Informedi’s Weekly Business Insights

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Celebrities are venturing beyond the billboard and the big screen—and into big business. Hailey Bieber, a model married to Justin, recently sold Rhode, her make-up brand, in a deal valued at as much as $1bn. Skims, a shapewear label founded by Kim Kardashian, a reality-TV star, makes $1bn in annual sales and is expected to list on the stockmarket soon. Rihanna is now a billionaire not directly because of her music, but thanks to Fenty Beauty, her make-up label. Ryan Reynolds, a Hollywood actor, is active in everything from telecoms to online privacy. Surprisingly, many of these superstar businesses have become a source of innovative new consumer products.

Celebrities have long used their fame to peddle things.  But unlike their predecessors, the new superstar brands put the A-list into capitalist. Ms Bieber and co are involved in operations and hold equity stakes of varying sizes in the underlying businesses. Many celebs have begun to rethink the value of traditional endorsement and licensing deals. Social media now give them a line straight to their fans. Direct-to-consumer distribution, meanwhile, has made getting a product to market easier than ever. Given that the real money is in building and owning a brand, rather than advertising, why not launch one instead?

This thinking in turn is altering the life-cycle of consumer goods. Just as pharmaceutical giants acquire biotech startups to refresh their drug pipelines, so consumer giants are buying up the most successful celebrity brands. The match makes sense. The hardest part of building a brand is the first 100,000 sales, but the A-list has a fan base that is well disposed towards them and their wares. Once a celebrity brand gets off the ground, a consumer giant has the production and distribution networks to help it grow.

Hence the series of deals. Among the first was Apple’s acquisition of Beats Electronics, a headphones and streaming business co-founded by Dr Dre, a music producer. Many were shocked when the tech giant, which prides itself on in-house research and design, paid around $3bn for the brand in 2014. More recently Diageo, a drinksmaker, has bought a tequila firm co-owned by Mr Clooney, in a deal valued at around $1bn, and a gin distiller partly owned by Mr Reynolds, for up to $610m.

Obviously, a famous name is not enough on its own to get a second-rate product flying off the shelves. You need only peer into the bargain bin in any cosmetics shop to spot the remainders of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s beauty products, or Sarah Jessica Parker’s scents. Some of Mr Trump’s newest offerings may soon join them. According to a perfume-review website, Victory 45-47 for men is “not particularly memorable”.

Shoppers today are quick to review products on social media. Fans might try a new lipstick or t-shirt produced by a celebrity. But they will not buy it a second time if they are disappointed. At their best, celebrity brands are innovative, creative—and lucrative for their owners. Yet, just like show business, brutal flops are possible, too.

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The findings a decade ago were, well, shocking. Mainstream economists had long argued that free trade was overall a good thing; though there might be some winners and losers, it would generally bring lower prices and widespread prosperity. Then, in 2013, a trio of academic researchers showed convincing evidence that increased trade with China beginning in the early 2000s and the resulting flood of cheap imports had been an unmitigated disaster for many US communities, destroying their manufacturing lifeblood.

The results of what in 2016 they called the “China shock” were gut-wrenching: the loss of 1 million US manufacturing jobs and 2.4 million jobs in total by 2011. Worse, these losses were heavily concentrated in what the economists called “trade-exposed” towns and cities (think furniture makers in North Carolina).

If in retrospect all that seems obvious, it’s only because the research by David Autor, an MIT labor economist, and his colleagues has become an accepted, albeit often distorted, political narrative these days: China destroyed all our manufacturing jobs! Though the nuances of the research are often ignored, the results help explain at least some of today’s political unrest. It’s reflected in rising calls for US protectionism, President Trump’s broad tariffs on imported goods, and nostalgia for the lost days of domestic manufacturing glory.

The impacts of the original China shock still scar much of the country. But Autor is now concerned about what he considers a far more urgent problem—what some are calling China shock 2.0. The US, he warns, is in danger of losing the next great manufacturing battle, this time over advanced technologies to make cars and planes as well as those enabling AI, quantum computing, and fusion energy.

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With AI coming for white collar work, Gen Z have been ditching college and corner office ambitions, in favor of taking up traditional trades like welding, plumbing, and carpentry. But they’re in for a rude awakening: high unemployment rates, unhappiness, and automation risks.  

