FASHION MADE: Normalizing New Tech at Intel, with Mariya Zorotovich

Is this your first time at Pyropower?

It is.

Yeah? How have you enjoyed it?

It's been great because it is such a deep dive within kind of the product creation side of the house, which is a place that I know I've been in retail, I have never been super close to. And so it's super interesting to hear the conversations that are taking place, the solutions that people are looking at, and really where they are in their journey. And so that's where it allows me to kind of draw parallels and gauge where other functions of retail are in this kind of transformation stage.

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. What is your current mission at Intel then?

Current mission at Intel, you know, for Intel, we are in this phase of also kind of transforming and continuing to meet the needs of our customers, you know, worldwide. And it's really about how can we help bring platforms and new technology to the marketplace that can help to improve, you know, how we work, live, and play. Within my particular area, I'm focused on normalizing emerging technology, where we incubate it and learn about it and help try to remove some of the barriers to that technology so that a retailer can take it on and be able to scale really quickly with it. Okay, can you give me a specific example of a technology in this Yeah, so for example, many of the applications that we're seeing here have to do with data, right? Lots and lots of data because you're digitizing everything. So, what we're really curious about is if you have this, you know, physical location of the workplace or even a physical store and you have all of this data that's coming into place, how do you make sure that your architecture is future-proof, is future-ready, can take load of all of this data, can work with the cloud, you know, can digitize from an IoT standpoint. You know, what does that look like and how do different ecosystem players, meaning hardware providers, software providers, cloud providers, and even the retailer, come together to work really efficiently to problem solve through some of the integration challenges that occur?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because there are a lot of those actually.

Yes. Because, you know, In their nature of where we are with these applications, everyone is kind of building their application from top to bottom, focused on a particular problem. And that's great. But as a retailer, the reality is you're bringing all of these different groups together, but you have to do it in a way where you want flexibility, you want to be able to have it extend over time, and you probably also wanna be able to switch out applications, just because the nature of your business. Those are some of the real challenges that start to present themselves when we talk about all of these data solutions and also the accessibility of those data. So if you have an application that's top to bottom, it's really hard to pull that data out. How can we start to alleviate some of those pieces?

How can you start to alleviate that?

Right now, where we're exploring is kind of this space around the world of open source that comes together with these proprietary applications. And how can you leverage kind of these future-proof type of architecture in that if everyone kind of follows the same suit, we can address it through things like middleware within the infrastructure, where these solutions can kind of latch into it. And then as a retailer, you have this backbone that helps support your business. And this all falls in line with kind of being that future NACS, right? Companies are moving towards cloud, which means you have containers and orchestration. And so again, from an IoT standpoint, with all these applications that are coming in, how do you help so that they can scale for future? So that's the space that we're looking at.

Amazing. Amazing. And you must work with so many different technologies as well.

Lots of different technologies, but they all have common threads. And the common threads are data, which is the IoT portion, artificial intelligence, which is the processing portion, and cloud, which is the storage capability, and then variations therein. But what we're most interested, of course, is the output of that, right? What is that? It's experiential retail, and that's what's really cool.

Yeah, because obviously retail, you know, had a little bit of a slump. I don't think there's a retail apocalypse like some people are saying. I mean, you look at the numbers and still most products are bought in store, a large, large majority of products are bought in-store rather than online.

Yes.

Slightly less so in the UK than there is in the US, if you look at the figures. But it's certainly a space where there's change happening.

Yes.

And I guess Intel is supporting that.

So, you know, with these words like, you know, the apocalypse, etc., I mean, you know, what we have to think about is digital transformation is really about using digital technologies to solve problems. That's really all it is. And this idea of the apocalypse would say, yes, in terms of the traditional means of doing business, yeah, those things are changing because digital technologies have capabilities over and above what we have, you know, what we've experienced. So when you think about digital coming into your workspace to solve a particular problem, the process around that, how we operate, the roles, responsibilities, the skill sets around that, that all starts to open up and potentially can change in which you can create bigger value out of that. And that's super exciting.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's a really exciting place to be. There is so much talk about digital transformation these days. What are the common mistakes that you see that companies are making when they're trying to implement rapid change with these technologies?

Rapid change, although the tenets of being agile and change, the characteristics are about speed, are about making decisions based on customer need and not necessarily following this traditional line of process, it doesn't mean that it's not thoughtful. It doesn't mean that it's not planned. Planned, because it does require that. You're talking about transformation on the operating model, transformation on the culture, which both have to go hand in hand in order to create space for the skills and capabilities and people that need to come into the space, and frankly, the reskilling of the workforce that you have. You need to create that space for learning as roles start to change. And then, you know, The ultimate, if you're bringing those things together, starts to look at business transformation in terms of innovation, new business model, new business value. And that's kind of that sweet spot to really maximize the ROI on the workforce is that you bring those things together and that's what allows you to go over and above, right? That allows to create that space to be super innovative, to address a problem in a completely different way with the technology capabilities available.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, there is, you talk about digital skills and there's certainly a deficit of digital skills in the fashion industry right now. Do you know what can be done to address this?

