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AI Playbook: Content & Cocktails — Kick Off NRF with Coresight Research!
Start your NRF weekend with an evening where innovation meets inspiration. Join Coresight Research on Saturday of NRF 2026 for an exclusive cocktail event — AI Playbook: Content & Cocktails — bringing together investors, retail, and technology leaders for a lively evening of insights, networking, and curated drinks.
Discover how artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of retail — from personalized customer experiences to data-driven growth — and be part of the conversations shaping the future of the industry.
This is more than just cocktails — it’s your first look at Coresight Research’s annual Technology Outlook Report, our latest perspectives on harnessing technology and AI to drive impact across the retail value chain. The conversation will be continued at a more strategic level during our Executive Leadership Dinner later in the evening.
Limited spots are available, so secure your place early for an evening of meaningful connections, bold ideas, and inspired conversation.
Let’s raise a glass to innovation, intelligence, and what’s next for retail at AI Playbook: Content & Cocktails — your NRF weekend, elevated.
CEO & Founder
UDig
Vice President, AI Platforms
Tractor Supply Company
Senior Director of Retail Store Operations for North American Stores
Nike
EVP, Chief Technology Officer
Gap Inc.
Chief Digital and Information Officer
PacSun
SVP Technology
Dollar General Corp.
Coresight Research
President
Vice President - Innovators Services
Vice President - Advisory
Agents expand the frontier of what is possible by accelerating experimentation, scenario testing, and concept-to-pilot velocity.
In this opening conversation, Gap EVP, Chief Technology Officer, Sven Gerjets will unpack what it takes to Catalyze Innovation in the age of agentic AI, when systems do not merely advise but can take action. Centered on real-world constraints, we will explore the operating model, governance, and cross-functional execution required to move from experimentation to enterprise-scale impact—turning innovation from theater into measurable outcomes, with imagination as the guiding constraint.
Keynote Speaker: Sven Gerjets | EVP & CTO, Gap Inc
In Conversation With: Deborah Weinswig | Founder & CEO, Coresight Research
Focus: The Back-of-House Shift Beyond simple automation, agentic retail creates a “self-adjusting” business.
This panel explores how agents are in the very early stages of advising human teams on complex decisions, eventually moving toward autonomously managing supply chains, inventory, and pricing. We will also discuss other high-impact operational areas—from dynamic staffing to fraud detection—and the specific risks along the way, such as “black box” logic and systemic errors. Lastly, we’ll discuss how to move away from rigid, legacy rules toward a fluid, orchestrated system that senses market shifts and acts in real-time to preserve margin and customer experience.
Panelists:
Tom Hutchins | SVP Technology, Dollar General
Janice Wang | CEO, Alvanon
The store is no longer a place; it is a set of capabilities. This session focuses on how retailers Reshape the storefront into a competitive advantage—one that blends digital growth, commercial strategy, and physical experience into a single, coherent performance system. We will look at what it takes to redesign the store as an engine for conversion, loyalty, fulfillment, and brand storytelling, while keeping operational reality intact: labor constraints, inventory accuracy, shrink, and the timeless customer expectation of “make it easy.”
Ben Thompson | GM Digital Growth & Commercial Strategy, Endeavour Group
Andy Frank | CEO & Founder, UDig
Glenn Allison | Vice President AI Platforms, Tractor Supply
Digital intelligence is maturing into physical intelligence. This keynote explores how retailers can Enhance both operations and experience by “embodying” AI—bringing decision-making into the physical environment through Physical AI, sensing, automation, and world models that simulate and optimize real-world conditions. The ambition is not novelty. The ambition is reliability: fewer misses, faster responses, better execution, and experiences that feel effortless because the complexity has been absorbed by the system, not the customer.
Keynote Speaker: Ryan Taylor | Senior Director NA Stores, Nike
