UnleashWD Innovation Summit 2019 has wrapped up and once again, I’m bouncing off the walls with the energy created by all the smart, engaged, creative people I met.

Our relevancy is not guaranteed. When you think of what happened to powerhouse businesses such as Kodak, Blockbuster, Sears, Toys R Us, BlackBerry, RadioShack, Nokia and others … it is a cold sense of reality that our business model of the past is no guarantee of relevance and profitability tomorrow.

Over the last 36 months, I had the opportunity to lead strategic planning workshops for associations, buying groups, independent distributors and one manufacturer.

It has been said that culture eats strategy for lunch. And that culture is a company’s last differentiator.

Without vision there is no change, transformation and innovation.  Sam Walton, the iconic founder of Walmart Stores once said, “Capital isn’t scarce, vision is.”

Distribution leaders find themselves in a once-in-a-career opportunity to create a culture of change, transformation and innovation.

Every distributor that wins the future will be an innovative distributor.

Many businesses are pulled to yesterday … what made us relevant and profitable yesterday.

Dirk Beveridge, UnleashWDThe Innovation Inversion Rule states that the urgency of innovation and the ability to innovate are inversely related.

Why did International Business Machines become IBM? Or Apple Computes, why did it simply become Apple? Or how about CINTAS? Why is CINTAS no longer Cincinnati Towel and Apron Service. And most recently, why is Dunkin Donuts, dropping Donuts, and just becoming Dunkin?