Retail CIOs: Prepare For Retail 2020

Retail in Europe and North America is in the eye of a storm. Battered first by the fragmentation of traditional mass markets, then by the challenge of cross-channel interaction, and finally by a global recession and transfer of economic power to Asia, Western retailing is reshaping itself to accommodate a radically different model of interaction with information-rich consumers. Visionary retail CIOs should discern the organic competitive imperatives of their peers and develop a road map to prioritize appropriate investments. By asking their line-of-business colleagues to help choose between well-conceived, attractive options for deploying game-changing technologies, they will make more progress toward the partner player archetype, rather than lamely asking, "What would you like?" or fussing about with stakeholder committees.