The Red Queen Retail Race: An Innovation Pandemic in the Era of Digitization

This book considers: how innovation through technological change is transforming the service sector; how changing consumer needs and behaviors are forcing firms to alter operations; how firms need competitive strategies and new modes of implementation to respond to this changing landscape; and how public policy will need to adapt.

Richard Cuthbertson, Senior Research Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford,Olli Aleksi Rusanen, AI Applications, IBM Finland,Lauri Paavola, Postdoctoral Researcher, Aalto University

Richard Cuthbertson is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford; Governing Body Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford; and a Visiting Senior Fellow at Aalto University. Richard earned his undergraduate degree at Lancaster University Management School and his PhD at the University of Southampton. After a commercial career in distribution management and marketing operations, he became a senior lecturer at Bournemouth University before joining Saïd Business School. Richard is a past Fellow of the Finland Distinguished Professor Programme (2015-2017), was awarded the Emerald Literati Network Award for Excellence (2010), and the Pegasus Prize for eBusiness Future Insights (2006).

Olli Rusanen now works for IBM in AI Applications, where he assists retailers in digital channel management. During the research for this book, Olli was a project manager at Aalto University and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford, with research interests in retail innovation, strategy, and retail adaptation to a digital environment. He has conducted several case analyses of major retail chains in European and US markets, in order to understand how resource management practices change as a result of technological change and how the firms pursue competitive advantage in an increasingly digital landscape.

Lauri Paavola is a Postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University School of Business. Before his postdoctoral research at Aalto, Lauri has worked at Stanford University as a Research Fellow (2020) and at the University of Oxford as a Visiting Scholar (2014-2016). Much of Lauri's research and teaching has concentrated on addressing the challenges of digitalization, particularly through technological innovation and data analytics.