Trade jobs are having a moment. Touted as the smarter, safer alternative to “irrelevant” overpriced degrees and entry-level white-collar jobs (which tech CEOs warn could soon be swallowed by AI), traditional manual work is experiencing a resurgence among Gen Z.

Around 78% of Americans say they’ve noticed a spike in young people turning to jobs like carpentry, electrical work and welding, according to a 2024 Harris Poll for Intuit Credit Karma. They’re not wrong. Trade school enrollment really has been surging post-pandemic, even outpacing university enrollment.

And it makes sense: six-figure salaries without student loans, the freedom to work for yourself, and hands-on, real-world skills that can’t be outsourced to a chatbot. But new research suggests that the reality isn’t as stable—or as future-proof—as it’s being pitched.

According to a new WalletHub study ranking the best and worst entry-level U.S. jobs in 2025, trade roles dominate the bottom of the list. Welders, automotive mechanics, boilermakers, and drafters all rank among the least promising career starters. 

Worse still, jobs like building inspectors, electricians, and plumbers are tied to the highest unemployment rate in the entire study at 7.2%—more than three times that of entry-level office jobs like budget analysts or financial analysts, which sit closer to 2.0%.  According to the researchers, these roles scored poorly due to limited job availability and weak growth potential, as well as their potentially hazardous nature.   Plus, while you’d assume the physical nature of trade work makes them immune to automation, WalletHub’s analyst Chip Lupo tells Fortune that the data shows they’re also vulnerable.   “New technologies like prefabrication and robotics are starting to take over parts of the workload, which can reduce demand,” Lupo explained. Just like office workers who are experiencing mass layoffs and are at the mercy of recessions, rate hikes, and demand, so too are tradies. 

“Trade jobs are closely tied to industries like construction and manufacturing, which means they are sensitive to changes in the economy. When these industries slow down, projects often get delayed or canceled, which can lead to job losses,” Lupo added.  “On top of that, some trade jobs are seasonal, which means that bad weather or off-peak months can dry up construction and maintenance work for several weeks.”  Alarmingly, not a single trade job made the list of happiest jobs.

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With any given acquisition or merger, the markets might or might not immediately factor in the value that the company predicted it would add.  What determines whether investors believe in CEOs’ presentations? To find out the authors conducted a statistical analysis using event study methodology, in which researchers determine what characteristics of an acquisition (“the event”) explain how the stock market responds to it. And among the acquisitions in our sample one seemingly simple but significant factor emerged: When presentations were accompanied by a slide illustrating the strategic rationale for a deal, investors were more than twice as likely to give it an immediate thumbs-up. The positive impact of strategy visualizations, as the authors call them, on postannouncement valuations was four times larger than the impact of other visual tools such as photographs, maps, logos, and even bar charts and line graphs.

Most executives agree that business strategy is a set of choices regarding how and where a firm wants to create value and compete. But what many forget is that strategy also requires an interpretation of what the choices imply, which needs to be explained simply and clearly.

Through a process that the University of Michigan organizational psychologist Karl Weick calls “sensemaking,” executives develop an understanding of their business context and how their firm will operate in it. This generally involves categorizing types of competitors and potential customers and identifying the firm’s key resources and capabilities and the main cause-and-effect relationships among them. This understanding is organized into what we call “a cognitive map.”

A good strategy reflects such a map. In fact, executives usually create a draft of one as they develop their strategy. While discussing and debating what direction the company should go in with colleagues, consultants, board members, and others, they often draw circles, boxes, and arrows that represent important elements of the proposed strategy and the relationships among them on flip charts and slides.

Once executives reach agreement on a strategy, they need to communicate it to other stakeholders, who must understand it and act on it. The daily decisions of employees, for example, need to be guided by the same understanding of the firm’s strategy. If they don’t make different choices as a result of a new strategy, then you don’t have a new strategy.

This is when executives must switch from sensemaking to sense giving: They need to transfer their cognitive map of the firm’s strategy to the minds of employees and investors. The authors’ research suggests that reinforcing a verbal presentation with a visualization of the strategy and how it works is the most effective way to do that.

