“Have you become a nation of Flintstones, when you could have been the Jetsons?” – Futurist Jim Carroll
The Future of Retail? A Keynote for A Global Brand Leader in London!
My message on the speed of change in retail is drawing attention, further and further afield.
Case in point – yesterday, I was a keynote speaker for a global leadership meeting of Pladis held in London, UK. This is the newly merged entity of three iconic global brands — Godiva Chocolate, McVitie’s biscuits from the UK, and Ulker from Turkey. I was asked to provide my insight to 300 executives from around the world in a morning keynote, and then followed this up in an intimate discussion with members of the board and the senior management team.
It’s hard to discount the speed of change occurring in the world of retail and consumer products. Consider this:
- e-commerce could be 25% of the retail – grocery and convenience — experience by 2021
- “shopper marketing,” which combines location intelligence, mobile technology and in-store display technology for a new form of in-store promotion, continues to move forward
- mobile payment involving Apple Pay and disappearance of the cash-register, providing opportunity and challenge with loyalty, infrastructure and disruption
- the continued migration to the same-day shipping model from titans such as Google, Amazon, John Lewis
- Amazon Alexa, AI and shopping bots! Simply talk and products are added to your shopping cart, and delivered within an hour
- the rapid installation of “click and collect” infrastructure (i.e. an online purchase, with same day pickup at a retail location)
- faster ‘store fashion’ with rapid evolution of in-store promotion, layout and interaction
- the arrival of active, intelligent packaging and intelligent (“Internet of Things”) products
- collapsing product life-cycles, rapid product obsolescence and the implications on inventory and supply chain
- the evolution of the automobile to an online shopping and credit card platform (yes, this is real….)
Here’s the thing – we are going to see more change in the world of retail in the next 5 year than we have seen in the last 100. Savvy brands, retailers, shopping mall and retail infrastructure companies are working to understand these trends, and what they need to do from an innovation perspective to turn them from challenge to opportunity.
That’s my role. This is all happening in the context of massive and fast disruption as new competitors enter the food, CPG and retail space. Consider this chart of players in 2016 from Rosenheim Advisors, and look at the players in each category.
The rate of change is going from fast to furious, and innovation is critical!
My keynote title for London yesterday? “Achieving Agility: Aligning Ourselves for an Era of Accelerating Change!” Learn more in the retail and consumer products trends section of my Web site.
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Future of Flying Cars? Take a Drone, and Stick a Human In It!
While leaving Heathrow airport yesterday after a keynote, I was contacted by The Street for my thoughts on an initiative by Uber to build a flying car.
Crazy science fiction? Maybe not. After all, simply scale up today’s drones, add a human to them, and you’ve got a flying car!
You’ll find my comments below. A key point – tech companies in every industry innovate faster than legacy companies. That’s a big challenge, and the biggest issue for every industry as disruption continues.
Uber Fighting to Stay Ahead in Flying Car Initiative
Uber shows how tech companies are continuing to innovate sectors at a faster rate than traditional industries, futurist Jim Carroll told TheStreet.
Uber has hired 30-year NASA veteran engineer Mark Moore to help its Elevate division design flying cars that will take off and land vertically so it can easily transport commuters in crowded urban areas, Bloomberg reported on Monday. His official title will be director of engineering for aviation.
The company first outlined its vision for the futuristic service in a 97-page white paper in October and claimed it could launch as early as 2026. In its vision of the future, air taxis will transport commuters between aircraft hubs known as “vertiports,” which would be located between 50 miles and 100 miles of each other.
“Just as skyscrapers allowed cities to use limited land more efficiently, urban air transportation will use three-dimensional airspace to alleviate transportation congestion on the ground,” the company wrote.
Moore makes sense for the project, considering he wrote a white paper in 2010 on VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) cars to be used for daily commuting. His paper impressed Alphabet co-founder Larry Page so much that he helped launch flying car startups Zee.Aero and Kitty Hawk to bring Moore’s vision to life, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
When most people hear about flying vehicles, they think of the futuristic show “The Jetsons” that ran from 1962 to 1963 as a picture of what the world would look like in 2062. Of course, it included flying cars.
Noted futurist Jim Carroll told TheStreet that a lot of the inventions featured in that show are “becoming real sooner.” Both the Apple smartwatch and video and picture sharing app Snapchat could be compared to similar items featured in the TV program. “Trends are accelerating and the future is coming at us faster,” Carroll explained.
This acceleration is partly due to the rise of tech companies in traditional sectors, he said. Electric car company Tesla is innovating cars at a faster rate than a traditional car company like Mercedes-Benz. Apple Pay and PayPal are innovating the payment space at a quicker pace than Visa (V) . “The tech companies are now the ones dictating,” Carroll explained.
Another example of how quickly new technology is being developed are drones, or unmanned flying aircrafts, which have already gone mainstream, he pointed out. “Scale up and stick a human in there,” he said jokingly.
Keynote: Pladis – Godiva Chocolates, McVities Biscuits Ulker – , London, England – The Future of Food & Retail
This was a huge amount of fun! I love overseas trips! And what an organization — Pladis is new, with three separate, distinct brands coming together with a focus on future opportunities. My keynote covered trends in fast-changing retail, consumer behaviour, store infrastructure, brand promotion and more. It must have gone well — since Godiva is having me back for a separate supply chain event in Ghent, Belgium in May!
Daily Inspiration: “Give me your mind for a moment, and I will share with you a future of opportunity, not a future of fear!”
“Give me your mind for a moment, and I will share with you a future of opportunity, not a future of fear!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
Daily Inspiration: “Some reports have found that goldfish have longer attention spans than humans. That is the modern day challenge for most companies trying to reach today’s consumer!”
“Some reports have found that goldfish have longer attention spans than humans. That is the modern day challenge for most companies trying to reach today’s consumer!” – Futurist Jim Carroll
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