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If the last 10 years were about creators building audiences, the next 10 will be about them building infrastructure. Were entering the era of the creator-led studio. Its already happening. Creators are turning themselves into multi-dimensional entertainment businesses. Theyre not just building content pipelines; theyre building worlds, structuring teams, developing IP, launching products, and curating and hosting IRL experiences. Theyre weaving content, community, and commerce into something bigger with the mindset of founders and the ambition of studio executives. Creators are becoming studios Not in the traditional sensenot high rises, backlots, or broadcast slots, but in a way thats native to the internet and modern-day technologies: fast-moving, audience-first, built around trust and consistency. Its a shift from: I make content I build programmingI do brand deals I own the formatsI am the brand I build brands The best creator-led studios arent just launching formats, theyre building systems for turning creative point of view (POV) into repeatable output. Moreover, the creators who scale arent just building content engines; theyre building emotional frameworks. Call it voice, POV, or DNA, its what everything else ladders up to. And at the very bleeding edge, those doing it the best are expanding those frameworks beyond content into commerce, community, courses, products, and live experiences. They are building full-stack media businesses, looking to own the audience, the formats, and the infrastructure. Whats driving it? 1. Creators are maturing into operators Creators who have the desire to go after this opportunity are no longer solo acts. Theyre founders. Theyre hiring. Building teams. Thinking in pipelines, product-market fit, and distribution economics. Theyre not chasing virality, they are building staying power, and its working. I explored this previously, when I discussed the shift from creator to entrepreneur. Now, its evolving again, from entrepreneur to studio builder. One important callout, though. This isnt for every creator and isnt to diminish the incredible value to come from remaining small and mighty. There will be a thriving segment of creators who stick to what theyre doing. However, I believe that the biggest share of audience and money will be held in the relatively few who become studio builders 2. Trust is becoming the most valuable signal As AI floods platforms with synthetic content, trust becomes the premium. As Doug Shapiro put it: Trust is the new oil. Audiences wont just want content; they’ll want curation, context, and a point of view. The creators who earn and sustain that trust wont just be personalities. Theyll be institutions. 3. Audience expectations are shifting Were now in an era where consistency is currency. People want formats they can return to. They want creators they can rely on. They want editorial judgment, recurring presence, and recognizable rhythms. Thats not just a creative instinct; its reinforced by platform algorithms and audience psychology. Recurring formats increase watch time, retention, and subscriber loyalty. When content appears reliably and feels familiar, audiences are more likely to form habits around it. Creators who think in seasons, franchises, and formats wont just gain attention, theyll earn mindshare. 4. Metrics over meaning The traditional media and advertising worlds, in their obsession with hyperperformance, data precision, and efficiency, left behind something essential: emotional connection. In that creative and cultural vacuum, creators stepped in. Not with metrics, but with meaning. Creators are value driven. Theyre plugged into the nuances of pop culture. And theyre intimately connected to their communities through access, respect, and trust. They didnt just inherit the audience. They earned it. Not just as content creators, but creative directors of a new era. Bringing the kind of relevance, emotion, and resonance that modern culture wants. Were still in the early stages of this movement. But this shift is real. The creator economy isnt just growing faster, its growing up. Over the next few years, I believe well see more and more creators evolve from individual success stories into collective media companies. Studios. Networks. Brand ecosystems. Institutions in their own right. Because the future of media isnt just creator-led. Its creator-built. Neil Waller is co-CEO and cofounder of the Whalar Group.
Category:
E-Commerce
Since ChatGPT was released nearly three years ago, individuals and companies have experimented with reactive AI, composing AI prompts to create articles, tables, translations, to-do lists, and chatbots to resolve questions. While these tasks offer practical value, especially boosting efficiency, the next leap isnt just technical. Agentic AI systems can enable organizations to deploy autonomous service agents capable of managing entire organizational processes end to end.The value of agentic AI lies in collaboration, not replacement, where humans and machines each play to their strengths. When workflows combine human judgment with machine precision, organizations can streamline tasks, innovate personalization and insights, sharpen decisions, scale, and measure outcomes that inform ongoing process upgrades. Unlike reactive AI, agentic systems function as digital colleagues, taking initiative, pursuing goals, having memory and context, using tools to learn from outcomes, and adapting in real time. This shift unlocks incremental gains and breakthrough innovation in customer and user experience through reimagined workflows for operational excellence. The catch? Redefining how an organization operates to deliver differentiating value requires careful human orchestration. While agentic AI acts autonomously, it depends on human or enterprise oversight to anchor purpose, set guardrails, and ensure alignment. Effectively implementing agentic AI prioritizes the role of human employees in value creation to a higher level, ensuring transparency, ethical standards, and responsible strategic oversight at every level. Enable seamless integration: The Model Context Protocol To realize agentic AI’s full potential, organizations need to connect AI agents to multiple tools and data sources without building custom integrations for each one. Enter the Model Context Protocol (MCP)an open standard that replaces fragmented integrations with a single, universal protocol. Think of MCP as a USB-C port for AI agents. Just as USB-C standardized device connections, MCP standardizes how AI systems access databases, applications, and external services. No more writing separate code for each integration. For businesses, this means autonomous agents can seamlessly access customer databases, CRM systems, knowledge repositories, and execute actions across platformsall through one standardized protocol. As the ecosystem matures, AI systems maintain context while moving between tools and datasets, creating a sustainable architecture. The result? Dramatically reduced technical complexity and agents with the contextual awareness to deliver transformative customer value. Change management for cross-functional process reengineering Implementing the transformative value of agentic AI requires organizational change managementredesigning organizational processes that efficiently yield