So there’s another NRF Big Show under our belts – check it off the list! I’ve been going to the annual NRF events since the early 1990’s and have seen them morph from a trade association conference to a massive technology expo filling the entire Javits Convention Center in New York. This week we’ll all see the usual messaging – “bigger and better than ever “, “more international attendees ” (one nagging question: do those international attendees know that what they are really doing is to help fund a lobbying organization?), “more tech vendors ” … more ‘n’ more ‘n’ more.

But I’m not complaining – the NRF Big Show is the only game in town, and it fills a big need. Attendees go to (1) meet up with colleagues and friends, (2) get the latest from solutions providers that they either work with now or are considering, and (3) learn new stuff, either about what other retailers are doing with new techs or about the new techs themselves.

The NRF events tend to move between two fundamental thematic cycles, “discovery ” vs. “execution “, and we expected this year’s event to be very “execution ” focused. Since the 2010 event, retailers have been on a long discovery jag as they have gotten their minds wrapped around all the business implications of consumers’ rapid integration of smart mobile devices into every aspect of their lives. So the focus of past NRF shows has been overwhelmingly on “shiny new objects “, even though at the 2016 event solutions vendors were trying to push the conversation towards how all those shiny new objects could be better used by retailers to improve not only sales but profitability.

This year’s event theme indeed cycled towards “execution ” – just as we expected. Today, you can hardly find a retailer who doesn’t at least acknowledge that consumers’ digitally enabled paths to purchase have caused businesses to consider how to align their value propositions to those new behaviors. So while the whole “omni-channel ” discussion may be over, now the discussion has to be about how best to support 21^st Century shopping, and how to make money doing it.

The Cycles Are Colliding

But just as business change cycles are spinning ever faster as companies attempt to keep up with the consumer technology adoption cycle, the thematic cycles exhibited at the NRF event are speeding up too. In fact, they are colliding. It’s great that retailers are finally “over ” any initial resistance to the realization that consumer digital shopping behaviors affect their store and E-commerce operations, merchandizing and marketing strategies, and even their supply chains. Now they have to lay their money down and make the necessary changes to their strategies and operations – and implement the supporting technologies that have been on display for the past few NRF events. Time is a’wasting!

But in the meantime, bold new technologies are infiltrating both consumers’ lives and business systems – and they were on display this year at the NRF event.

Specifically, I would point to AI (‘artificial’ – or if you’re thinking about IBM Watson, ‘augmented’ – intelligence) as being the next really big game changer. While retailers are still mulling over which technology solutions will help them achieve better inventory visibility and accuracy throughout the enterprise, converge the selling channels, achieve profitable cross-channel order fulfillment, market to consumers in new ways, etc., a whole new generation of tech that embodies “AI ” needs to be discovered.

I participated in a breakfast event that was sponsored by IBM, Aginity, Sprinklr, Instart Logic, and Windsor Circle. Just the mix of those technology companies is interesting: IBM is all about “Watson ” nowadays, Aginity offers a solution that helps companies manage the ever-expanding types of “big data ” without requiring a building full of data scientists and to catalog analytics for re-use, Sprinklr is all about social media engagement, Instart Logic ensures better presentation of information in the digital selling environment, and Windsor Circle uses AI to produce behavioral customer profiles.

Thinking about how those technologies interact gives us a good picture of the future of AI-enabled retailing that that is fast approaching: to the extent that a retailer can detect what lifestyle need consumers are trying to fulfill based on analyses of clicks, searches, social media activity, past purchase history, demographic and psychographic attributes, what’s going on around them – like the weather, and even (in the near future) what they look at while standing at the shelf edge in a store, and then match the result to dynamically generated profiles of other journeys to fulfill a similar need to find the best potential match, a retailer can present a relevant set of options to the consumer that feels very one-to-one. AI doesn’t just help make this scenario easier, it makes it happen. And this isn’t a theoretical scenario – companies are trying to accomplish this now. Once consumers experience it, retailers will have to move very quickly to offer something similar, just to keep up with expectations.

The question will then veer right back to “execution “: how to offer this kind of dynamic personalization without breaking the economies of scale that the old mass merchandising model enabled. I expect (hope!) that that will be the theme for the NRF 2018 Big Show.