By: Peter Cohan
Get to know RETHINK Retail’s Top Retail Experts through the “Meet the TRE” Q&A series! Dive in to learn about a member of the thought leader community and follow their work and insights across our content and their social channels.
• Name, Full Title, and/or Company
Peter Cohan is an Associate Professor of Management Practice at Babson College, a strategy consultant, startup investor, book author, and columnist.
• Tell us about your background
Before starting my own company, I worked in two consulting firms founded by professors. The first firm was Index Systems, a consulting firm founded by five former MIT professors, to bridge the gap between management and information technology. While there, I was in the founding team of an artificial intelligence startup that raised millions in venture capital and failed. After business school I went to work for Monitor Company, a strategy consulting firm cofounded by Harvard Business School professor, Michael Porter where I learned the tools of strategy which have fueled my career since.
After spending about seven years as an internal consultant in the banking and insurance industries, I founded Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a strategy consulting firm that has completed over 150 projects to help companies identify, evaluate, and profit from growth opportunities created by changing technology. I invested in seven startups, three of which were sold for over $2 billion and one of which, SoFi, went public in 2021 at an $18 billion valuation. I am the author of 17 books, most recently Brain Rush: How to Invest and Compete in the Real World of Generative AI. I am a senior contributor at Forbes and a contributor at Inc.
RETHINK Retail named me a Top Retail Expert every year between 2021 and 2024 and chose me as a Top AI Leader in 2024. My October 2024 podcast about generative AI: Unlocking #Retail’s #GenerativeAI Future: Insights from Peter Cohan was Goodpod’s top management podcast of the month.
I earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Swarthmore College, did graduate work in computer science at MIT, and hold an MBA from The Wharton School.
• Brief description of your current role and your space in the industry
At Babson I am faculty lead for the core undergraduate strategy course and have created popular electives on Startup Cities and Scaling Strategy.
In 2020, I published my 16th book – Goliath Strikes Back – about how large companies in six different retailing industries were competing with e-commerce startups. I did a podcast about the book with RETHINK Retail and was later chosen as a Top Retail Expert.
With the July 2024 publication of Brain Rush, I am focused on providing thought leadership to retailers seeking to capture the payoff and avoid the risks of Generative AI.
• What challenges/opportunities are currently facing retailers?
Challenges and opportunities currently facing retailers include adapting to the threat of tariffs, responding to rapidly changing consumer tastes, scrambling to hold on to market share in the face of fast-growing upstarts, developing the next generation of leaders who can keep companies growing rapidly, and avoiding the risks and capturing the opportunities of applying generative AI to their customer-facing and internal business processes.
• What hot topics or trends have you been seeing in the retail space? How do you support these hot topics?
I have been supporting the hot topic of what retailers should about generative AI by identifying the many mistakes business leaders are making in their efforts to apply the technology and investigating the few examples of successful adoption of generative AI in ways that boost revenue and encourage customers to keep buying.
• How has the retail industry changed in the past 5 years? What do you predict will happen in the next 5 to 10 years?
As I shared with the MIT Retail Forum in 2020, the biggest change has been omnichannel retail – ideally with seamless shopping across online and physical channels, with consistent pricing and inventory across platforms. The last five years have also seen the rise of personalization, a mobile-first approach, cashier less checkout, and reliance on third-party delivery services.
The next five to 10 years could feature the use of augmented and virtual reality in virtual fitting rooms, AI-powered customer service, sustainable retail practices, greater use of data analytics and predictive modelling, and drone delivery. I am skeptical about whether these technological trends will deliver their promised payoff.
• Do you have any interesting projects coming up?
Yes. They include teaching a new Babson course Generative AI For Growth and Strategy, providing thought leadership to a global consulting firm on how companies can use generative AI to create new growth curves, developing executive education programs for global executives seeking to apply the concepts of my book Value Leadership and leading a course this coming spring for undergraduate students to gain insight into the Paris startup ecosystem.
• Which resources do you use to keep up with industry news?
The general business press and leading retail industry publications.
• What is the greatest challenge the industry is facing?
The greatest challenge facing the retail industry today is the need to adapt to rapidly changing consumer behavior created by evolving technology. This includes responding to the shift towards online shopping and the expectation for seamless omnichannel experiences, where customers can move between online and in-store shopping effortlessly; this often requires significant digital transformation and investment in technology to meet evolving customer expectations.
Soon, retailers who are not capturing the greatest growth opportunities from generative AI while sidestepping its risks, could be left behind. To do this effectively, retail CEOs will need to change how they lead — to make sure generative AI is incorporated into key customer-facing processes in ways that radically improve the customer experience.
• How do you continue to grow and develop as an influencer of the retail industry?
I write articles about how retailers are using new technology, participate in podcasts on generative AI, and talk with executives about how they are grappling with the challenges of using generative AI for growth and strategy.
• What are the most critical changes that we must make to face the future effectively?
We need more leaders who can turn an idea into a publicly traded company and keep it growing rapidly for years thereafter. To do that, they must be infused with the right mindset – which I call cognitive hunger – and quit if they are stuck in cognitive lock-in.
• Who is making the greatest advancements in the industry, and what are they doing?
Victoria’s Secret/Pink is among the most innovative because the company successfully created a separate brand, “Pink,” specifically targeted at a younger demographic (college-aged women), by offering a more casual, comfortable style of lingerie and apparel – this brings the younger demographic into the Victoria’s Secret customer base earlier in life, while also adapting to changing consumer trends and connecting with their target market through strong social media engagement.
• What has helped you get to where you are and what advice would you have for others who want to set off in a similar direction?
The most important thing for me is always wanting to understand why and how things work. In that pursuit, I have become increasingly careful about admitting what I do not know and finding answers to these questions by talking with experts, customers, companies, and others who can provide answers. This search for the relevant facts allows me to develop an independent perspective that my clients find extremely valuable.
• What is the best resource for people who want to dive in deeper?
My Babson faculty site has good information
https://www.babson.edu/about/our-leaders-and-scholars/faculty-and-academic-divisions/faculty-profiles/peter-cohan.php
• Is there anything we’re leaving out here that needs to be addressed?
No.
