Daily Inspiration: "Think fast. Be faster!"

"Think fast. Be faster!" – Futurist Jim Carroll

In a few weeks, I'll be speaking at Revionics Insight 2019, one of the leading events in the retail industry.

As part of the process, I've done yet another detailed research dump – essentially, I grabbed about 750 articles about some of the latest trends sweeping the retail sector from my go-to tool, Dow Jones Factiva.

I've been making my way through them in order to bring my deck up to date. (You won't get canned 'crap' with my talks!) And when you re-immerse yourself in an industry, you again realize that the issue of speed truly defines success.

Think about the change underway – Amazon continues to define every single aspect of retail. Stores need to be able to deliver product almost instantly, provide for in-store pickup after an order is placed on mobile or have cutting edge in store displays to grab shorter consumer attention spans.

Product lifecyles continue to collapse – today's fashion is tomorrow's retro-bin, faster than ever before.

People expect your e-commerce infrastructure to be as good as, if not better, than Amazon's, in terms of status, updates and insight.

And new competitors continue to rush into your space, disrupting your business model, challenging your concepts, redefining your ideas, or cutting your margins to the bone.

A few days ago I wrote a blog post for the event, and said this: "It's hard to discount the speed of change that continues to envelop the retail sector. Consider this: E-commerce could be 25% of the total retail - grocery and convenience -- experience by 2021. In store, cash registers are disappearing, pick-and-pack is dominating retailers attention, and Amazon-style disruption is everywhere.

And then: "Some have said that we have seen more change in the world of retail in the last 5 years than we have seen in the last 100, and the pace of change is only going to increase." That's the retail industry. EVERY industry is faced with similar fast rates of disruptive change.

You need big strategy, bold ideas, and fast execution.

You need to think fast. But that means nothing if you don't *act* faster.

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