What: In Peter Hinssen's "The Day After Tomorrow", the Belgian entrepreneur and innovation strategist argues that organisations are trapped in a dangerous time bias, spending nearly all their energy on today's operations and tomorrow's incremental improvements, while systematically neglecting the radical, transformative thinking that will determine their survival. Drawing on exponential technology curves and a vivid "plantation versus rainforest" metaphor, Hinssen presents a 70–20–10 portfolio model urging leaders to ring-fence attention, budget and talent for a third horizon, the Day After Tomorrow, where conventional forecasting fails and only reverse-engineered imagination from the future back to the present can prepare organisations for disruption.

Why it is important: For department store leaders and retail executives, this book is a direct challenge to the innovation theatre that dominates the industry: running AI pilots, launching omnichannel projects and redesigning loyalty apps that all still demand an 18-month payback. Hinssen's framework exposes the structural reason why most retailers are reactive rather than anticipatory, not a lack of ideas, but a governance and culture failure that lets the urgent perpetually crowd out the important. In 2026, as AI becomes retail infrastructure, physical stores evolve into experience and data hubs, and AI agents begin to reshape discovery and conversion, the 70–20–10 model gives boards a concrete, board-ready language to rebalance portfolios: protecting today's margins while explicitly funding exploration of models such as retail-as-a-service, agentic commerce and membership-based formats that may cannibalise current revenue streams but will define relevance in the 2030s.

Book Review: The day after tomorrow