In the near-term, the most impactful innovations that affect retail shopping will be technology that enables contactless and more convenient experiences. Scan and go or shop and go technology will be much more pervasive in the next few years. From a longer-term perspective, autonomous delivery will have a big impact on retail and the shopping experience. Autonomous/robot technology is already replacing humans for repetitive, predictable tasks in warehouses and even on retail sales floors.

All of the points listed are relevant and will disrupt retail in the years ahead. However for my money, automation is one of the most significant areas of development. This is mostly because it helps to square the circle of reduced margins from online so it has a tangible benefit and payback. Eventually, when autonomous delivery becomes more mainstream, we will see a highly automated fulfillment chain that is efficient and cost effective.

Disruptive innovation is a trivial factor in today’s retailing industry. None of these ideas have caught on at a sufficiently widespread level to say they have disrupted anything – the pandemic may have, but not these others. With all due respect to Professor Christensen, disruptive innovation is a rare event that, while giving an edge to the innovator, provides a market lead that is rarely sustainable. When you can count the number of disruptive innovations that have remained on both hands, this is not something worth pursuing – low probability of ROI.

All of the innovations above will be front and center in the next five to 10 years with scan and go just beginning to be more prominent. I am excited to see how the drones, driverless cars and trucks, etc. are introduced into the market and mix with the everyday bustle of traffic and pedestrians.

Wait, didn’t Amazon write this book about 20 years ago? Like any great “rabbit” used in racing, the Seattle giant has led the whole industry forward in every category mentioned for quite some time now and continues to surprise almost weekly. Not sure how Clayton missed that 900-pound gorilla.

Disruptive innovation will open the doors to enable the industry to better cope with, or respond to yes, “disruptions” in the environment around them where, for a while, things may become abnormal. Additionally, the industry will be in ever-improving conditions to enhance the customer experience, remove some costs from the supply-chain, and even improve the product lifecycle and time to market. Two technologies most likely to have the greatest impact are contactless payments, including scan-and-go, and robotics, with a third being AI.

A year ago I would have laughed at this concept, but retail is markedly different now. With the exception of autonomous delivery (which is still a bright shiny object not ready for prime time) retailers are actively engaged in reducing friction and transforming operations. Companies that want to pretend that it’s still 1997 will fail.

In my opinion, the “tech” mentioned here just moves parity forward. Keep chasing them as game-changers at it will be exactly what he’s talking about in his first book.

I think a glimpse at something such as Vans’ customization is an enabler, mass customization done well could lead to something interesting. Micro-manufacturing, micro-fulfillment, getting product manufactured closer to real-time and personal — probably things like that which are happening in small bits around the globe.

If one really wants to understand disruptive technology/innovation, one should study the history of the members of the DJI 30s. Remember Woolworth, once the largest retailer in the U.S.? They were sent into oblivion by an innovator named Sam. Once Paramount was listed, they eventually were replace by an innovator names Walt. We could go on and on — in my classes it is a three-hour lecture.

Retail is one of the sad stories for innovation. It always seems to come from the outside. Malls, mass merchants, online. Will 3-D printing be next?

What is next? First retailers in the U.S. must catch up with Chinese retail innovation. Why are our retailers behind? Then the focus for retail innovation must be to make the entire process for the consumer convenient, convenient, convenient.

The big lesson I have learned over the last decade is consumers will tell us which innovations are worth investing in. Retailers and most other industries have not had a great track record trying to force innovation on their customers, unless that innovation has demonstrative value for the customer. Frictionless commerce (scan and go) and free home delivery are at the top of the list right now. I expect to see further innovations in fulfillment, inventory management and supply chain as well. Better reliability in product availability seems to be a lesson we have to learn over and over. There has been a lot of innovation in that space recently that I expect to see implemented in the near future.

So many great comments on shopping, fulfillment and last-mile innovations. But my head goes to the first mile. Merchandising, design and product development. How do all these process innovations help make the retailer smarter about product? Where is the supply chain innovation that will make the time/action calendar more responsive to in-season responsiveness? I look at end-of-season residue inventory in apparel and think about the profit drain that could be improved upon if the retailer could know more and guess less. Digital design can now shorten the design cycle dramatically. Can there be a breakthrough in raw material and production management that can respond to more specific demand rather than projecting trends?

