“What Happens to the Ground When Everything Moves to the Cloud?”

Silo Busting 19: Blend Space: Shopping in an Uncertain Future with Buck Sleeper and Ken Gordon

The world is finally, cautiously, about to reopen. This is much-needed good news for the beleaguered retail industry. Question is: How can retailers design a shopping experience that will truly work for this brave new world? According to Buck Sleeper, leader of our Restaurants and Retail Vertical, the answer is Blend Space, a recent proof-of-concept project about “not just brick-and-mortar shopping but how we shop online, emerging trends in edge retail distribution, and what this space is going to look like in the future when we are fully recovered from this global pandemic and enter our new normal.” In this conversation with producer Ken Gordon, we learn how Blend Space is not omnichannel, where the outlines of Blend Space’s geography reside, what happens when cloud floats onto the scene, and how companies can start blending. Ultimately, says Sleeper, Blend Space gets to the point where “You can have your shopping experience and I can have mine, both within the same brand but on our own terms.”

Host: Alison Kotin
Engineer: Kyp Pilalas
Producer: Ken Gordon