Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

Humanoid robots usually elicit more cringe than awe: They stumble, kick children, and despite advances are still worse at using their hands than my toddler. It’s a nascent industry, and such robots are more commonly seen in viral videos than real workplaces or homes. 

It was a surprise, then, when last week the Federal Communications Commission issued a sweeping ban on foreign imports of advanced robots, including humanoids, quadrupeds, and wheeled robots. The decision, made by an increasingly partisan and Trump-aligned FCC, cites two reasons. One is that foreign-made humanoids will collect so much data—in homes but also potentially at sensitive facilities—that they’d pose a threat to national security. The second is that US robotics companies need protection from Chinese competition to create a more robust and secure domestic supply chain.

On its face, it’s a strategy to align political and industry interests that is much older than the Trump administration. Whenever China has gotten good at offering cheap versions of strategic technologies like solar panels, electric vehicles, and drones, the US government has tried to stop it from flooding the market by using tariffs or rules on how government agencies purchase the tech. Such moves are always followed by debates about whether the trade-offs—particularly higher prices for consumers—are worth the benefits.

But robotics is now best seen as another piece of the AI industry—in many ways its cutting edge. And the Trump administration is taking an increasingly aggressive approach to protecting the US AI industry, reportedly considering a ban on open-source Chinese models that often rival those from OpenAI and Anthropic while costing far less. Such a move would block businesses from realizing an estimated $25 billion in annual savings.

The ban on humanoids, then, should be understood not as another chapter in the old China trade playbook, but as evidence that the Trump administration is expanding its protection of the AI industry beyond today’s leading labs. It is now willing to step in on behalf of an emerging robotics sector that is still barely finding its footing.

But if the new rule aims to boost US robotics companies, there’s a big flaw. Those companies, as well as academic robotics labs, are hugely reliant on cheap robots from China to do research.

At SpaceX’s market debut on June 12, the perfect trade already looked obvious. Shares priced at $135, valuing the company at roughly $1.8 trillion, and closed near $161, pushing its market capitalization above $2.1 trillion. Four days later they reached $225.64, and for one brief week the chart resembled the trajectory of one of the company’s own rockets.

Then gravity returned.  Seven weeks later, SpaceX trades below $110, far below its IPO price. More than $1 trillion of market value has evaporated from the peak. Most employees could do nothing but watch because their pre-IPO shares remained locked up.  In hindsight, the right trade is obvious. In real time, it never is.

What makes SpaceX different isn’t simply the size of the IPO. It is the scale of wealth it transferred into the hands of employees. Few public offerings have created so many paper millionaires so quickly. A position worth $50 million may look life-changing, but it is still only paper wealth. Before a single share can be sold, market volatility, taxes and trading restrictions will determine how much of that fortune actually survives.

Unlike a traditional IPO, there is no single day when employees suddenly become liquid. SpaceX replaced the familiar 180-day cliff with staggered release dates that resemble stage separation. Portions of employee holdings become eligible after second-quarter earnings, additional tranches follow throughout the fall, the principal lockup expires in December, while other holdings, including Elon Musk’s, remain restricted until June 2027. Even after shares become eligible for sale, trading windows, blackout periods and securities-law restrictions may continue to delay transactions.  The calendar, not the stock price, has become the scarce resource.

The debate naturally centers on whether employees should sell or hold. Yet history suggests neither answer is universally correct.

Netflix created one of Silicon Valley’s greatest fortunes for employees who ignored conventional advice and remained heavily concentrated. Diversification would have reduced risk, but it also would have dramatically reduced wealth. The lesson is not that diversification is wrong. It is that the best financial outcome and the best financial decision are rarely the same thing.

Where does SpaceX stock go next? No adviser can answer that.  The better question is one only the employee can answer: If this entire fortune were already sitting in cash today, how much would you invest in SpaceX?  Everything else, the lockups, the tax elections, the trusts, the charitable gifts, is simply a framework for acting on that answer.

SpaceX taught its employees to think in terms of launch windows. Their financial planning now requires the same discipline. The goal is not simply to become a millionaire on IPO day. It is to remain one long after the headlines have faded.

Growth is harder than ever to find, which is precisely why corporate venture building is gaining steam internationally: In recent McKinsey surveys, about 40 percent of global CEOs continue to cite new-business building as one of their top three strategic priorities despite cost pressures.

