Parsons School of Design, Harvard’s i-lab and global management consulting firm Kurt Salmon are joining forces to create XRC Labs, a New York-based accelerator that unites entrepreneurs and investors to solve the biggest challenges-and unlock the next generation of opportunities-facing the retail and consumer goods industry.
“The shopping experience is still largely the same as it was when Selfridge opened the modern department store in 1909,” says the accelerator’s managing director, Pano Anthos, a serial entrepreneur and retail technology expert himself. “It’s not a technology problem. It’s a design problem. Retailers have the technology to personalize every consumer’s experience and to form products that function like magic. They just haven’t built much that consumers want to use.”
XRC Labs addresses this gap. Its mission is to create an ecosystem of entrepreneurs and investors to rapidly design, launch and iterate retail and consumer technologies, products and services, all supported by hugely influential partners and advisors with deep roots in the retail and consumer goods industry.
“Our focus on creative entrepreneurship, coupled with our expertise in design, makes Parsons the ideal partner for XRC Labs,” said Parsons’ Executive Dean Joel Towers. “Good design drives innovation and is essential to creating products that consumers want. In the lab, entrepreneurs will learn how to leverage emerging technologies and processes to create a personalized consumer experience that will allow them to thrive in a global marketplace.”
XRC Labs, for “accelerating retail and consumer goods innovation,” will conduct a minimum of two ten-week sessions each year, with applicants drawn from a pool of entrepreneurs and innovators with a passion for customer experiences, brands and retailing. The accelerator will focus on omnichannel retail, product development and data science, exploring innovations that address such challenges and opportunities as loyalty, customer experience, geolocation, 3-D printing, crowdsourcing, personalization, consumer insights, the Internet of things and video analytics.
“Retail is happening everywhere, and it’s changing the rules of the game. Design now trumps exclusivity. Data science now trumps ‘location, location, location,’” said Al Sambar, managing director at Kurt Salmon and head of the North America Retail and Consumer Practice. “XRC Labs is facilitating an industry shift equivalent to the move from nineteenth-century general stores to national department stores. The opportunities for differentiation are enormous.”
Entrepreneur, investor and sponsor applications for XRC Labs’ October session are now open.
“The retail and consumer goods sector is massive and warrants focused attention and ecosystems that only highly vertical accelerators like XRC Labs can offer,” said Jodi Goldstein, managing director, Harvard innovation lab. “As with other accelerators, we are excited about its formation as a logical next step for alumni of our programs.”
Entrepreneurs can apply at www.xrclabs.com.
About Parsons School of Design
The New School’s Parsons School of Design is one of the leading institutions for art and design education in the world. Based in New York but active around the world, the school offers undergraduate and graduate programs in the full spectrum of art and design disciplines. Entrepreneurship and design innovation are at the heart of Parsons’ curriculum, which embraces an institutional vision that aligns with shifts in the global economy. Parsons graduates are leaders in their respective fields, with a shared commitment to creatively and critically addressing the complexities of life in the 21st century. For more information, visit www.newschool.edu/parsons.
About Harvard innovation lab
Launched in November 2011, the Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab) serves as a resource for students from across Harvard interested in entrepreneurship and innovation. The programming the i-lab offers is designed to help students grow their ventures at any stage of development and covers a wide range of disciplines.
About Kurt Salmon’s Global Retail and Consumer Group
Kurt Salmon is a global management consulting firm dedicated to building the market leaders of tomorrow-whatever tomorrow might look like.
In nearly a century of working with the world’s most consistently successful companies, Kurt Salmon’s Retail and Consumer Group offers well-honed experience to help you turn your business operations into a source of competitive advantage. Over the years, we have worked with 30 of the world’s top 50 retailers, as well as scores of global and specialty brands, to design and align how they operate in order to shape and satisfy the desires of their customers-now and in the future.
We call it delivering “success for what’s next.” Our clients tell us the results are transformative.
