Let’s get the controversy out of the way before delving into the urgent issue of AI confronting the home and housewares business.
There is plenty to debate about whether the potential economic and national security gains of the fast-escalating AI sphere outweigh the potential rising energy, natural resource and societal costs to win the global race to AI dominance. In the end, though, it might not matter whether you personally feel AI is liberating or oppressive.
Remember the fairly smart industry leaders who once said people would never buy a coffeemaker on the Internet? Or the advertising moguls who said nobody would be persuaded by what regular citizens had to say about stuff on YouTube?
Of course you do, as you fine-tune your online marketplace and social commerce budgets for the coming year.
Radically new and disruptive technology can seem at first like a runaway train, until the realization that it’s careening toward you drives an effort to keep it on the rails at a manageable speed so you can climb aboard.
When it comes to AI in business, that train actually already has left the station. It might seem to some as if it’s getting away too fast, but the reality is it’s not even close to full throttle. And there is still time to grab a seat at the next stop before someone you never heard of and never saw coming jumps in to take it from you.
It is with that in mind that the International Housewares Association crafted a program for the forthcoming 2026 International Housewares Association Chief Executive SuperSession (CHESS), September 29-30 at the Rosemont Hilton near Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
In my role as a facilitator of the CHESS program, I have watched AI sessions for the past several years. They often seemed to come off as a bit theoretical, impractical and even puzzling in the moment for business leaders confronting far more urgent, existential challenges. It’s safe to say leaders of businesses large and small who felt too busy, indifferent, or disengaged by the thought and talk of AI just a couple of years ago now know they need to, to some degree, bank their existence on the swift adoption of the technology in its various generative and agentic forms.
With that, CHESS 2026 has been programmed around the theme, “Refortifying the Value of the Human Touch.” Wait, you’re thinking, that doesn’t say anything about AI. Oh, but yes, it does.
Much of the CHESS program — including a series of interactive “AI Leadership Labs” that demonstrate leading-edge applications — will delve directly into AI and its impact on many facets of the housewares business. However, the objective isn’t simply to underscore how investing in AI can lift profit margins by eliminating long-term payroll costs. It is to emphasize how AI can be a positive change agent for enabling, resetting and optimizing organizational skills and talent, freeing teams to focus on organic, intuitive strategizing, development and management required to secure a company’s distinctive mission, culture and future. (Click here for a complete CHESS 2026 schedule and to register to attend)
There is still time to jump on the AI train. IHA’s CHESS 2026 will provide a good platform for getting that ticket punched.
