Studio RX
New Book : The Flip
The third book in the trilogy. The Great Acceleration named the speed. Blindspot named what we didn’t see coming. The Flip names what just happened. Decision authority has quietly inverted from human judgment to algorithmic optimization, and most brands are still building for the old direction. The book is a field manual for leaders who refuse to drift.
The Retail Relevance Index
Where does your brand actually sit?
The Retail Relevance Index. A diagnostic, not a survey.
Most brands assume they are still relevant. The market often disagrees. The RRI is an AI-scored diagnostic built on the framework that anchors how brands differentiate. It scores how your brand performs across the dimensions that now decide whether you get selected by humans, by algorithms, or by neither. The tool produces a radar view, a quadrant position, and a short read on what is working and what is drifting. Use it before the strategy session, not after.
Run the diagnostic
Free to try. Contact for a detailed competitive analysis.
01
Advisory
I work with retail and brand leaders using tools built around the Retail Relevance Index, The Four Forces, The Algotistic Organization along with data/design and technology choices to align their go-to-market strategies with rapidly shifting customer journeys.
The output is not a deck. It is a sharper set of questions, a defensible position, and a direction your team can act on. Some briefs are bigger than one mind. When the work demands it, I assemble a small team of world-class peers around the question. No fixed roster, no agency overhead, just the right people for the problem.
02
Keynotes
I speak on agentic commerce, the funnel-to-loop shift, decision compression, machine-readable trust, and what it actually takes to stay relevant when AI is sitting between your brand and your customer. Past stages include London (Retail Technology Show), Cairo (Egyptian Retail Summit), Bangkok (ASEAN Omnichannel Congress), Bogota (Omnichannel Acceleration), New York (NRF Big Show Innovation Showcase), Montreal (C2, Economic Forum of the Americas), Lisbon (NextGen Commercial Center Conference), Las Vegas (ShopTalk), among many other private corporation-specific events & workshops.
03
Workshops
Built for leadership teams, steering/executive committees, corporate stakeholders, board of directors.. Each workshop is anchored in the proprietary framework stack and customized to an organization's specific dynamics. The format scales from board-level strategy sessions to full day applied workshops.
Services
Strategic clarity for executive teams.
Stages where the audience leaves with something earned.
From 60 minutes to half-day and full-day formats that produce decisions, not enthusiasm.
Frameworks
1
The four AI pressures reshaping retail: optimization, automation, immersion, contextualization.
Four Forces:
2
A diagnostic for measuring brand relevance across human and algorithmic selection.
Retail Relevance Index:
3
Funnel-to-Loop:
The shift from a linear path to purchase to a continuous loop of discovery, decision, and feedback.
4
Decision Compression:
The collapse of the time and steps between consideration and purchase under AI mediation.
5
Sea of Sameness:
The competitive risk most retail brands face when efficiency overtakes differentiation.
6
Super-Empowered Consumer:
The buyer equipped with AI tools that outperform the brand’s own sales logic.
7
Machine-Readable Trust:
The new currency for brands that need to be selected by algorithms, not just by people.
8
The behavioral pattern of consumers and operators who defer judgment to algorithmic outputs.
Algotistic:
9
The Back Flip:
The deliberate move to re-center human judgment after over-rotating on AI optimization.
10
The triangle of human judgment, system fluency, and category expertise that defines the next generation of strategic leaders.
Augmented Strategist:
Carl Boutet is a Montreal-based retail strategist, author, and educator. He teaches at McGill’s Bensadoun School of Retail Management and at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand + Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and is co-creator of the McGill Retail Innovation Lab. His trilogy, The Great Acceleration (2020), Blindspot (2024), and The Flip (2026), tracks how commerce keeps shifting under our feet. He was named in the Top 10 Global Retail Thought Leaders and Top 100 in Business Strategy and Emerging Technologies. Full bio available (Carl’s LinkedIn) He has delivered keynotes and advisory work across the Americas,Asia, Europe, Middle East and Northen Africa, with guest lecture roles at the University of Bath, Concordia University, National University of Management in Cambodia, and Konrad Lorenz University in Bogotá. He has appeared as a media commentator on Bloomberg, CBC News and TVA Nouvelles for more than eight years, in both French and English. His education includes an MBA from Queen’s University, a BComm in marketing from Concordia, a Certificate in Human-Computer Interaction from Stanford, and a Certificate in Big Data Analytics from MIT CSAIL. He is bilingual in French and English and is based in Montreal.