This prioritization is largely driven by leaders’ desire for growth and innovation as they attempt to keep up with gen AI and other technologies and external forces.  Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a good example of the promise of such an approach: Originally designed as an internal resource for Amazon’s technological infrastructure, AWS has evolved into a platform generating more than $70 billion in annual revenue.

Even in the current volatile business environment, pursuing new ventures remains a sound strategy: According to McKinsey’s most recent survey on new venture building, even in uncertain times, roughly half of reported new businesses meet or exceed expectations, and those that succeed are reaching $10 million in revenue faster than ever—on average, in just 31 months.

Still, many new corporate ventures struggle to scale—not because ideas are weak but because there is typically no system to support those ideas. The incentives, governance, and cultural norms established for the core business often are at odds with the speed, risk, and autonomy that new ventures require.

Leaders across the organization, including the chief marketing officer, CFO, and chief human resources officer, should collaborate and coordinate efforts and activities associated with launching and scale new ventures; such large transformation initiatives must be symbiotic. However, it’s the CEO who plays the most central role in resolving the timelines and tensions between new growth and the existing business, although resource allocation decisions cannot be their only focus. Strategy, culture, and governance are just as critical for the CEO to own. Indeed, research shows that those companies in which CEOs personally prioritize venture building consistently outperform their peers, with new businesses contributing nearly 20 percent of enterprise-wide revenue within five years.

Venture-building works best when the CEO behaves less like an operator of the business and more like an architect of a portfolio of future businesses, where the CEO typically must make (and continually revisit) a series of hard choices.

Trade-offs aside, there are four areas where the CEO’s attention matters most: setting venture building as a top strategic priority; deciding where to play and what to build; committing capital with patience; and creating the culture, capabilities, and partnerships required for new ventures to thrive.

The four business-building priorities for CEOs do not play out in isolation. Two forces increasingly determine whether the CEO’s actions will result in scaled businesses: how ventures use technology, especially AI; and how leaders and boards judge new ventures’ progress when traditional corporate metrics don’t fit.

Marketing capabilities — the complex bundles of skills, processes, and organizational know-how that enable companies to implement customer-related activities and adapt to marketplace changes — are rated by marketing professionals as important to business success. At the same time, artificial intelligence is rewriting the rules of content creation, customer targeting, and performance measurement. Responsibilities such as managing generative engine optimization (GEO) are emerging as vital online capabilities that did not exist even two years ago.

Two critical things are happening right now. The first is that the requirements of effective marketing are shifting faster than at any point in history, led by the need to figure out where and how to incorporate AI capabilities. The second is that the state of the marketing profession is not ready for this moment. Instead, marketing teams are systematically undermining their own ability to build the capabilities important to their success.  This is not a minor inconsistency. The authors’ see a pattern — visible across budgets, hiring, organizational behavior, and strategic priorities — that raises fundamental questions about how companies today are making decisions about investing in marketing capabilities.

When we look at what companies are actually doing to support the stated commitment to training and hiring, the details tell a story of underinvestment. Training and development budgets have declined steadily for years and now stand at just 3.8% of marketing spend — down from a pre-pandemic high of 5.8% in 2019. Marketing head count growth has dropped sharply, falling more than 50% from last year’s rate. And when asked what capability is most lacking in their organizations, the most common response from marketing leaders was not a skill deficit but inadequate resources: not enough people, time, or budget to make existing capabilities function effectively.

Strategic intent and resource allocation point in opposite directions. Companies say that they build their capabilities through people, but they are systematically reducing or slowing their investment in those same people. We call this disconnect the marketing capability paradox.

A closer look at agility and skills investment illustrates this contradiction. Seventy-one percent of marketing leaders in our survey said that agility is key to their organization’s success. Marketers reported performing reasonably well at this, able to quickly revise priorities and shift resources in response to change. But at the same time, they reported that their weakest-rated activity across all agility dimensions is “building the capabilities that facilitate agile marketing actions.”

Companies see themselves as good at reacting to change, but they are weaker at building the organizational foundation that would make those reactions less costly and more effective. This distinction — between responding to the present and investing in the future — is a troubling signal that runs through every dimension of how marketing capabilities are managed in organizations.

