Research
Upskilling, Reskilling, and the talent pipeline nobody is planning for.
A year of research into how retail and consumer goods businesses should respond to the simultaneous arrival of AI, demographic decline, and the quiet collapse of the entry-level roles where operations managers used to learn the business.
What the executive summary covers
The Talent Pipeline Problem
Why automation is quietly removing the entry-level roles where operations managers used to learn the business, and what that means for the next decade of retail leadership succession.
AI, Commercial Skill, and Critical Thinking
How AI amplifies the return on both good and bad judgement, why critical thinking must be protected, and what KPMG's recent CEO survey tells us about the risk most boards are underestimating.
A Financially Credible ROI Model
How to build a training business case your CFO will actually approve, mapped to the P&L, the balance sheet, and free cash flow, with a worked example of phased investment structuring.
Career Maps, Learning Paths, and the 9-Box Grid
The three structural components of a working upskilling programme, the common mistakes that make each of them fail in practice, and how to run the pilot department approach successfully.
The war for talent is now unwinnable on hiring alone.— Upskilling and Reskilling White Paper · Martec International · 2026
Why this research matters now
of CEOs believe AI will reduce early-career learning opportunities
KPMG 2026 CEO Outlook. The number is almost certainly an undercount, and the implications for future management pipelines are significant.
before most AI investments generate measurable ROI
The foundations that matter, quality data and commercially capable people, need to be built now. Waiting for clarity is not a strategy.
of external senior leadership hires fail within two years
Against 24 per cent of internal candidates. The hiring-led talent model is stopping working, and the maths is getting harder each year.
