{"id":5389,"date":"2010-01-15T09:21:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-15T15:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/?p=5389"},"modified":"2026-10-08T09:23:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T14:23:39","slug":"harnessing-innovation-for-growth-in-retail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/2010\/01\/15\/harnessing-innovation-for-growth-in-retail\/","title":{"rendered":"Harnessing Innovation for Growth in Retail"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Chapter 1: Intro<\/h2>

Innovation for growth is actually a real differentiating strength for Microsoft. To define “innovation for growth,” it is really about how we help retailers understand, leverage, and incorporate innovation and emerging technologies into their environments to solve business problems. In a nutshell, that is what we are trying to do. Retailers don’t buy technology; they buy solutions that solve problems for them. Some of those core problems include: how do I improve sales, reduce costs, better manage inventory, and create customer loyalty and an experience that is more exciting and compelling than the competition?<\/p>

Chapter 2: How do I create customer loyalty<\/h2>

Over the past 10 to 15 years\u2014and escalating over the past six to eight\u2014technology has been the primary conduit for achieving those goals. I remember back in the late 90s, when this bubble really started to burst. We went from a time in 1994 and 1995 when technology and retail IT were seen as a necessary evil, to a point where the VP of store operations and the VP of merchandising were racing to my office because they couldn’t do anything without technology being a core part of their strategy.<\/p>

That has only incrementally grown in importance, to the point where CIOs are now reporting directly to the CEO. Their main functions involve guiding and advising the rest of the organization on how to effectively leverage emerging technologies and innovation to better connect with customers. As we discussed earlier regarding the consumerization of IT, the question is how to tap into, harness, and leverage these technological shifts.<\/p>

Chapter 3: How do I harness innovation<\/h2>

Microsoft is incredibly well-positioned when you consider that we are investing $10 billion a year in research and development. As an aside, if you have ever been in the Redmond Retail Innovation Labs, it is like walking through a Star Wars bar\u2014they are doing some amazing things. If you look at Project Natal and all the technologies over the past 10 to 15 years that have contributed to it, I could spend a whole session just on how that is going to revolutionize retail.<\/p>

Chapter 4: What is coming down the pipe<\/h2>

Over the last 10 years at Microsoft, I have seen more and more retailers asking us to come in as strategic advisors. They want to know what is coming down the pipe: How do I harness and leverage social networking while protecting myself against its major pitfalls? How do I tap into consumer mobility and let that serve as my customer’s personal kiosk as they walk through my store? How do I integrate my channels so I not only know what my customers are doing wherever they interact with me\u2014whether it’s the call center, the web, through their Xbox 360, or in a store\u2014but also understand the trends, identify my best customers, and treat them as individuals?<\/p>

We sit down with CIOs, and sometimes CEOs and CFOs, and tell them, “Here is where we are, here is where we are going over the next one to three years, and five years out. If you don’t prepare yourself for this incoming tsunami, you are going to be exposed.”<\/p>

This innovation piece is a major differentiator and advantage for Microsoft. By leveraging our massive investment in R&D, we put technology in stores that improves the customer experience and empowers associates to be more confident and intelligent. We are in the enterprise, the server data center, and business intelligence. We are on the desktop with Excel, helping people collaborate and communicate. But we are also in the consumer’s home\u2014on their desktop, on the web, and on their phones. Because of this, we can offer solutions that seamlessly bridge those three worlds.<\/p>

We have invested heavily in the digital work style, but over the last 10 to 15 years, we have also invested heavily in the digital lifestyle\u2014everything happening in the home, mobile spaces, and social networking. Now, we have built this beautiful digital platform that connects the two. Whether you are in your car, on your phone, on the web, or walking into a store, we bridge the digital lifestyle and the digital work style.<\/p>

Start looking to the future to see what is coming down the pipe: web services, cloud computing, the increasing power of mobility, and the impact of social networking. Here is what retailers need to be thinking about for the next three to five years. Imagine I am getting ready to leave work. I’m time-constrained, my wife isn’t very happy today, and I want to build up some points by picking up something she asked for on the way home. However, I still have work to finish and want to spend time with my kids, so I need technology to help me.<\/p>

I get in my car, and my phone automatically connects via Bluetooth. I can talk to my car, my car talks to my phone, and my phone talks to a web service. On my way home, I ask, “Where is the closest store that has these three things my wife wants at the best price?” A web service launches and responds: “You can stop at these two separate places, or this one place has all of them but it is a five-minute longer drive.” I choose the latter. It maps a route for me and pulls a digital coupon or promotion directly to my phone, which I will then use to check out digitally and reduce transaction time.<\/p>

That is exactly where we are going.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did a series of interviews on the key events and technology trends that were impacting retailers at the 2010 National Retail Federation trade show in New York City. In this video, I discuss the impact of Environmental Sustainability on the industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[65,217,541,540],"class_list":["post-5389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-video","tag-microsoft","tag-nrf","tag-nrf2010","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5389"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5394,"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389\/revisions\/5394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgruehn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}