Seven Barriers to Capability Building.  Cuts in training and declines in head count are the most visible symptoms of this paradox, but other data hints at larger structural challenges. From the survey, the authors identified seven interconnected forces that are working against capability development.  These forces are:  There is a serious gap between the adoption of technology and marketing teams’ preparedness for using it. Too many marketers have a structural orientation toward the present.  Marketers aren’t highlighting strong data around impact and retention.  Ties with the C-suite are weak.  A rigid build-versus-partner mindset stifles development.  The foundation is too weak to sustain new initiatives.  And the marketing’s essential purpose has a framing problem. 

What Companies Should Do?  survey data suggests three priorities for marketing leaders and their organizations.  First, executives across the C-suite should wake up to the need to decouple capability investment from short-term financial pressure.  Second and relatedly, marketing leaders need to reframe the case for capability investment.  And third, marketers must revisit the build-versus-partner assumption.

Business leaders routinely make important decisions under pressure, often with incomplete or conflicting information, in ways that significantly impact team and organizational performance—as well as their own careers. Elite sports coaches do the same, with two critical factors increasing the stakes: a compressed time frame (they often must call plays in just seconds) and constant public exposure (including live TV coverage and 24/7 criticism from fans and the media).

Over the past several years the authors have studied 11 successful coaches working in the National Football League (NFL), National Basketball Association (NBA), and Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States; Premier League, LaLiga, and UEFA Champions League (football) and Rugby Union in Europe; and the National Rugby League in Australia and New Zealand to better understand how they handle everything from in-game play calls and substitutions to recruitment and return-from-injury choices. We wanted to understand what they did cognitively, emotionally, and socially as they made decisions.

What emerged was not a checklist of traits or a new decision formula. Instead, the authors were able to carefully document how high-stakes decisions take shape before, during, and after moments of consequence. The authors focus on specific practices the coaches employ during each of those three phases—and explain how business leaders can use them to increase the quality of their own decision-making.

Before:  Before a decisive moment arrives, coaches focus on creating the conditions that make clarity possible when pressure hits.  They anticipate future decision needs.  They control how information reaches them.  And they understand their people.

During.  When facing high-pressure choices, top coaches steady their own emotional state, read people in real time, and draw on their preparation as momentum, confidence, and pressure shift around them.  They manage emotions.  They read the room.  And they turn preparation into instinct.

After.  In business, the aftermaths of decisions are often reviewed. In pro sports, that step is a distinct phase of decision-making—one deeply embedded in the rhythms of competition. Coaches routinely watch game footage with their staff members and teams—analyzing key decisions, tactics, and moments under pressure—as part of their preparation for the next opponent.  They normalize being wrong.  They repair trust.  And they upgrade the system.

The comparison between decision-making in sports and business has its limits. Sports offers a visible scoreboard and clear wins and losses, whereas business outcomes sometimes unfold more slowly and with greater ambiguity. Yet both environments present leaders with the same fundamental challenge: making high-stakes decisions under constraint, with incomplete and sometimes conflicting information.

The study of elite sports leaders makes that process visible. What appears to be instinct is usually the product of preparation, emotional control, pattern recognition, social awareness in the moment, and accountability in the aftermath. Using the playbook of sports for inspiration, business leaders can develop capabilities and build systems that help them make better decisions when it matters most.

Susan Christoffersen spent five years as Dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, a period she jokingly describes as “the deanship of lemonade.” The phrase, she says, was a nod to the extraordinary challenges that shaped her tenure: “There was a lot of external lemons thrown at us, but it was my job to make lemonade.”

She stepped into the role in the middle of the pandemic, then steered the school through international student caps, a provincial tuition freeze and the fastest wave of technological change business education has seen in a generation. On July 1, she completed her term as dean to take up a newly created role: Presidential Advisor on Innovation Investments at the University of Toronto, working alongside President Melanie Woodin, the university’s first woman president in its 200-year history.

The author sat down with Christoffersen, the William A. Downe BMO Chair and Professor of Finance, to talk about her path from a mining town in British Columbia to the top of one of Canada’s leading business schools, and about what she has learned along the way.

