Redefining Retail

1Running Backwards

The Ancient Greeks believed that, when approaching the future, we walk backwards—because, though we know where we come from, we don't know where we're going or what to expect along the way. Our risk is increased by the fact that, when we approach unexplored paths and uncertain conditions, we tend to base all our decisions on the only certainty we have: the experience of the past. The result is that no matter how cautiously we proceed, we are likely going to fail—or at least take the wrong way and get lost at some point.

This concept is still true today. Although we have much more visibility into the future compared to that of the Ancient Greeks, the current BANI scenario—again: brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible—is such that every prediction incorporates a considerable margin of error. In fact we could argue that, in a world that changes at the speed of an algorithm, the margin of error is exponentially higher. Therefore, it's not so much that we are walking backwards—we're running backwards. If we apply this metaphor to the way companies and other established organizations function today, we realize that this tendency to interpret information and make plans based on previous experiences is one of the main reasons why so many fail to catch what Steve Jobs called the next wave. In an unstable and fast‐changing world, the more you rely on the past, the more you fail to read the present and foresee the future. The problem is that the majority ...