What Makes a Great Strategy Slide.  Humans are visual creatures. More than 50% of our brain is involved in processing what we see, which may explain why research shows that we absorb visual information more quickly and accurately than other types of information—provided that it’s organized properly.  The authors study results pointed to five concrete design rules: Group your ideas into three or four main concepts that can serve as a base of the strategic model.  Create layers with increasing detail.  Use color and shading only to distinguish the layers.  Indicate a clear sequence of relationships among the elements of the framework.  And organize your framework horizontally.

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“What’s the best-case scenario that you can logically describe?” According to the author, as an academic and adviser who has spent more than 30 years forecasting future intersections of people and the political economy through the lens of technological change, he is often asked that question. His answer is always the same: Best-case scenarios do not exist. Neither do worst-case scenarios. Human-powered futures are always a mix of misunderstood and unimagined downsides and upsides. What’s different from one era to another? The range and breadth of uncertainty that decision makers must navigate as they try to amplify the upsides and reduce the downsides of change.

That’s important because politicians, CEOs, financial markets, and everyday people have one thing in common: They abhor radical uncertainty. It makes their purpose and mission seem impossible.

Radical uncertainty is entirely different from conventional risk, which positively powers markets and creates opportunities for leaders to make decisions with potentially outsize political and economic payoffs. Risk has boundaries and relevant data; it can be priced and hedged because it represents a partially knowable probability distribution among outcomes. That’s why the saying “no risk, no return” makes sense and why we comfortably talk about and understand “risk-on” and “risk-off” behavior in markets and politics.

Radical uncertainty has none of those positive characteristics. When events move far outside the boundaries of what we know from the past, and when the shape of the probability distribution can’t be mapped, business and political systems tend toward paralysis. People become deeply anxious. Markets gyrate. C-suite confidence corrodes and decision-making freezes up.  

There is clear evidence for each of those effects right now in the United States’ political economy.  The common thread is radical uncertainty engineered by the Trump administration’s notable first six months. Whether you support or oppose the Trump agenda, the fact is that no American administration of at least the past century, and possibly ever, has created such radical uncertainty around such a broad swath of the American political economy, even within the first 100 days.

According to the author he has spent much of his academic career studying what happens in moments like these — times of high-stress decision-making, when people and organizations are functioning (often badly) under radical uncertainty. It’s been a natural extension of that research to advise companies and governments about how to better navigate these moments and deploy and refine tools and methods that can help them make better choices. There are two important lessons about scenario planning to share from that experience.

1. Beware Overindexing on Short-Term Signals.  First, certain identifiable and dysfunctional patterns of information processing and decision-making are painfully common. The most visible is overindexing on very short-term signals, whether it be a single day’s news headlines or a social media post. People tend to chase what looks (for a short time) like a high-salience signal or interpretation, which leads them to oscillate too fast and too far between optimism and pessimism.  Another dysfunctional tendency often creeps in to compensate when people feel overwhelmed: the search for false certainty that may stop the exhausting struggle.
2. Rethink Preparation.  The second lesson I’ve learned is that there is a way to do better. Scenario thinking starts from a different premise: that we cannot predict the future and therefore shouldn’t try. It was pioneered at Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s and developed for use outside the energy sector by my colleagues and me at Global Business Network and the Monitor Group in subsequent decades. Particularly during periods of high uncertainty, and by necessity under radical uncertainty, the guiding principle for strategic decision-making needs to be preparation, not prediction. The goal is robust strategy development that is designed to perform regardless of where reality lands on the map.

The key to scenario thinking is to render that landscape map of what is possible expansively and broadly enough to incorporate what is actually possible rather than what a person or an organization wishes were possible because it would be easier to handle. That means stretching the boundaries of the critical uncertainties — those factors that are at once both the most important and the most uncertain — a little bit further out than seems plausible now.

An expansive scenario map provides a better foundation. Such maps help leaders make sense of incoming evidence in a systematic way: They can place each piece of evidence on the map where it belongs and carefully watch the evidence accumulate over time so they can continually adjust their estimates of where the future is likely to land. Radical uncertainty will eventually begin to stabilize into something more akin to risk. Decision makers who can track that process accurately and not jump too soon (or too late) have the long-term advantage.

