The goal of "The Innovation Conversation" is to explore some facet of the fast-changing, technology-driven retail landscape and how it affects businesses and consumers. It is, we think, fertile territory ... and one that Tom Furphy - a former Amazon executive, the originator of Amazon Fresh, and currently CEO and Managing Director of Consumer Equity Partners (CEP), a venture capital and venture development firm in Seattle, WA, that works with many top retailers and manufacturers - is uniquely positioned to address.
The movement of retailers into technology has been considerable, as they seek options that will give them greater agility, elasticity and cost savings. In this Innovation Conversation, Tom and Kevin (but mostly Tom, who knows a lot more about this stuff than Kevin) talk about both the pain and gain of such a shift, the reasons it has to be a high priority, and how it can give retailers additional bandwidth to do the things they really do well. They also talk about the advantages and disadvantages of working with Amazon's AWS division - the leader in cloud technology - and lay out some of the other alternatives.
FYI…you can check out AWS here … and Microsoft's competing Azure business here.
