Retail Tomorrow Podcast Series

It was a decade ago that Gary Hawkins, who with his son (and podcast co-host) Sterling Hawkins founded and runs the Center for Advancing Retail & Technology (CART), released a paper about Retail 3.0, describing how the industry had evolved to the point where marketing personalization, contextual relevancy and customer data-fueled brand-retailer collaboration had become critical to survival. Now, with a new paper, Retail 4.0, Hawkins argues that the digital transformation of retail will be breathtaking in its scale, scope, and speed. This digitalization of retail – the industry transmuting into a new, higher-order, ecosystem – will be accompanied by a radically different economic model, disrupting the entire industry.   In this, the first of a two-part conversation, Gary, Sterling, and Kevin Coupe talk about the cultural transformations that must take place within businesses if they are to have any chance of transforming their companies, setting the stage for the next step, which is implementation.