During his three-year tenure as Tesco's boss, Philip Clarke cast himself as a visionary. He delivered weighty speeches urging retailers to "lead the revolution" or risk becoming "victims of evolution". As head of Britain's biggest retailer, and the world's second-largest by sales, he seemed to be doing just that. Tesco had built its business on sprawling supermarkets, but Mr Clarke knew their time was passing and devised new uses for them. He ramped up sales online and through convenience stores, the channels of the future. With a movie-streaming service, Blinkbox, and a tablet, Hudl, Mr Clarke started to create an Amazon-like "ecosystem" that would bind shoppers to Tesco. Few retailers seemed to be more in tune with what he called the "informed, demanding, restless 21st-century consumer".
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