Oracle posted a very interesting short thought-piece Wednesday (June 19) about the different ways retail chains do—and should—handle lab strategy. Often labs are pure internal mechanisms, but they are more often the result of a tech acquisition. But the choice of strategies reveals an awful lot about attitudes of senior management. One key point is that management must be willing to accept—and learn from—failures. But if the CEO even thinks of the ultra-valuable data that comes from learning what shoppers will not accept as "a failure," the chain has even bigger problems than it thinks.
By looking at the different choices made by Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Nordstrom, Staples, Tesco, Wet Seal and Lowe's, Oracle categorizes three IT lab approaches. But how a lab is corporately structured will make little difference if senior management isn't willing to first learn (and to pay a lot for those lessons) and to be open to a future that they may not like. The job of a chain is to adapt to the reality in its market. The job of a dying chain is to cling to its current tactics if the future doesn't look like what it wants it to look like.