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Kevin Surace: AI Creates Possibilities, Not Threats, for Distribution

If you don’t leave before the opening, you won’t leave for the whole session.”

That’s the challenge laid down by Kevin Surace, the futurist and disruptive innovation speaker credited with creating the first cellular smartphone and the virtual assistant, as he prepares to step onto the TUG CONNECTS 2024 main stage later today.

It’s standard for guest speakers to leave participants with web links and practical examples for tools that will help them boost their productivity, and “those are all very useful things that you can use when you need them,” Surace says.

But those worthwhile, incremental gains don’t come anywhere near the profound shifts that are already beginning—in our day-to-day lives, and at work.

“In very short order, anyone attending this conference will be able to go and create their own movie,’” he says. “You can make that movie for $120 instead of $120 million,” with artificial intelligence writing the script, generating the camera angles, and conjuring the characters for what he called a “Hollywood quality-looking film”.

That prospect is “a little spooky” for people who work on sound stages or movie sets, he acknowledges. But it also creates an advantage for anyone who wants to go out and become their own movie producer—just as podcasting “came out of nowhere 20 years ago” and opened broadcast media to people with no access to a studio.

Surace sees that same excitement and potential for change opening up new possibilities, not threats, for distributors.

“Wholesale distribution is a very important part of the supply chain, and for all the reasons we know, it’s not going anywhere,” he says. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies are moving beyond a just-in-time supply philosophy and “recognizing the value of also having backup warehouse supplies and something in the middle. Otherwise, we’ve got some real supply chain issues.”

He says AI can add to that capacity by:

• Making it easier to predict customers’ requirements and optimize shipments;
• Boosting productivity in warehouses;
• Standardizing sales training and delivering consistent feedback to field representatives—sometimes while they’re in the middle of a call;
• Generating amazing marketing content that goes beyond merging in a customer’s name, by using personalized video to talk about their transaction history and the items they might need to order next.

All of those improvements are about maintaining and improving a company’s ability to deliver, not about job loss.

"Everyone at this conference wants their business to grow, and they’re doing that when more people are retiring than are coming into the workforce,” he says. “So even if you weren’t expanding, you would have to make your people more productive,” just to keep up with existing demand.

“You might have 20% fewer employees 10 years from now, and you won’t be able to replace them. So that means you can’t afford to lose anyone, and you also need them to be more productive if you do want to grow.”

Surace cites the Internet of Things and cloud computing as two relatively recent tech innovations that quickly entered the mainstream so that no one now thinks twice about using them.

“Ten years ago, I had to introduce people to the cloud,” he says. “But now, most of us just use it. Is someone really going to build their own server room anymore? We know what the cloud is, we use it, and we don’t even think about it anymore. Why do we care?”