Retail leaders share 4 rules to radical innovation
1. 1,369 views | Apr 1, 2019, 05:29pm
Retail Leaders Share 4 Rules To
Radical Innovation
Leadership Strategy
Robert Reiss Contributor
I was recently talking with Terry Jones, Founding CEO of Travelocity and Co-
Founder of Kayak, who shared an interesting perspective on disruption,
“My innovation is your disruption. It is only disruption because you didn't do
it!” This concept to me is at the heart of the transformation of retail we are all
experiencing.
To discuss this further, on March 4, 2019 at the major retail conference Shoptalk
in Las Vegas, I moderated a panel of four retail leaders to shed light on how
companies can become innovators. The panel was: Sharon John, CEO, Build-
A-Bear Workshop; Amit Shah, Chief Marketing Officer, 1-800-Flowers.com; Paulo
Carvao, General Manager IBM - US Retail, Consumer Goods & Travel
Transportation; Kate Gutmann, Chief Sales and Solutions Officer UPS, including
5,000 The UPS Stores.
WENDY HELLERPaulo Carvao, Robert Reiss, Sharon John, Kate Gutmann, Amit Shah
Retail Leaders Share 4 Rules To Radical Innovation https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertreiss/2019/04/01/retail-leaders-share-4-rule...
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2. While many significant ideas were shared, here are four that depending your
vantage point can drive disruption or radical innovation.
Rule # 11: Create new ways to connect with your customers
Sharon Price John, President and CEO at Build-A-Bear Workshop, shared how
the company created a new way to reach their customers. “We know music has
been an important component of the Build-A-Bear Workshop experience. So we
found a really innovative and fun way to connect with our community. In October
2018 we started Build-A-Bear Radio. It is a new streaming radio station on Dash
Radio where we like to say, ‘the fun is always on’. We mix hit songs with original
music and we already have hundreds of thousands of listeners a day!”
Rule # 22: Think of big ways to truly help your customer succeed with
their own business
Kate Gutmann talked about a game changer the company recently launched for
their small and medium-sized business customers. “Many customers across UPS
are small and medium sized businesses who want to compete with larger players
in their industry,” Gutmann said. “They face the complexities of managing their
brands across their own websites and often numerous online marketplaces and
other channels. With very few people, they have to juggle multiple logins, labor,
packing, shipping, tracking sales, and managing inventory. That’s a lot to handle
when you’re a small business and need to be efficient and flawless as you focus on
the experience you provide to customers. UPS changed all of that by introducing a
new service called UPS eFulfillment. Our customers can immediately connect to
21 online marketplaces via this software platform, and UPS takes care of the rest.
It’s turnkey. It allows small businesses to market at scale with a fully managed
presence on marketplaces including eBay, Wal-Mart, Etsy, Amazon and many
others. It is another example of UPS working to help our customers win in the
market through the powerful solutions we offer.
Rule # 33 Engage your culture to learn faster so they can be more agile
to deliver for customers
Amit Shah at 1-800 flowers coined a new term “LQ” which means learning
quotient. He shared, “Years ago the most important ability was someone’s IQ or
intelligence quotient, years later it became EQ meaning emotional quotient. In
today’s rapidly changing digital market the key to success is how quickly people
can learn. We understand there is deep-seated organizational and collective
muscle memory, and the way to advance is to build an organization of people who
have high LQs. To summarize, we believe learning leads earnings.”
Rule # 44 Data is the next natural resource
Retail Leaders Share 4 Rules To Radical Innovation https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertreiss/2019/04/01/retail-leaders-share-4-rule...
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3. I believe the great CEOs understand both business success and personal success. My higher
purpose is to disseminate CEO wisdom to help elevate business, the economy and ...
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Paulo Carvao from IBM shared, "As a company we are making a big bet. We are
betting on our clients and how they will leverage data to transform. That's why
concepts like trust and data & insights ownership are critical as we move to a
world that is more data driven with artificial intelligence infused in business
processes. All of our technology investments are to make sure that we're
accelerating our clients' businesses. We are infusing trust and transparency into
everything that we do."
Carvao continued explaining how business and technology are now coming
together, “ So, how do we bring these two, business and technology, together -
two worlds, that historically have behaved in different ways - so that they can
innovate in a more agile way, help transform the business faster, and keep pace
with the accelerated change in the industry."
… In summary, I can think of just one retailer in America who is 200 years old,
Brooks Brothers. I remember when I was fortunate to interview the CEO Claudio
Del Vecchio and he shared what probably is the core reason Brooks Brothers has
had such incredible longevity, “Innovation is a very important value for Brooks
Brothers and has always been.”
To listen to interview with these CEOs go to The CEO Forum
Robert Reiss Contributor
Retail Leaders Share 4 Rules To Radical Innovation https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertreiss/2019/04/01/retail-leaders-share-4-rule...
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