Summit Connects Retail Waste Execs with Tech Experts

By [ Tiffin Shewmake ]
10/24/2019

This September, RILA and Austin-based startup Smarter Sorting hosted the first ever Innovation in Action Summit. The two-day Summit was designed to help retail waste management and operations executives imagine the “art of the possible” by connecting them with design thinking leaders and tech experts developing solutions to common challenges.

The Summit included:

Presentations by retailers;
“Big data” workshops by technologists; and
Teams of retailers working with engineering and design professionals.

The result was a collection of specific solutions that, taken together, have the potential to revolutionize how retailers manage regulated consumer products over the course of their lifecycles.

RILA believes that cross-functional and cross-industry collaboration and innovation is the future of business, and we are excited to play a leading role in helping our members embrace new opportunities to maximize the value of data and technology.

The insights and ideas we all shared at the Summit will help us develop products that can help retailers on the ground. After we build the prototypes, retailers will have the option of testing them in live retail environments—and innovation can begin.

Dan McGowan

CRO
Smarter Sorting

Following the Summit, Smarter Sorting will develop a tech-based solution protype and present it to the retail participants this December to demonstrate how new technology can be used to cure old problems.

For more information or to get involved, reach out to Tiffin Shewmake, RILA vice president and executive director of the Retail Compliance Center.