Helping AI Succeed in Retail: Turn Pilots Into Measurable Impact

New AI tech might be smart, strong and intriguing. But for retail organizations, even the most promising tools can fall short of expectations if they aren’t supported by the culture, human judgment and trust needed to make AI work in practice.

“Bigger budget, more people, none of that’s going to solve this,” said Julie Averill, chief impact officer, Gold Thread LLC, and author of the recent book, “Chief Impact Officer.”

Averill was speaking to retail digital, marketing and technology leaders at NRF Nexus 2026 about why AI pilots fail and what organizations can do to create measurable impact, and highlighted data showing why AI success remains elusive for many organizations. MIT reports that 95% of all generative AI pilots fail to make any measurable impact. RAND reports that more than 80% of AI projects fail. Companies are quietly abandoning their AI initiatives and asking how others seem to be succeeding.

The secret? No matter how strong the technology, she said, it’s still no match for human insight, judgment based on experience, and solid culture. It’s less about the tools, and more about the conditions that allow for greatest impact.

Averill is a former global CIO and executive vice president at lululemon, and helped the company grow from $2 billion to $10 billion over eight years. She also led a technology transformation at REI and helped create the omnichannel playbook at Nordstrom. At Nexus, she presented three succinct steps toward creating innovation at scale and at speed.

Her message for retailers was direct: AI impact depends less on adopting the newest tools and more on creating the organizational conditions that allow people to use them well.

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