Next week will be our last newsletter of the year, and as usual we will post our top-read articles from 2016. But I thought it would be interesting to look at the articles I wrote by topic area, just to see if that gives a good sense of the focus of 2016, and if that is going to mean anything for 2017.

I started out at the beginning of the year calling it “The year of disruption ” and I don’t think I was wrong. Among many things that happened, Sports Authority went out of business, and Macy’s CEO stepped down – putting into question the future advocacy of a company that has led the effort to be public about omni-channel’s impact on retail. Some retailers took a stand against the holiday season, staying closed on Thanksgiving, while others doubled-down – and more and more consumers stayed home and shopped online, particularly on their mobile devices. But in the end, I don’t think I’d call that a year of disruption within the ecosystem, so much as a disruption to retailers’ way of thinking. The real, physical disruption is still to come.

By far, the things I wrote the most about in 2016 were related to stores and cross-channel (and stores’ role in cross-channel). I’ll give you a hint that this is having a strong impact on my thinking for what will be the big trend of 2017. But I also must confess that I maybe miscalled the whole Pokémon Go thing (I thought it would die out pretty fast). I haven’t checked in much with retailers, but after spending a semester with a bunch of high school and middle school kids, I was surprised to find that even in winter their pursuit of Pokémon through that app remains pretty intense – more intense than I expected it to be. If anyone knows if retailers are still seeing Pokémon Go traffic, let us know in the comments, because I’m really curious about that one.

After that, I covered everything from dynamic pricing (and how it wasn’t as big of a deal as some more-hysterical people were saying), to the importance of the cloud for retail, to the importance of infrastructure investments that retailers should be making.

And there was one particular article, one that I doubt got much attention and will be surprised if it makes our top 10 list, but one that vendors in particular should pay attention to. I was talking to a vendor just last week for whom the idea applies sadly all too well. The idea is this: vendors are so eager to please clients that they are not taking nearly as strong of a stand about the future of retail as they should. And part of the reason why retailers are frustrated with the solutions they are finding on the market is precisely because solution providers are not taking a stand like they should.

While retailers are on the front lines of digital transformation driven by omni-channel shopping behavior, it is the solution providers who see across all of these retailers and can provide the most guidance and insight into how to manage the specifics of that change. But I still see too many vendors saying things like “whatever you want ” and “however you want it “, rather than taking a stand.

That’s another trend I’ll be watching closely in 2017.