Daily Inspiration: “What was once fast is now exponential. If you aren’t prepared for that reality, check your assumptions at the door to the future!”

“What was once fast is now exponential. If you aren’t prepared for that reality, check your assumptions at the door to the future!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

If the future belongs to those who are fast, then agility is a virtue, and decisiveness of action is a gold mine! That was the essence of my message at Revionics Insight 2019 at Torrey Pines, California, with the title “Aligning to Acceleration: Innovating in Retail, and the Era of Relentless Velocity”: just six months before Covid-19 totally upended the global retail industry.

“The future? What you thought was far away is becoming your current reality sooner than you think!”  That observation was within the opening minutes of my talk, and that thinking has always been a key part of the message I’ve used on stage. It looks kind of quaint now, given how much change the world of retail has had to adapt to in the last 18 months.

What did I cover on stage? The dominance of Amazon, the prevalence of omnichannel, the continued rise of e-commerce, local delivery partnerships, pick-and-pack, curbside pick up, instant delivery, and driveway dronepads were just a few of the disruptive retail trends I spoke about. Today, those trends just about define everything in the world of retail – but the fact is, all of these trends were already very significant within the industry long before our world changed in such dramatic fashion.

Bottom line? It’s kind of fun to note that I actually made this observation on stage:

We are going to see more change in the world of retail in the next 5 years.  More than we have seen in the last 100.

That was an understatement! Never, ever forget that we live in the era of acceleration – and so while you think you have time to prepare for the future, you have far less time than you think. The impact of exponential change means that trends accelerate and happen faster than ever before, such that if you aren’t structured for speed, you’ll never quite catch up.

That’s your reality, and that’s your future.

Here’s a highlight clip:

Before I hit the stage, I hit the golf course with a preview of my talk!