MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Last week, Business Insider held its IGNITION conference, and amongst guests and panelists was Target’s Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell. Taking jabs at competitors like Walmart in order to tout his company’s success strategy, Cornell revealed the retailer’s focus remains on innovations it can roll out in stores and online within a five-year time frame.
“Experimentation is interesting, but if I can’t scale it—if I can’t do it 1,800 times—it’s not going to add a lot of enterprise value,” Cornell said, responding to a question about Walmart’s Store No. 8, robots, and virtual reality, as reported by Business Insider. “To do things at scale, they have to have broad-based applications. Otherwise they are nice little experiments that distract the organization and distract resources that really need to be reapplied to the core enterprise.”
However, not to be left behind by Walmart’s current ventures with shelf-scanning robots and new produce varieties, Target has partnered with the venture capital firm BCG Digital Ventures to launch a fourteen-week “innovation sprint” aimed at coming up with new ideas for growing its business. With it closing this week, the project involved Target managers collaborating with BCG Digital Ventures’ designers, engineers, and investors to produce ideas for new products and potential businesses.
“We’re going to see some pretty exciting ideas,” said Cornell, who will review the ideas after the programs end.
Target also recently announced the reimagining and remodeling of many of its brick-and-mortar stores in order to feature fresh food and grocery conveniently front and center.
As we embrace the future, will Target’s remodeling and innovation sprint strategies continue to fare well against competitors’ more unique approaches? AndNowUKnow will continue to report.