Yeah, so in terms of addressing the skill sets, first and foremost, you know, it's kind of going back to business basics. To know what skills you need to have, you actually need to know where your business is going. So it can be at an organizational level, but it can also be at a team level. Where's your from and your to state? Do you actually know what that is? When I ask people about their changes, I say, "Well, what does success look like?" And often there's a lack of description about what is success. Well, if you don't know where you're headed, you don't really know the things you need to be successful, which includes the people or the skill sets. So that's the baseline. You have to have a plan to know where you're headed, and from there you can start to work backwards to understand, okay, what are the functions, what are the processes, what are the skill sets? And from there, you create this real plan about how are you going to move your workforce there. One piece to that though, besides the traditional disciplines of org development and HR, and learning and development coming together to help really kind of lift the skills and create a strategic plan around moving that skill set forward in your workforce, It is super important on the cultural side that you have these cultural attributes that are focused on growing, that are focused on learning, focused on risk-taking. If you don't have those things in place, people are not going to feel safe to be able to continue to learn and iterate. And it becomes this very uncomfortable place where people need to have the confidence that they can be able to make it to the next level in terms of continuing to learn, Because again, you're going to be starting over, right? It's kind of this new place of learning versus being the expert. And that's really important for as leaders and as a company to be able to recognize that change and that shift that the person is going to make.

Well, I guess it can be quite scary for an individual to do this. You know, you're talking about retraining.

Yes.

You know, if you spend your whole life doing something or you spend 20 years doing something and suddenly, you know, technology introduction comes about and you feel like, okay, I Am I still gonna be secure in the future? So how do you address some of those issues?

Yeah, so I think that's where, first off, we have to honor the past to be able to embrace the future. And so for many folks that have been in retail, who have been in retail for quite some time, everything that people have done, it's been awesome and great, and it's been done with the tools that we had in front of us. Now we're entering into this stage of, Industrial 4.0, which is the digital kind of revolution, where now we have these new tools at our hands to continue to evolve and do something more awesome, right? Do it in a different way, create new value. And that jump, again, is the place where we as individuals have to be okay with learning. We have to be okay of transitioning. We have to have the agility and the endurance and resilience that this kind of constant learning going to really be a part of the business because technology in itself is iterative and it continues to do more and more and more. So to me, that's just the way of the world is going to be. So the more as an individual I can prepare myself to be very open to learning, be vulnerable at times, and if I have a corporate culture that surrounds me around that learning and my leaders also talk about that, that's a really great, positive, and healthy environment to be in. So I think that's super important on those journeys. And this is where I tell people when it comes to digital transformation, it will rock you to your core. It rocks you to your core as an individual around the confidence of what you've known to where you need to go. And sometimes that path isn't clear. And also for an organization, right? It's the, well, these are our values, and these are our practices, and this is how we do it. Well, that could all shift and change. And that's where, you know, we have to be able to embrace that, yeah, you'll have your values as a company, but all your practices may change as a result. Of the technology that's coming into the workplace.

Yeah. What part does academia play in all of this?

Yeah, so it, right now, because we're in this Industrial 4.0 with digital, it's a really interesting space because you're starting to bring together lots of different people and organizations into this space, and academia is one of them. And it creates interesting dialogue about what's happening out there. And I think academia has an important place. One, because just from the technology that is being delivered out there, it's coming from an educational discipline, right? And then the other place is they're building future leaders, right? Helping to educate future leaders. And whether that's in the undergrad or in the master's or the PhD stage, they are helping create this ecosystem of people that are resilient and can change and grow. We're starting to open up that dialogue more and more all the time with educational institutions around that, because I assume they're gonna also see different people coming to them for different needs of learning based on what's happening in their workplace.

Yeah, I think one of the really important things that we see is that collaboration is key in all of this.

Oh yes, for sure. It is, you know, because of where we are with technology and being connected through data, Things are being much more distributed, right? Information is much more accessible to everyone. And this is where it allows those barriers that may have traditionally been there to be brought down where more of us can communicate together.

Just looking to the next few years with all of this sort of technology introduction, what process changes do you predict are going to happen over the next few years?

Oh, I never like to predict the future. I'm still one of those people that likes to continue to learn and take in and start to think of it. Yeah. I think what's interesting now that there are brands that are pushing forward in this space and they're starting to really understand what it means for their organization, for their customer, and how they start to create new value within their business and continue to evolve. And that's super exciting to see that. And that is not a technology portion of the conversation or just the technology org, but it's other portions of conversation about product development, around service, around their supply chain, things that aren't naturally only tech-driven. And that's super exciting to see that there is a cultural shift and a change to be nimble and flexible in the business. And those types of examples that start to get broadcast out, that helps create more confidence within the rest of the industry around that transformation is possible within their own org.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

No one likes to try and predict the future.

I know, it's too hard, it's too difficult. But again, I think people are starting to understand the different components that require transformation and how to truly take it in end to end. And we've heard it here at this conference. People were talking about end-to-end, bringing the parties together within the value chain. And to me, that's exciting. And so that's where I think we will definitely continue to move away from a product narrow focus to a much more holistic end-to-end and getting to, you know, that solving that problem or getting to that end customer.

Yeah, that's Zenith.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Maria, thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.

It's been great.

It's been great.

Thank you.