Scenario thinking is a model that generates a more accurate reflection of the world we’re living in right now. It is also less vulnerable to arbitrage by people who might want to exacerbate radical uncertainty in an intentional way, to advantage their goals at the expense of yours. And scenario thinking is manageable for human decision makers, who can’t hold an infinite number of possibilities in their minds at once and should not trust an opaque generative AI model to try to do so for them.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. “What’s the best-case scenario that you can logically describe?” According to the author, as an academic and adviser who has spent more than 30 years forecasting future intersections of people and the political economy through the lens of technological change, he is often asked that question. His answer is always the same: Best-case scenarios do not exist. Neither do worst-case scenarios. Human-powered futures are always a mix of misunderstood and unimagined downsides and upsides. What’s different from one era to another? The range and breadth of uncertainty that decision makers must navigate as they try to amplify the upsides and reduce the downsides of change.
2. That’s important because politicians, CEOs, financial markets, and everyday people have one thing in common: They abhor radical uncertainty. It makes their purpose and mission seem impossible.
3. During the times of high-stress decision-making, when people and organizations are functioning (often badly) under radical uncertainty, the author shared two lessons he has learned: beware overindexing on short-term signals and rethink preparation because there is a way to do better.  Under radical uncertainty, the guiding principle for strategic decision-making needs to be preparation, not prediction, because we can’t predict.

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Are you training for an outdated job? If so, AI could replace it, and you might be unemployed by 2030. Headlines continue to warn of AI eliminating millions of positions, like Microsoft’s recent layoff of 9,000 employees. But a quieter trend is brewing with a shift from emphasizing job loss to job creation. Experts recommend that you focus, not on what AI is replacing, but on what AI is quietly inventing: seven of the weirdest, most in-demand careers of the next decade. With AI creating 7 in-demand careers, some are already hiring for these positions.

1. Prompt Engineer. “Prompt engineering is to AI what coding was to the early days of the internet,” Yi explains. He says this role involves crafting highly specific prompts to guide AI tools like ChatGPT. Prompt engineers mix of logic, language and creativity, and fields like tech, law and education are already hiring prompt engineers.

2. AI Ethics Officer. Yi points out that AI touches everything from credit scoring to criminal justice. “Ethics officers will help companies develop guidelines to ensure fairnes3ews, transparency and compliance with global regulations,” he states.

3. AI-Assisted Healthcare Technician. “As AI begins to assist with diagnostics, medical imaging and treatment planning, technicians who can operate these systems and work with patients will become essential,” according to Yi.

4. AI Maintenance Specialist. Even though factories and logistics hubs are investing in intelligent machines, Yi points out that those machines still need human oversight. He describes them as specialists who understand both mechanical systems and AI behavior will be vital. “The factory worker of tomorrow won’t just hold a wrench,” Yi notes. “They’ll monitor dashboards and algorithms too.”

5. Sustainable AI Analyst. Yi says that AI consumes enormous energy, adding that it can also be used to reduce emissions and waste. He describes analysts in this role will work to ensure AI is used efficiently and contributes to sustainability goals.

6. AI-Enhanced Creative Director. “From fashion to film, creative leaders who can integrate AI into their workflows will be able to experiment at scale,” Yi stresses. “These directors will act as curators, combining intuition with machine-generated content.”

7. AI Literacy Educator. Yi reminds us that professionals will be needed to train others on how to use AI effectively and ethically, now that it’s embedded in everything from office tools to customer service. He believes that this includes schools, governments and private companies.

Yi’s comments drive home the importance of paying attention to the new trend of AI creating 7 new fields that can future-proof your career by 2030. He recommends focusing on skills that can’t be easily automated. Problem-solving, adaptability, communication and a basic understanding of how AI systems work are likely to remain relevant across sectors. “AI won’t kill jobs,” Yi concludes. “But it will make some jobs feel obsolete.” People who learn how to work with AI instead of against it will come out ahead as the trend of AI creating 7 in-demand careers will continue into the future.

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The public sector finds itself in a period of unprecedented disruption, navigating a series of shocks, including economic uncertainty, geopolitical instability, and the reform of energy systems. It seems this turbulence is set to intensify, with nearly 80 percent of public sector leaders anticipating greater disruption from 2025 to 2030. This is a striking finding, given that many respondents pointed out that the past five-year period was highly disruptive, citing the COVID-19 pandemic, geopolitical conflict, political volatility, and the rising impacts of climate change as the most challenging issues.