Reshaping The MBA.  Christoffersen became Vice-Dean at Rotman in 2015 and Dean in 2021. Over that decade, she helped launch six of the school’s eleven graduate programs, including a Master of Management and a one-year MBA, while deliberately shrinking the flagship two-year MBA.  “We are developing a truly pinnacle MBA degree focused on training top business leaders,” she says, “while at the same time leveraging the analytical and research strengths of our faculty which lend themselves to supporting more specialized skills.”  She sees the MBA less as the mass-market credential it became two decades ago and more as a capstone program for leaders, with a growing menu of shorter, pre-experience programs feeding into it.  That transition has become a talking point on the Rotman School’s website, where Christoffersen has argued that management education needs to matter more, not less, as artificial intelligence reshapes entry-level work.

AI, And What It Won’t Replace.  Christoffersen uses AI in her own work, and Rotman has been experimenting with it across recruiting, admissions and career services. But when the conversation turned to the anxiety many students feel about AI and the job market, she pushed back against the idea that technical skill is what will save them.  “I still think that at the core, we as human beings want to relate to one another at a human level,” she says. “Even when the world is going crazy and there’s volatility and uncertainty, I think it is critical to work on the interpersonal skills, making sure that you become the go-to person when people are looking for connections. I can’t overemphasize how important it is to build one’s network.”  Her advice to students worried about being replaced: invest in curiosity, confidence and interpersonal skills rather than treating AI fluency as the whole answer.  Her view aligns with findings from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, which found that while demand for AI and data skills continues to rise, employers increasingly value human capabilities such as analytical thinking, resilience, leadership and collaboration alongside technical expertise.  “Mundane, rote work is going to be more easily replaceable with AI,” she says. “Those qualities which make us uniquely human will become more in demand, so that’s where students should double down.”

Michael Manashirov spent years studying diamonds, watches, jewelry, and luxury assets before co-founding Qollateral, a company built around a simple idea: valuable assets do not always have to be sold in order to create liquidity.  For Manashirov, the business began with a question: What is something truly worth?

A family diamond, a vintage watch, or a piece of fine jewelry can represent more than sentimental value. It can also represent significant financial value. Yet many of these assets remain overlooked when people think about their overall wealth. That observation became the foundation for Qollateral—and an entrepreneurial lesson Manashirov believes applies across industries: some of the best opportunities are hidden in places people have stopped questioning.

For years, television series like Pawn Stars, Antiques Roadshow, and American Pickers have introduced millions of viewers to hidden value, authentication, collectibles, and negotiation. But Manashirov believes the biggest lesson from those series is the expertise required to understand why something has value.

“I actually think shows like Pawn Stars have done something positive for the industry,” noted Manashirov. “They introduced millions of people to the idea that ordinary-looking objects can carry extraordinary stories and value. They also helped people appreciate that expertise matters—that authenticity, condition, rarity, and market demand can dramatically change what something is worth.”

The popularity of shows like Pawn Stars reflects a broader entrepreneurial lesson: opportunity often exists where others overlook it. The show is not just about buying and selling unique items—it is about curiosity, expertise, recognizing value before the market does, and dealing with different personalities. Those same skills are necessary for entrepreneurs.

The Work Behind the Numbers.  Popular culture often makes valuation appear simple. In reality, professional valuation begins with two questions: What exactly is this, and is it authentic?  Then comes the market. Markets change. Collector preferences evolve. Demand shifts.  “People think valuation is about assigning a number,” Manashirov says. “It isn’t. It’s about reducing uncertainty. The number is simply the conclusion.”  “The goal is not the highest valuation, it’s the most accurate and defensible one.”

Finding opportunity where others see an old model.  After years of working with luxury assets, Manashirov noticed a larger opportunity.  “I realized that many successful people hold wealth outside traditional financial accounts,” he noted. “Yet conventional finance often overlooks that portion of their balance sheet.”  The problem, he explained, was not simply access to capital. “It was access to the right kind of capital.”  Selling an asset is not always the best financial decision. It may mean giving up ownership, selling at the wrong time, or parting with something that carries personal significance.  That insight became the foundation for Qollateral: helping owners access liquidity from valuable assets while maintaining ownership.  “Customers will tell you what frustrates them,” he says. “But pay even closer attention to the frustrations they’ve stopped mentioning because they’ve simply accepted them as normal. That’s often where the real opportunity exists.”

Lessons From Building a Company.  Building Qollateral reinforced several lessons Manashirov believes apply to entrepreneurs across industries.  Expertise gets attention, but consistency earns trust.  Markets are always changing.  And small details create large outcomes.

