Retail is at a pivotal point, approaching the singularity we envisioned earlier. The convergence of AI, real-time visibility, autonomous operations, and composable commerce is fundamentally reshaping how retailers compete. This isn't incremental disruption; it is a transformation so complete that traditional retail models will become obsolete. Retailers who understand and navigate this inflection will dominate. Those who don't will disappear. You will author the definitive book on this moment. No other work comprehensively addresses retail singularity with the rigor and insight this book demands. It will be the authoritative resource for retail executives and technology leaders navigating this critical transition. While you author this seminal work, you'll simultaneously drive Litmus7's thought leadership, research, and market intelligence strategy. You'll lead a research team, establish proprietary POVs, and generate market insights that fuel sales opportunities. This is a business-critical, multi-dimensional leadership role.
Key Accountabilities
- Author the Retail Singularity Book: Own intellectual vision, research methodology, and primary authorship. Conduct 40–60 primary interviews with retail C-suite and technology leaders. Deliver publication-ready manuscript with original insights, rigorous sourcing, and compelling narrative.
- Sales Enablement & Market Intelligence: Translate research into actionable market insights that directly fuel Litmus7's sales pipeline. Identify emerging opportunities where we can pitch, compete, and differentiate. Provide sales teams with competitive positioning, customer intelligence, and market context that wins deals.
- Lead Research Team: Build and manage a team of 3–5 researchers and analysts. Set priorities, establish methodologies, mentor talent. Drive quality, productivity, and intellectual rigor.
- Deal Intelligence: Analyze customer engagements, RFPs, and competitive wins/losses. Synthesize into organizational learning. Identify gaps and market opportunities Litmus7 should exploit. Support major deals with research-backed due diligence.
- Establish Proprietary POVs: Build 4–6 proprietary points of view on critical retail transformation topics. Author 8–12 thought leadership articles annually for LinkedIn, Forbes Tech Council, industry publications.
Core Responsibilities
Research & Book Authorship
- Design and execute multi-modal research: primary interviews, market data analysis, competitive intelligence, trend forecasting, scenario development.
- Conduct strategic interviews with retail C-suite (CIOs, CMOs, COOs, CEOs) and technology leaders. Uncover competitive intent, technology investments, business imperatives.
- Write publication-ready prose across formats: book chapters, articles, white papers, market briefs.
- Create compelling case studies, examples, and frameworks that illuminate complex concepts. Maintain editorial schedules; coordinate with editors and publishers.
Sales & Business Impact
- Support Quarterly Business Reviews with market insights that can lead to farming opportunities.
- Develop market context decks, competitive summaries, battle cards. Support RFP responses and customer engagements with research-backed positioning.
Team & Stakeholder
- Recruit, onboard, mentor and develop research team members. Establish clear expectations and growth paths. Conduct regular 1-on-1s, performance reviews, career development conversations.
- Set research priorities and assign projects. Monitor progress and quality. Provide mentoring and feedback. Foster culture of intellectual rigor.
Mandatory Qualifications
- Postgraduate in engineering/business/economics with 10–12 years of specialized experience in retail technology research at tier-1 analyst firms.
- Deep retail domain expertise: Genuine understanding of retail operations. Know what drives retail technology decisions. Should have spent at least 8-9 years in analyzing the Retail industry.
- Writing at scale: Published reports, white papers, monographs, or articles demonstrating analytical depth and publication-ready quality.
- Primary research mastery: Design methodologies, recruit and conduct interviews, analyze qualitative data, draw defensible conclusions, transparently address limitations.
- C-suite credibility: Engage senior executives as a peer advisor. Conduct strategic interviews that uncover authentic business imperatives.
- Sales acumen: Understand how research translates into business opportunities. Experience supporting sales teams and identifying market gaps.
- Team leadership: Experience managing or mentoring research teams, analysts, or junior consultants. Demonstrated ability to develop talent and drive quality.
- Research rigor: Multi-modal research design. Comfort with ambiguity. Systematically form and test hypotheses. Synthesize disparate data into coherent narratives. Rigor in fact-checking, citation accuracy, quality assurance.
- Communication excellence: Publication-ready writing across formats. Articulate speaking. Explain sophisticated concepts accessibly without sacrificing accuracy or nuance.
- Collaboration & independence: Work productively with sales, marketing, practice leads without ceding intellectual independence. Transparent about research process and findings. Report honestly even if findings challenge organizational preferences.
- Intellectual humility: Willing to update thinking based on evidence. Acknowledge complexity and counterarguments. Resist false certainty.
