The Next Wave of Retail: Anticipating and Preparing for the Future of Shopping  provides a glimpse into the retail world that may exist in the near future, but this book is not just about the future but also about the now and how you can stay relevant in a changed and transformed world. This is a book about options, an illustration of what is happening today and what may change in the future. It is about the consumer and their interactions with retail. I have spent the last 25 years of working with governments, global retail and financial institutions, and organizations building the digital foundation of tomorrow. However, the path to the future for me started in 2013, when I was in the office of the late Tom Kaldec, Head of Technology at Tesco, the world's 2nd largest retailer at the time, who later became a great friend and SVP of Technology at Target, an industry-leading retailer in the US. Tom said to me, "Ali, I want you to build the store of the future, but please do not focus on the technology but on our colleagues, customers, and values, create a vision that is exciting but value-based and doesn’t come back to me asking for more budget." At the time, I was working for Verizon, a US-based telecom company that only cared about the technology's functions and features and not the outcomes. However, I was lucky enough to be part of a great team whose data-driven vision of the future allowed me to tackle the biggest challenges in retail. Later in my career, I would meet Chris Luxford from the Aspire Group, a dear friend and mentor who helped me understand that this was the only way to approach transformation. Six months later, a group of Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups and I were QR-code checking in our CEO and Tesco's then-legendary CIO, Mike McNamara (who went on to transform Target's approach and culture to technology) into a 60,000-square-foot store just outside of London. What I did not know then but know now, is that we had just built the world's first frictionless, touchless, cloud-based shopping experience. You could pick up a micro-located product scan and pay via a custom-built app. The digital identity solution would form part of Verizon's federated digital identity ecosystem that supported the UK government's Verify solution. The BOPIS (Buy Online Pick Up Instore) solution's Click & Collect would evolve into Qudini, and a slew of other technologies would become commonplace for retailers during the 2020 COVID pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic sped up transformation across all digital channels, highlighting supply chain weaknesses worldwide. Unfortunately, the current inflationary environment, as well as the upcoming currency, global interest rate, capital, and cost of living crises, will push most consumers to the verge of financial collapse, along with the institutions that serve them. Capital and liquidity will evaporate.  Even before the pandemic, it was hard for many brick-and-mortar stores to stay open and keep customers interested in their products and spaces. But will shopping and retailing return to normal as the financial crisis expands? Retailers must reshape their organizations to generate value and leverage technology to enable tomorrow's "smart consumers."  The current period is one of exponential structural and financial change, in which events are occurring rapidly. As a result, businesses must be nimble enough to pivot physically and digitally swiftly and successfully.  Retailers and business leaders need to predict what customers want, what is likely to happen, and what is plausible. Then, put their retail businesses and brands to the test against all possible assumptions while driving innovation and delight into customer journeys and the path to purchase.  The coronavirus shuttered many street stores and malls, and consumers flocked to online shopping. H       --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theretailpodcast/message