The Retail Leadership Lens

Your company’s AI strategy will likely fail. So what separates that successful minority from everyone else? It often comes down to a new type of leader: the "Head of AI." From my conversations with boards, it’s clear this leader’s success depends less on their technical skills and more on their ability to operate as a true business leader. This is especially true as powerful new tools like Agentic AI, which can automate entire workflows, raise the stakes even higher.

Imagine that “someone” is an AI system helping you choose your next regional lead, predict sales volumes, or decide whether to close a struggling store. You’d want more than just the answer. You’d want to know the logic behind it. The “why”. That’s exactly the problem a new research project from Anthropic is trying to solve. It’s called Project VEND, and although the name sounds like it belongs to a dystopian thriller, the idea is refreshingly practical: get AI to explain its

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping retail, making operations smoother, customer experiences more personal, supply chains more efficient.