VUCA: what military thinking taught Tesco about the customer experience

This event report explores how Tesco, the UK supermarket change, took a US military paradigm from the immediate aftermath of the Cold War and applied it to new customer acquisition.

VUCA: what military thinking taught Tesco about the customer experience

Brian CarruthersWarc

The VUCA acronym emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the Cold War ended and the geostrategic thinking of US military planners entered a new phase. While Francis Fukuyama was declaring The End of History, they instead observed a world that was increasingly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous, as the Soviet empire collapsed and as non-state actors took on a more prominent role. In such a situation it was impossible to hold onto old certainties and to expect to rely on a central command addressing...

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