The Tweet Economy: Why Markets, Policy, and Public Opinion Now Move at the Speed of a Post

By Dominick Miserandino, CEO, RTM Nexus There used to be a rhythm to how information moved through the world. The 5 o’clock news came on, you sat down, you absorbed it, and then you had the rest of the evening to actually think about what you’d just learned. That rhythm is gone. I talked about […]

AI Can Tell us What Consumers Want. But Can It Tell Us What They’ll Want Next?

By: Lara E. Rothberg A shopper asks an AI agent to find the best pair of running shoes. The agent compares products, reads reviews, checks prices and makes a recommendation. The brand may never enter the conversation. No homepage. No campaign. No carefully crafted brand story. Just a product that either made the cut—or didn’t. […]

Illustration representing AI agents needing product management oversight rather than just prompt engineering

AI Agents Need Product Managers, Not Just Prompt Engineers

By: Hemang Upadhyay, Strategic Product & AI Leader, RTM Insider Production agents are products, with users, permissions, failure modes, and business outcomes. The easiest way to misunderstand an AI agent is to treat it as a better prompt. That framing survives the demo and falls apart in production. A production agent is not a model […]

Illustration representing reversibility as the next key metric for AI agent reliability

The Next AI Reliability Metric is Reversibility

By: Hemang Upadhyay, Strategic Product & AI Leader, RTM Insider Most AI reliability conversations still fixate on accuracy. Accuracy matters, but for agents that act, it is incomplete. Once an AI system takes action, the sharper question is often whether the action can be reversed. Reversibility is the ability to explain, pause, undo, correct, or […]

Panel discussion graphic on moving beyond personalization theater toward customer trust and execution

Beyond Personalization Theater: Why Customer Trust, Organizational Agility, and Execution Are the Real Growth Engines

For more than a decade, enterprise brands have invested heavily in personalization. Customer data platforms, recommendation engines, audience segmentation tools, dynamic content systems, and AI-powered experiences have become standard components of the modern retail technology stack. Yet despite billions of dollars in investment, many organizations still struggle to demonstrate meaningful incremental revenue from these efforts. […]

Graphic representing trust as the scarcest resource in the retail data and AI stack

In Retail, Trust Is the Scarcest Resource in the Stack

By: Jiaqi Qian, GP Singh The most expensive failure in retail analytics doesn’t look like a failure. Dashboards load. Reports ship on schedule. The AI assistant produces fluent summaries. On paper, the program works. Meanwhile the merchandising lead keeps a spreadsheet, the planner calls an analyst she trusts before signing a replenishment plan, and the […]

Illustration representing the shift from directive leadership to guiding and coaching teams

The Patience Shift: Why Leaders Must Guide, Not Just Do

Early in my executive career, I believed leadership was about speed and execution. When a problemarose, my instinct was simple: step in, take the wheel, and solve it. It was fast, effective, and got immediate results. Or so I thought. Over time, as I navigated senior leadership roles and spent years sitting in rooms with […]

Photo from the RTM Nexus July mixer featuring sponsors Merciv and Trasix

July Mixer Recap: Merciv, Trasix, And A New Kind of Meetup

What a turnout for our July mixer. Thank you to everyone in the RTM Nexus community who came out, it made for a great night of conversation and connection. See the full set of pictures here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Rvlqi2KbZfdzEgXpbDlMiNp3hyKwWysO?usp=sharing We also want to spotlight our two sponsors from the evening, Merciv and Trasix, and share a bit […]

Cover graphic for RTM Nexus's list of 19 essential retail and e-commerce books for 2026

The Definitive Retail and E-Commerce Playbook: 19 Essential 2026 Titles

The retail and e-commerce spaces are moving faster than ever. Between the sudden collapse of organic search channels, the automation of the physical storefront, and shifting compliance rules around tracking consumer behavior, operators need practical battle plans rather than academic theories. To give our community a distinct operational advantage, we have cataloged the most critical […]

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