With all due respect I think we may be talking past the point here. Christensen’s notion is the capitalist version of a much older Trotskyite concept of revolution in the revolution, generally called, “permanent revolution.” Remember, he’s talking about disruption as a continuous, integrated, process, not an event. It also assumes a company will be tracking and responsive to nuanced change in customer markets and tools (technology). I think this discussion is focusing on technology as though it had external agency rather being an enabling tool we control. Put a simpler way, with all due respect – this time to Dr. Christensen – this theory comes down to a variation on a slightly older bromide, “Keep your eye on the ball.” Good advice then. Good advice now. One more thing. Isn’t the second part of the question backwards? I’d say we would be better off thinking about which changing consumer behaviors will direct the technologies we bring to bear to address them.

I was at the Amazon Go store yesterday with my teenage son. He almost turned me in for shoplifting. But for that, I felt the overall experience so natural and intuitive – like I was picking up something from my pantry at home. Whether it happens online or offline, I think getting to a state where everything feels natural, intuitive, and pure magic sounds like a good future to have.

I’ll put a slight twist on the discussion. All true innovation is disruptive or it wouldn’t be innovation. It’s a matter of degree. Until there is a disruption in mindset, adapting to (or creating) the future will be a constant and stressful struggle. In most situations including retail, the human mind is the hardest thing to change. An eagerness to think differently comes first for both the innovator and the innovatee.

Retail is reacting to the three megatrends of globalization, personalization and digitization. Retailers’ customers are increasingly coming from anywhere in the world via the Internet, consumers demand more customization possibilities in the products they buy, and the systems in support of their businesses increasingly rely on digital systems simulating the real world for online catalogs, BOPIS, supply chains and shipping to consumer homes. More and more retailers will use AI and cloud-based systems to enhance these capabilities.

We need to return to Christensen’s fundamentals. When he postulated disruption in the Innovator’s Dilemma, he looked at a specific reality — where a marketer burdens their product with expensive features which do not deliver value to customers. This leaves them vulnerable to a low cost alternative.

Looked at this way, there has been little serious disruption. And most of the “disruption” has come because investors have funded selling at low price — not because the product can be made that way. Dollar Shave Club, WeWork, Amazon, Uber — ALL examples where the underwriting of investors created the appearance of “disruption.” But what we learned from Dollar Shave Club (for example) was that the razor market was already highly efficient — not a Christensen potential disruption.

What about retail? Amazon (with Bezos’ “your margin is my opportunity”) proves there isn’t a place to undercut without someone other than the customer paying to make it happen. I do NOT think retail risks disruption from technologies. They are incremental innovation — the primary engine of growth.

Not sure where, but it will be the factor that changes the business. I still recall Clayton’s examples from steel mill producers to chip makers and software. Almost every industry is plagued by the disruption and S curves where new tech displaces the old, outdated tech. More importantly, the new tech is almost always a real step function increase in value to customers and the business. In almost all of Clayton’s cases, the incumbent industry leaders had no clue they were being disrupted until it was too late. That’s one reason I don’t believe it will be something we are ready to predict — especially if we’re experts in the field.

Last point, there is also an aggregation of technology (or other types) of disruptions in many of these industries that catalyze the change, also very unpredictable because no single tech might be responsible for moving the market.

Disruptive innovation is today’s term for a paradigm shift. When a paradigm shifts, everyone, including the leaders of the status quo, goes back to zero. The key difference is the expectation that innovation is the cause of the disruption. Think back when Borders and Barns & Noble disrupted the bookstore business. Their model of wide aisles, reading areas, book club meeting space, in-store coffee shops, etc. forever changed the bookstore business. None of their new concepts would be considered a true innovation; simply, a new way to do old things. Ironically, a true disruptive innovator, Amazon, pushed both firms to the brink.