media plans for the months ahead and announced a year-long project that will guide everything I do. I remain focused on innovating B2B and, especially, creating foresight for the future of distribution. Our world is changing every moment of every day, creating unprecedented opportunities and threats. After exploring what holds distribution back, I committed to a path forward: 

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 energize the up-and-coming innovators that must own the future of distribution.  

Distribution is my passion. I get it. I know distribution’s history, understand its power, and sense its future. In this edition, I start by building common ground in discussing what distribution is and is not. By doing so, I hope to make my work relevant for every business person because, as I wrote last week, “every company in every industry has distribution, and every customer is served by distribution.” If we all have a stake in distribution, we can work together to create its future. Let’s get started.

Getting to the heart of distribution 

Distribution is massively misunderstood. Most business people think of distribution as the final step in a long process that begins with identifying customer needs with the intent to design products and make them, followed by marketing and sales efforts to build awareness, create demand, defeat competitors, and ultimately generate sales and profits. Only then does distribution step up to the plate, carrying products to waiting customers. To be sure, anticipating demand, stocking a warehouse, helping customers procure solutions, and managing logistics requires creativity, expert knowledge, and disciplined processes. But all of this is accepted as the necessary work of adding value to products so that the wheels of commerce can turn. This is wrong. Dead wrong.  

Distribution is the future of business. Distribution is not the fulfillment of a product's promise. Distribution is much more than delivery. Customers don't care about products or delivery. Customers care about outcomes that can improve the customer's performance, execute the customer's strategy, and help the customer innovate for the future. Distributors know this, and it's driving their innovations. Distributors are designing new customer experiences and pioneering unimagined customer outcomes. And there are other voices. 

Distribution has many practitioners. Manufacturers perform distribution and see innovation as centered on physical goods. Marketplaces carry out distribution on tech-heavy virtual platforms. The supply chain is recovering and may emerge stronger than before by achieving resilient, responsive, and regenerative distribution. All of these voices, and many more, must be heard, explored, and shared as we work on the future. 

Innovating distribution starts with individuals. Our conversation must help distribution’s innovators break free. We must not genuflect before crusading technologies or predetermined best practices. Instead, we should begin by exploring the world as it is, viewed from multiple perspectives. I offer this as context and look for feedback: 

Every business faces unprecedented challenges, including a changing geopolitical landscape, the supply chain crisis, a talent crunch, shifting generational values, the emerging futures of work and education, and the ongoing digital transformation of our work and lives. Distribution can help. Distribution’s contribution starts not by looking inward but by working at the center of commerce to help all customers to innovate their business. And since distribution serves every company, distribution can help our society and economy flourish. 

A Conversation about values and vision

Innovation will happen simultaneously, across many industries, in companies of all sizes, and within communities of shared interests, professions, and trades. Distribution is ultimately about doing business as humans for humans, and I offer the following questions as a guide for our conversation: 

• Work. Tell me about you, your vocation, and what gives you joy at work. Do you see your work or your organization changing as the future unfolds? 

• Purpose. Who are your customers? What are their needs and aspirations? What does that say about your purpose and your organization’s purpose, now and in the future? 

• Progress. Do you see signs of movement in your organization or any other company, trade, profession, or institution? What are the milestones that you might set as goals? 

• Technology. Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the power of data and digital technologies for empowering customers and your ability to serve them with distinction?

• Foresight. What does our conversation mean about the most potent innovations for your customers and how you serve them? How will distribution evolve?

Will you join our conversation? 

I welcome your comments on this edition and my last. Please leave feedback and suggestions below, schedule a conversation here, or reach out at mark.dancer@n4bi.com.