quality outcomes. Not just a new tool, impactful agentic AI implementation requires an AI expert as a vital ongoing member of cross-functional mission-based teams focused on a specific process selected for re-engineering. AI experts should not be siloed in the technical function. They should be embedded with the functional process content and outcomes experts, learning from each other as they expand organizational expertise. As the number of reimagined process teams grows, so does the organizational expertise, extending gains achieved and staying ahead of a continuously evolving AI. All of this requires careful orchestration of data, strategy, and organizational readiness focused on the functions to which agentic AI is applied and a work culture that adapts to discover new opportunities. This is transformational enterprise change. It is not an event but a new way of working. The potential, however, is substantial. If your organization is still only implementing prompt engineering, you are lagging. Prioritize process re-engineering targets Another key factor is how to prioritize which re-engineered processes customers and users will value most by seeing how they use the product or service. In the early 1980s, then-NCR Corporation used observational research to identify the most time-consuming challenges their retail cash registers could automate. NCR collaboratively developed the Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) protocol and developed a SCSI computer chip that enabled scanning charges to replace hand entry. Similarly standing in their customers shoes, Intuit engineers and product managers spur innovation by regularly engaging in follow-me-home with customers seeing how users apply their product features in their daily lives. This institutionalizes technical experts insights into customer usage to feed innovative ideas for more transformation. Train for an AI world Companies recognizing employees AI skill gaps are providing in-house or commercial training for workers. Higher ed institutions and their nonacademic competitors offer a variety of online courses. With AI continuously evolving, the next generation and their teachers also need training. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Americas second largest teachers union, is starting a training hub with $23 million in funding from Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to focus on training teachers to generate lesson plans with AI wisely, safely and ethically. AFTs Share My Lesson is now Beta testing an OpenAI-powered teaching assistant, TRYEdBrAIn, that can adapt lesson plans to change grade levels, translate into different languages and many other options. Beta testing is now underway to understand user experience. The Khan Academy is testing an AI-powered teacher assistant as a student tutor in various school districts. As digital transformation accelerates, leading organizations will see agentic AI not as a tool, but as a catalyst for new paradigms of teamwork, value creation, and enterprise agility. Barie Carmichael is senior counselor and David Sanchez is director, AI Business Solutions at APCO Worldwide.
Category:
E-Commerce
Canada’s largest airline, Air Canada, will begin suspending flights starting Thursday. The decision comes after the airline’s flight attendants union, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), issued a 72-hour strike notice over failed contract negotiations. The airline said it will suspend flights on Thursday and Friday, moving toward a full shutdown on Saturday of both Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge if a deal isn’t reached. “A planned labour disruption by CUPE, the union representing 10,000 flight attendants at Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge, is expected to begin Saturday, August 16, at 01:00 ET,” Air Canada said in a statement. Air Canada also said it has been in contact with other airlines to help meet their customers’ travel needs. It explained that the airline will attempt to rebook customers’ canceled flights, possibly on other airlines, but acknowledged there will be major hurdles with rebooking in a timely manner. “If your travel is disrupted, you can always choose a refund,” it said.“We regret the impact a disruption will have on our customers, our stakeholders, and the communities we serve,” Air Canada CEO Michael Rousseau said in a statement. “However, the disappointing conduct of CUPEs negotiators and the unions stated intention to launch a strike puts us in a position where our only responsible course of action is to provide certainty by implementing an orderly suspension of Air Canadas and Air Canada Rouges operations through a lockout. As we have seen elsewhere in our industry with other labour disruptions, unplanned or uncontrolled shutdowns, such as we are now at risk of through a strike, can create chaos for travellers that is far, far worse.” In a statement, the union said the airline has failed to address its concerns. The statement referenced “poverty wages” and unpaid labor, referring to time worked while planes are not in the air. The statement said: “Currently, Air Canada flight attendants perform hours of critical safety-related duties for free. The company has offered to begin compensating flight attendants for some of these dutiesbut only at 50% of their hourly rate, and the company is still refusing to compensate flight attendants for time spent responding to medical emergencies, fires, evacuations, and other safety and security-related issues on the ground.” While most airlines only pay flight attendants for time in the air, some flight attendants have begun pushing back. Recently, flight attendants in North America have sought compensation for total hours worked. That includes time on the ground, where they board passengers before takeoff and waiting periods between flights occur. “We have a lot of time in our days that we are unpaid,” Julie Hedrick, a flight attendant for American Airlines and president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants union, told NPR last year. “All of us, of course, feel that we should be paid for the minute we get to work until we go home, but we have to look at the entire package,” she said. In hopes of appeasing the union, Air Canada offered a 38% increase in total compensation for flight attendants over four years. It included a 25% raise in the first year. The union pushed back, saying it would only actually raise wages by 17.2% over four years, and didn’t account for inflation. Air Canada had offered to compensate flight attendants for some unpaid work, but only at half of their hourly rate. This isn’t the first time Air Canada has threatened to shut down operations. Last year, after stalled talks with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) union, pilots prepared for a strike. Finally, an agreement was reached after Air Canada pilots voted in favor of a new agreement. If a deal isn’t reached by the weekend, the disruption will certainly be widely felt. According to the airline’s corporate profile, Air Canada provides service to airports all over Canada, as well as six continents, and is the largest foreign carrier to the U.S. Air Canada provides service to more than 50 U.S. airports, with around 430 flights between the countries each day.
Category:
E-Commerce
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