Futurist Keynote, South Africa: The Future of Retail, Cow Hills

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By Matthew Griffin Keynote Presentations 7th September 2020

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Retailers have already experienced one major disruption, and now they’re about to experience another and most aren’t prepared.

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Firstly, thank you to Carlos and the team at Cow Hills who invited me to be the keynote speaker at their annual get together in South Africa to present on the Future of Retail at the glorious Suikerbossie Restaurant overlooking in Hout Bay, where South Africa’s largest retailers, including Shoprite and Woolworths, gathered to hear about the latest trends impacting the industry.

During my keynote I covered a wide range of topics, from the emergence of new product design and manufacturing technologies, such as Creative Machines and 3D holographic printing, right through to the emergence of the first fully autonomous retailers which will usher in the industry’s third wave of disruption and only serve to further compound the disruption wrought on the industry by the arrival of E-Commerce in the early 2000’s, as it helps retailers everywhere change the economics of the industry, eliminate supply chains and inventory, and move to an on demand business model.

See the keynote in full

To add even more fuel to the fire though, as if trying to navigate two industry wide disruptions in just a couple of decades wasn’t enough, this latest trend is being driven by none other than the e-tail behemoth Amazon who, as I discuss during the presentation, are now on route to become the world’s first fully autonomous retailer where everything from product design and manufacturing, through to fulfilment and delivery are autonomous and performed by machines.

As I’ve discussed many times before, exponential technologies like the ones I discuss in the presentation not only make the likelihood of entire industries being disrupted in new ways more plausible and easier than ever before, but they also help accelerate the rate of disruption itself.

Inevitably, as executives in the retail industry are about to find out first hand again, this means that the amount of time between disruptive events, and the cycles of disruption themselves, are get increasingly shorter over time, ultimately meaning that companies need to be always on the look out for the next wave of disruption and be ready to both defend against it and lead it.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Matthew Griffin, described as a "Walking encyclopaedia of the future" by NASA and a futurist polymath, is one of the world's most renowned futurists and strategic foresight experts. A serial entrepreneur Matthew is the Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working across the next 50 years, XPotential University, the world's first free futures and foresight university, and the World Futures Forum which works with the United Nations to solve the worlds greatest challenges. 13 times author of the Codex of the Future series, Matthew is an in demand international keynote, acclaimed university lecturer, and host of the hit Fanatical Futurist podcast.

A rare talent in his past Matthew helped build and run several multi-billion dollar business units for Atos, Dell-EMC, and IBM, and his ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77+ governments, and many of the world's most respected brands including ABB, Accenture, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Dentons, Deloitte, Disney, EY, KPMG, Lego, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Pepsi Co, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, VISA, and many others. He was also the only futurist invited to talk at the UN COP28 held in Dubai alongside world leaders.

Regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, Matthews mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.