Redefining Retail

Introduction: Change Is the Only Constant

When we thought we had all the answers, all of a sudden, all the questions changed.

—Mario Benedetti, Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet (1920–2009)

It is not news that change is inevitable. Indeed, we know from the sixth‐century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus that “the only constant in life is change.” However, the speed, depth, and breadth of the transformation triggered by digital technology, accelerated by the pandemic, and exacerbated by the volatility of the macroeconomic context qualifies as an undeniable paradigm shift. The business community has long used the acronym VUCA—volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous—to describe the state of flux that has replaced the sense of certainty, stability, and familiarity that people had previously been used to.¹ However, another acronym more aptly captures the times we live in today—BANI: brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible—coined in 2016 by Jamais Cascio, an American anthropologist, futurist, and author. The term BANI emphasizes even more the folly of relying on the concept of stability. In the words of Cascio: “It is a framework to articulate the increasingly commonplace situations in which simple volatility or complexity are insufficient lenses through which to understand what's taking place. Situations in which conditions aren't simply unstable, they're chaotic. In which outcomes aren't simply hard to foresee, they're completely unpredictable. Or, to use the ...