The overall trends included: Tightening budgetary constraints.  Limitations in the ability to attract and retain talent.  When looking five years ahead, leaders envisaged three trends rising to greater prominence:  The impact of disruptive technologies such as AI and automation.  Citizens’ rising expectations and declining trust in governments.  Escalation of geopolitical risk.  Crucially, the best leaders match this visionary quality with the capacity to drive execution: The majority of respondents cited leaders’ ability to get things done as a top indicator of excellence. A complimentary trait—the capacity to uplift departmental culture and health—speaks to leaders’ essential role in mobilizing and nurturing their teams in an environment of disruption.  Perhaps the most striking finding of the research, however, is that these elements of leadership excellence are underpinned by character, values, and integrity.

We also asked respondents to tell us how they allocated their time across the key elements of leadership excellence. Reflecting the primacy of this practice, leaders allocated the greatest share of their time to setting their organization’s direction, vision, and strategy—with 65 percent of respondents saying this was either their first or second priority in terms of time allocation.  Other major focus areas for leaders—with roughly equal time allocated to each—are navigating the government, mobilizing the organization, and nurturing culture and talent. However, leaders’ rating of their effectiveness differed significantly across these practices.  Two essential leadership practices see much less time allocated to them the respondents: managing personal time and resources effectively, and orchestrating external parties.

The best public sector leaders are masters of both the art and science of steering large organizations—or “turning the tanker”—to deliver impact amid complexity.

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It’s perhaps no surprise that Gen-Z—who are getting fired at disproportionate rates and are often the subject of workplace ire—has an entrepreneurial streak. Still, the generation’s fervor is impressive. According to a 2023 report by commerce platform Square, more than half of Gen-Zers consider starting a business. A 2024 Justworks study places that number even higher, finding that 71 percent of young employed adults are interested in becoming founders.

There are two fundamental ways to start a company, says Kevin Novak, founder and managing partner of early stage AI investor Rackhouse Venture Capital. You can either become the “world’s expert” in something, or you can spot a “wide open opportunity” by asking, “What is nobody an expert in?”   Young people—understandably—may lack that expertise, so the first option is likely out of reach. But Novak says Gen-Zers are uniquely positioned to disrupt sleepy industries and find new ways to solve problems. Here’s what he and other investors see as the best opportunities for Gen-Z entrepreneurs right now.

1. “Unsexy” industries like industrial manufacturing.  Novak says that generative AI has created a “huge opportunity” for innovation in “dirty, dusty, unsexy” industries like compliance, logistics, industrial manufacturing, and construction operations.  Past waves of technological innovation have allowed startups to transform once-stagnant industries, he says. Uber, for example, forever changed ridesharing through its mobile app. But back-of-house industries couldn’t ride these waves, according to Novak—they “didn’t participate in mobile” and “didn’t participate in big data.”  “So as a builder,” he adds, “if I can figure out what is the problem holding you back from doing your job 10 times better, I effectively get the opportunity to harvest two decades worth of economic lag.”
2. Experiential industries.  Alex Rosenthal, director at consumer investment firm Verlinvest, says he’s bullish on businesses “offering live social experiences.”  “The more that AI and social media become a part of people’s lives,” Rosenthal says, the more “they’re going to want to put their phones down and go out into the real world and do something that’s good for their well-being.” As digital natives, Gen-Zers have an especially “strong desire to feel community,” he says. And brands in social experience industries like fitness, health, wellness, education, and travel are especially well-positioned to meet this need.
3. Small-business services.  Cardone Ventures co-founder and president Natalie Dawson says many of the small-business owners she meets with every day “have no idea” how to generate new leads or organize existing ones. That’s why she recommends that Gen-Zers create businesses that help other businesses grow.  Specifically, Dawson advises becoming the agency of choice for small-business owners in a specific vertical by providing them with one platform that blends several functions like marketing, sales, and bookkeeping. “AI is ripe to disrupt this,” she says, “and Gen-Z is ripe to … not have to go through traditional schooling and traditional education to get the skills required to really help business owners make more money.”
4. The creator economy.  Entrepreneur and angel investor Sage Ke’alohilani Quiamno is eyeing Gen-Z creator economy startups. Young founders can more easily spot pain points in this space, she says, because “they’re experiencing the problem firsthand.” Gen-Zers have “grown up monetizing personal brands and social platforms”—or followed along as their favorite creators did so.  The generation intuitively understands “the nuances of audience, engagement, platform, algorithms, creative burnouts,” Quiamno says. This gives them a more accurate view of how to improve the industry than older media executives, she adds.
5. AI-enabled startups.  In CentaurLab.AI founder and investor Boon Chew’s opinion, it’s not the industry Gen-Z founders choose that matters. It’s the tools they use. By using AI, Chew says, you can easily amplify the value you’ll create in a given sector. AI “cuts across so many things,” he says. “So when you add ‘AI-enabled’ or ‘AI-driven’ to whatever industry you go into, you can pretty much become a leader in that right away.”

