Short clip: Making calculated mistakes

October 10, 2006, 8:10am PDT | Length: 00:01:33
In an interview with ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Dan Farber, Robert Fortdiscusses his current focus on "back-room" technology and why not all mistakes are bad.

Transcript

Short clip: Making calculated mistakes

>> So what are some of the new areas of innovation that you are looking into at this point?

>> Well, we've been focused right now on our back room technology mostly. Just sort of doing some house cleaning in that area. But if you look at our data warehouse, you look at our voice over IP and you look at our kiosks for example, and our new POS that we're rolling out, these are sort of pillars, and what I'm looking to do now is to start to u se those platforms and see what benefit we get from integrating them. As I just pointed out, if you go to our digital listening station and customers are actually listening to things, we are keeping metrics, we have telemetry, in a sense, of what they're listening to. One idea would be to feed that information right back to the customer so that if you walked into a store, you would be able to see what are the top selling products in our store and what are the top listened to products in our store. That kind of information helps the customer who's usually trying to keep up with trends.

>> And finally, do you have any recommendations for people who may not be as innovative or may not be so risk taking?

>> You have to sort of release yourself a little bit. I think you have to give yourself, its okay to make a mistake. Again, make it a cautious and calculated mistake, but its okay to make mistakes. We've got to take risks. Just keep your eyes and ears open. It's always fun to look at every place, for example, we look at the consumer electronics world and ask ourselves what of those electronics can we actually put into a store to help out with our store environment? You know, obviously big screens are a big factor, and we have many of them. We have over 60 of them in our Time Square store. But it's just always having your eyes and ears open and then be willing to take some risks.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====

Virgin Entertainment Group CIO: Robert Fort

Virgin Entertainment Group CIO: Robert Fort

CIO of Virgin Entertainment Group, Robert Fort says that risk-taking and innovation are at the...

Short clip: Creating a culture of innovation

Short clip: Creating a culture of innovation

Robert Fort talks to ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Dan Farber about how his company encourages its...

Short clip: Using real-time data to boost sales

Short clip: Using real-time data to boost sales

Robert Fort explains to ZDNet Editor-in-Chief Dan Farber how the company's retail stores use...

Talkback - Tell Us What You Think

Formatting +
BB Codes - Note: HTML is not supported in forums
  • [b] Bold [/b]
  • [i] Italic [/i]
  • [u] Underline [/u]
  • [s] Strikethrough [/s]
  • [q] "Quote" [/q]
  • [ol][*] 1. Ordered List [/ol]
  • [ul][*] · Unordered List [/ul]
  • [pre] Preformat [/pre]
  • [quote] "Blockquote" [/quote]

The best of ZDNet, delivered

ZDNet Newsletters

Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox

White Papers, Webcasts, & Resources

Facebook Activity