This Week in Innovation: Innovation in Retail

This Week in Innovation: Innovation in Retail

This Week in Innovation: Innovation in Retail 

On this week’s podcast of This Week in Innovation, our CTO, Brian Sathianathan, and podcast co-host, Jeff Roster speak with Capgemini Invent’s Brandon Rael about innovation in retail. Together, they dive into why innovation is critical for retailers to embed into their business operations, how they should go about doing so, and what retailers should consider about the future of innovation. 

Through Capgemini Invent, Brandon works with both organizations who already have a strong vision of innovation, and those who need guidance on where to even begin. Having this experience has positioned Brandon to understand the ins and outs of organizational innovation development, in this case, through a retailer’s lens. During the podcast, Brian brings up a key point to innovation integration: what happens when a company’s vision for innovation becomes simply project-based, as opposed to a lifetime practice? Brandon affirms this question by explaining that innovation has to be grounded in everything that makes up a company- it can’t just be a short-term project. What is the problem we are trying to solve? What is the customer experience we want to create? What is the business challenge you want to solve? These are questions that Brandon poses for all businesses to consider when wanting to embed innovation strategies into their work. With that, Brandon asserts that innovation has to occur throughout the entire organization; the C-level execs, supply chain team, operations, merchandising, customer service, and everything else, all need to collaborate cross functionally when involving innovation. The goal has to always be improvement, innovation is never static; Brandon reminds listeners that to innovate is to incrementally add more, to keep evaluating and assessing performance, and to take risks. 

A little after the half-way point of the podcast, Jeff asks Brandon what emerging technologies he thinks are crucial when it comes to innovation in retail and Brandon brings up everyone’s favorite topic right now- metaverse. Brandon names that for innovation in retail, social selling is worth exploring because connecting to the consumer, specifically genZ and gen alpha, and meeting the customer where they are at is exactly what will bring success to retailers. The upcoming generation of consumers already live in a gaming world, might as well connect with them there, and make the shopping experience seamless and intuitive for that demographic of customers. Like Brandon named, huge companies like Nike and Gucci are already existing in metaversal platforms, other retailers should consider what this means for their vision of innovation. 

As the podcast concludes, Brandon leaves listeners with three last nuggets of wisdom. The first is that the tell-tale sign that a retailer needs to be doing something different is when the business is being run the same way it was 20 years ago, in other words, that there is no awareness of innovation, no changes, no appropriate risk-taking, no cross-functional collaboration. Second, young entrepreneurs need to never stop learning because life-long learning is exactly what fosters an innovative business space. Third, and lastly, learning and valuing soft skills is imperative for success. Brandon says that soft skills make up 90% of business operations and that he wishes he would’ve had that savviness years ago when he was first in the innovation business.

At Iterate.ai, we agree with Brandon’s take on innovation. Innovation is embedded into everything that we do, including our company’s mission and beliefs. Need a low-code platform where innovation apps can be rapidly developed? Check out our Interplay® platform. For more information and support with committing to an innovative approach, please contact us here.