Ultimately, the lesson behind Qollateral goes beyond luxury assets. The best businesses do not always create entirely new categories. Sometimes they identify an overlooked opportunity, understand why an existing model exists, and improve the experience around it.  “That is where innovation often begins—not by replacing what works, but by making it work better,” noted Manashirov. “It’s a lesson for every entrepreneur.”

High-stakes disputes have a way of making smart people move too fast. The pressure builds. The invoices keep coming. The emails get sharper. Everyone wants the problem to end. That’s usually when the most expensive mistakes happen.

A serious dispute is also a business decision, even when it carries legal consequences. Money matters, but so does timing, customer trust and how much of leadership’s attention gets consumed while it’s unresolved. The goal isn’t always to “win.” The better goal is to protect the business without creating a second problem inside the solution. Always consult your legal team before agreeing to anything — nothing here replaces that advice.

1. Start with what you’re actually protecting.  Before deciding how hard to fight, get clear on what’s really at stake. Ask directly: Is this about money? Ownership? Control? A contract that needs to be enforced? A relationship worth saving? A precedent you can’t afford to set?  Here’s a simple way to sort it: Write down the single sentence answer to “If I lose this dispute entirely, what does it actually cost the business?” If the honest answer is “not much beyond the money at stake,” you’re in a different negotiating posture than if the answer touches your ability to operate, a key relationship or a precedent that will get tested again.
2. Say less, and say it clearly.  In a serious dispute, long messages become expensive. Emotional emails, broad accusations, casual admissions and unnecessary explanations can all create problems later — every written message may eventually be reviewed by lawyers, mediators, arbitrators, investors, partners or a court.  That doesn’t mean going silent. It means applying one filter before you hit send: Would I be comfortable with a judge, arbitrator or the other side’s lawyer reading this message out loud? If not, rewrite it before it goes out — not after.  A practical habit worth adopting: draft the message, then delete the first paragraph. It’s almost always throat-clearing, justification or the emotional part you don’t need on the record. What’s left is usually the actual point.
3. Spell out the terms before you agree.  This is where many disputes go wrong. People agree “in principle” because they’re tired, the call ends, hands are shaken — and then the real trouble starts because the most important terms were never written down. Rather than treating the following as a vague checklist, use it as a settlement isn’t complete until every item has a specific, named answer — not “TBD,” not “we’ll figure it out” e.g., Who is paying whom, how much, and by what date?  What claims are being released, and what claims are explicitly not being released?
4. Pick the right path for the problem.  Not every dispute belongs in court. Negotiation gives both sides the most control. Mediation helps people reach a deal without handing the decision to someone else. Arbitration is more formal and produces a private, binding decision. Litigation may be necessary when you need court authority, stronger procedures or a public ruling.  Rather than defaulting to whichever path feels most familiar, weigh each option against four questions:  Control, Speed, Privacy, and Precedent.  Score each path against those four factors for your specific situation, and the right choice usually becomes obvious. The mistake is letting the dispute choose the path by default — a fast settlement can be the smart move, and a longer fight can be the necessary one; the point is to choose deliberately.
5. Keep control of the record.  Once a dispute becomes serious, stop letting everyone “help.” Create one internal source of truth: contracts, amendments, emails, invoices, messages, payment records and call notes, all in one place. Decide — explicitly, in writing to your team — who is allowed to communicate externally about the matter, and make sure counsel knows what’s already been said.  Mixed messages create leverage for the other side. So do missing documents, side conversations and informal promises. The record doesn’t need to be dramatic. It needs to be complete and accurate.  The final review matters most of all. The last 10% of the language in any agreement tends to carry most of the risk, because it’s where the exceptions, carve-outs and edge cases live. A strong agreement should make the next step obvious: what happens, when it happens, and what the consequence is if it doesn’t.
6. End the dispute without giving away more than you meant to.  High-stakes dispute resolution isn’t about sounding tough. It’s about being clear, prepared and disciplined. The strongest leaders don’t rush into vague agreements just to end the discomfort. They slow down long enough to understand the legal risk, the business cost, and the terms that will govern what happens next — because a fast resolution that leaves ambiguity behind isn’t actually resolved. It’s just delayed.