WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

The retailer of the future will harness the power of data, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality, says serial entrepreneur and technology expert John Straw.

A comprehensive survey designed to surface consumer comfort levels with new and emerging technologies.

At an early stage, apparel was identified as the starting point for Xunxi – a sector in which the lengthy production cycles and high inventory levels have long been a problem for small and large players alike. Powered by new technologies such as real-time resourcing, process and cost planning, automated in-house logistics and Xunxi’s manufacturing operating system, the factory is able to produce small-batch orders at reasonable costs and with shorter delivery times, consequently increasing manufacturing efficiency from 25% to an average of 55%.

Here are my top six trends:

1-Niche Rich: Continued Customer Segmentation Refinement

2-Digital Meets Physical: Balancing Convenience and Connection

3-Sustainability: Casting a Very Long Shadow

4-New Formats: The Next Marketplaces, More DTC Brands

5-The Linchpin: Data and Technology

6-Mall Fall: Department Store Degradation and Mall Seizure

The future travel experience will be personalised, delivering seamless and safe services that are high value, low touch and consumer-centric, thanks to an accelerated digital transformation post-pandemic. These new advances in technology will usher in a new era of automation, requiring upskilling for employees to provide greater levels of high-quality service. Tracking climate impact across consumers, brands and destinations will be critical for building resilience, agility and speed to combat future risks and accelerate the green transition.
This white paper outlines a vision for how consumers will book and experience travel in 2040, exploring how technology and the need for sustainability could change the travel experience over the next 20 years. In particular, this analysis will focus on the future of travel — exploring what online travel agents, urban mobility, air travel and hotels will look like.

The coronavirus outbreak will continue to propel funding, acquisitions, partnerships, and experimentation by brands and retailers as they are forced to grapple with global supply challenges posed by our increasingly interdependent world.

Regardless of the coronavirus’s impact on the global economy, we will surely face a similar situation in the future; brands, retailers, and their supply chains will need to be prepared.

Workers can pick 2x-3x faster with near-100% accuracy and less labor, delivering higher productivity and a better workplace.

Gestion des stocks, de la caisse ou amélioration des services en magasin : face aux enjeux de digitalisation du point de vente, de quelles solutions technologiques disposent les détaillants ? L'édition 2020 de l'exposition NRF Big Show à New York nous a permis d'en identifier certaines.

The technologies on the list, which is curated by members of the Forum’s Expert Network, are selected against a number of criteria. In addition to promising major benefits to societies and economies, they must also be disruptive, attractive to investors and researchers, and expected to have achieved considerable scale within five years.

The retail industry is rewriting the laws of physics. Change is coming at an ever faster rate each year and 2030 will be upon us before we know it. Explore the world in 2030 and the future of retail 2030.  

New research from Bossa Nova indicates retailers are in dire need of a solution for severe inventory problems and recognize that automation is the answer.

Ocado's new warehouse has thousands of robots zooming around a grid system to pack groceries. The thousands of robots can process 65,000 orders every week. They communicate on a 4G network to avoid bumping into each other. Is this the future of retail?

Worried about the robot apocalypse? This latest report of global robot density averages says the machines are on the rise worldwide.

Worried about the robot apocalypse? This latest report of global robot density averages says the machines are on the rise worldwide.

Piloting a drone or an unmanned vehicle by only using your gaze sounds like a scene out of a science fiction movie, but now it’s a reality. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, and collaborators developed a deep learning system that uses NVIDIA GPUs to enable a user to control a drone by simply directing their eyes towards where they want to steer.

The last mile is seeing disruption from new business models that address customer demand for ever-faster delivery, as well as new technologies such as drones and autonomous ground vehicles.

Companies benefit from optimizing collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence. Five principles can help them do so: Reimagine business processes; embrace experimentation/employee involvement; actively direct AI strategy; responsibly collect data; and redesign work to incorporate AI and cultivate related employee skills. A survey of 1,075 companies in 12 industries found that the more of these principles companies adopted, the better their AI initiatives performed in terms of speed, cost savings, revenues, or other operational measures.

Companies benefit from optimizing collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence. Five principles can help them do so: Reimagine business processes; embrace experimentation/employee involvement; actively direct AI strategy; responsibly collect data; and redesign work to incorporate AI and cultivate related employee skills. A survey of 1,075 companies in 12 industries found that the more of these principles companies adopted, the better their AI initiatives performed in terms of speed, cost savings, revenues, or other operational measures.

An overview of influencer that inspire me daily when reading the newest trends on digital transformation. Feel free to add your favorite influencer on this list. I personally have no influence on the ranking - a neutral algorithm calculates who has the most impact online. So all fame and blame belongs to the algorithm.

As machines increasingly complement human labor in the workplace, we will all need to adjust to reap the benefits.

International Federation of Robotics presentation.

This paper examines the essential eight technologies that matter and what business leaders now need to do about them, and emerging technologies in general.

Something that often bothers me about sci-fi is the loner inventor trope. A guy in a garage builds a robot, or AI, or frequently both that are somehow decades beyond the technology of his day. It’s hard to even appreciate how hard this is for robots to do, because it’s hard to appreciate how difficult walking still is for humanoids. I wrote a whole piece about the problem of building walking robots back in 2011 — it wasn’t pretty back then, and it’s still a challenge for most full-sized humanoids.

The robots are indeed already here. I work at a university where my job is teaching students and doing research and robotics and so I really what I want to convey to you today is the trends that I see robotics research going that will ultimately turn into actual products and directions that you might be able to take advantage of in the future.

The theme of both the robot-ization of the global workforce and the populist desire for a hike in the minimum wage have been popular and ongoing ones here at Zero Hedge. However, never has it been more clear just where the future lies than this chart from BofAML's Michael Hartnett... As he says, "we are long robots, and short human beings."