Future of Business: Walmart’s CEO on AI, Jobs, and Managing Rapid Change

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In uncertain times, leaders at all levels can learn from what the world's best CEOs are doing to protect themselves and forge a path ahead. In this Future of Business series, IdeaCast hosts Alison Beard and Adi Ignatius sat down with four leading CEOs who manage across different industries and geographies to understand where global business is going. In this episode, host Adi Ignatius speaks with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, who since announced he'll be retiring in early 2026. They discuss how the world's largest company makes it through global disruption and supply chain shocks, their ongoing digital transformation including the implementation of AI, and how McMillon aims to stay close to the original purpose of the company.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Every second counts in sports, and AWS is changing the game.
0:04.5	From the NFL to the NBA and the PGA tour, the world's premier sports leagues are fueling innovation with AWS AI to give fans more of the insights they crave faster.
0:16.9	From predictive analytics to advanced stats, AWS is going beyond the box score.
0:21.8	Learn more at AWS.com slash sports.
0:36.5	I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR Ideacast.
0:44.1	For the next several weeks, we're bringing you a view from the C-suite.
0:51.8	Interviews with leading CEOs across industries and geographies
0:55.7	recorded during our recent future of business event.
0:59.2	Today, we're getting inside the mind of Walmart CEO Doug McMillan,
1:03.9	who just announced that he'll be stepping down in a couple of months
1:06.7	as the head of the retail giant.
1:09.2	Walmart is the world's largest company by revenue, its biggest
1:12.5	private employer, and boasts 255 million customer visits per week. As goes Walmart, so goes the economy.
1:22.2	For his part, Doug started working in Walmart as an hourly associate in 1984, becoming its CEO in 2014.
1:30.4	We spoke with him before he announced his retirement, focusing on how Walmart built its digital
1:34.8	business to stay competitive, how it has dealt with issues of tariffs, talent, and worker pay,
1:40.4	and the ways it has adapted its supply chain to appeal not just to shareholders, but to all of its
1:46.4	stakeholders. Here's our conversation.
1:50.4	Doug, thank you very much for joining us.
1:53.0	Hey, Adi. Great to see you.
1:54.4	So let's just jump right in. It's never easy running a big company.
1:59.8	You know, with AI poised to disrupt, with recurring ways of geopolitical
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Harvard Business Review, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Harvard Business Review and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.