Thanks to a freelance-journalism job I had this past week at Jacob Javits Center, covering forum and panel discussions connected with the National Retail Foundation's annual trade show, I gleaned some insights into the future from CEOs and top visionaries of big retailers such as Starbucks, Nike, Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Neiman-Marcus, Williams-Sonoma and Lane Bryant.

The guy from Nike's communique was how the desire for speed is now global in nature and "every kid today absolutely wants to get faster."

The CEO of Starbucks relayed that society is becoming more and more "tribal-oriented" and there is deep loyalty to be gained in creating a very local sense of community.

An overall "take-away" was that because American consumers now live in an environment of three-second soundbites, getting through a particular message demands a quick-read of an individual across a wide range of interests, instinctively knowing their unspoken needs.

The CEO of Williams-Sonoma, for example, said it was about making smart choices on the customer's behalf, "getting to their un-asked for needs and creating for them what they need but just didn't know they needed."

Along these same lines, another CEO reminded that the business axiom that will never change is there are "two types of personalities at work: believers, or optimists, and skeptics, or pessimists."

"Our job is to foster a culture among the believers that will make them want to plant seeds in their world," he said.

Certainly stuff for me as a Believer to chew on—and fast!