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Living a full life outside of our careers gives us many opportunities to continue growing. Outside interests beyond family and friends can expand our horizons and ideas of what’s possible. According to the author for him, that’s studying the art of car racing.  According to him, he appreciates how drivers are prepared from every angle, like prepping the car, assessing the competition and determining where and when to take risks. And I’ve found that the strategies deployed on the track translate well to running a successful business.  Race car drivers and entrepreneurs all want to move fast and win. Beating your business competition and other cars on the racetrack both require accelerating at the perfect time.

Putting the right foundation in place

Pit Crew: Few things define teamwork as well as a pit crew. From the tactical direction of the crew chief to the strength of the tire changer and jack man, to the communication skills of the spotter, pit crews work seamlessly at remarkable speeds to prepare their car for the next lap and eventually the finish line. Your job is to be an agile crew chief.  This could mean empowering mid-level managers to make operational calls, much like a pit crew places trust in their jackman. Or giving your marketing team the ability to practice flexible spending so they can quickly capitalize on new opportunities. It’s also your job to set the tone, communicate objectives clearly and ensure everyone is aligned when it comes to roles, tactics, timelines and outcomes.

Tire Pressure: Tires are a foundational element of a car, much like a strategic plan is the foundation of a viable business. Tire pressure allows drivers to optimize their handling and achieve faster lap times — it’s all about the contact patch between the tires and the road.  If you don’t have the tire pressure right, you risk losing control during turns. Likewise, a strategic business plan gives you the ability to create alignment and achieve faster results without losing control when the unexpected happens. It gives you control and speed, and a clear view of what’s working and what’s not.

Competitive Intel: Successfully competing means knowing who or what you are up against. Each of your competitors has some advantage. Like race car teams, you need to know the track record of your competitors — where they have succeeded and faltered, the strengths and weaknesses of team members, the amount of fuel/capital they have — and use that intel to your advantage. Get educated. Tools like Crayon share real-time insights gleaned from your competitors’ digital footprints, while social listening platforms like Sprout Social offer competitor reports and performance tracking across social networks.

Driving growth

Fuel Level: Think of motor fuel as your sales and marketing expenditures. You need to know how much fuel you have left in the tank. Do you front-load your pitstops (and sales/marketing expenditures) to start out strong and then conserve for the rest of the race? Or do you make more pit stops toward the end of the race (and end of the year), so you have enough fuel to get across the finish line?  A SaaS company might invest heavily in Q1 ad spend to acquire annual subscribers early. There’s no right answer here, as it depends on your revenue model and resources. But knowing what works best for your venture is critical for a successful year-end.

Pacing: Perhaps one of the most important elements of car racing and running a business is determining your pace. As a track has different sections that require different speeds, so does the growth trajectory of your business. In racing, drivers often start at a moderate pace to preserve fuel and tire life on long races to avoid unnecessary wear and tear in those initial laps.  Running a business is a long race, so you need to balance moderate pacing with those “push to pass” moments, when you strategically fuel a burst of acceleration to overtake your competitors. This could mean launching a feature during a competitor’s PR crisis or offering limited-time pricing in a peak demand season. Other pacing factors can include funding levels, product/market fit, cost of customer acquisition, market timing, scalability and more. This is where you lean on your business strategy as a guide in determining your business’s optimal pacing.

Crossing the finish line.  When you’re racing a car, crossing the finish line is the end of the race. In running a business, it means achieving sustainable, profitable growth. That feat takes all of the above strategies, combined with your leadership skills in risk management, adaptability and innovation. And most importantly, vision and conviction.  As racer Dale Earnhardt once said, “The winner ain’t the one with the fastest car. It’s the one who refuses to lose.”