"The mantra of product, product, product is overly simplistic," he says. "The customer has abundant choices. The half-life of your great idea is about three weeks."

Locally-based Liz Claiborne has tried to diversify in efforts to keep up with the changing industry. Known for years as a wholesaler and for its namesake retail stores, Liz Claiborne also operates emerging, hot chains such as Juicy Couture and Lucky Brand Jeans and sells through a variety of channels, including stores, department stores, catalogs and the Internet. The company's specialty-store division operates about 700 units, and executives plan to open 125 to 135 more every year for the next four years.

Besides good products, companies now need superior design, merchandising, marketing, customer service, presentation and other initiatives to compete, Charron says. Executives of the future must also be trained beyond learning specific functions of a company. "It is the way we work together that adds sustainable competitive advantages," he says.

Meanwhile, at a session earlier in the morning at the convention, speakers concentrated on technological advances in the industry.

Some time in the near future the shopping experience at stores like Home Depot could change dramatically through technological advances. Demonstrations yesterday detailed those changes.

Home Depot customers could one day design a new deck online on Home Depot's website before going to a store to purchase materials. Prior to entering a store, they would then switch on a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) capability that is expected to become standard on certain cell phones.

The RFID technology will alert employees in the store as to who the customer is and provide them with the knowledge that the shopper is interested in deck-building materials. Kiosks in the store could also provide one-on-one teleconferencing capabilities so that a customer could speak with a deck-building expert about the techniques needed to build the structure.

When checking out, a customer would not need to scan individual items because RFID tags would let the registers know what items the shopper has. Credit-cards can be used to manually check out, and security from fraud could be ensured by scanning the retina of a shopper.

"Consumers are more time strapped than ever," Home Depot Chairman and CEO Robert Nardelli told the convention audience. "Change is the only constant for Home Depot."