• Colorado-based Girl Scout Charlotte Holmberg went viral after marketing the best-selling "Samoas" cookies with a shirtless photo of "Game of Thrones" and "Aquaman" star Jason Momoa on the box.
• Holmberg told her local news station that "moms are getting really excited and are saying they need them!"
• A representative for the Girl Scouts of America told INSIDER that Holmberg has since sold out of the "Momoas," and is on pace to sell more than the 2,000 boxes she unloaded in 2018. 

We've seen plenty of Girl Scouts flex their creative muscles to successfully market their cookies in the past, but one budding entrepreneur from Colorado has taken the cookie-selling game to a whole new level.

Charlotte Holmberg — named a "Cookie CEO" after selling more than 2,000 boxes of cookies in 2018 — has captured the internet's attention with her latest marketing scheme. Assisted by her mother, who is a marketing professional, the elementary schooler replaced the traditional packaging on the best-selling "Samoas" boxes with a shirtless photo of "Game of Thrones" and "Aquaman" star Jason Momoa.

Holmberg and her creative cookies went viral after she was featured on the Girl Scouts of Colorado's Facebook and Instagram pages on February 13.

Unsurprisingly, Holmberg made some impressive sales with her inventive idea.

And, according to Holmberg, moms in the area were particularly interested in purchasing a Momoa box for themselves.

"The moms are getting really excited and are saying they need them!” Holmberg told Denver's 9News.

But the young marketing genius knows better than to target just one audience. "Boys will also want to buy some because he might be their favorite character,” she added.

A representative for Girl Scouts of America told INSIDER that Holmberg has since sold out of her Momoa cookies, but her cookie season is ongoing.

Read more: Amazing things Girl Scouts have done

She is likely on pace to best her already impressive sales performance from last year. The representative for Girl Scouts of America told us that the earnings from Holmberg and her troop's cookie sales will be used "to give back locally."

They will be "donating the money to enable Colorado girls in need to afford to become Girl Scouts, as well as collecting thousands of school supplies for students in need," the representative said.

Momoa himself has yet to comment on her strategy.

Join the conversation about this story »

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• SpaceX is about to launch a Falcon 9 rocket that will carry the first-ever private moon mission.
• SpaceIL, a nonprofit organization based in Israel, designed and built the 1,300-pound lunar lander called "Beresheet," which means "in the beginning" (the first words in the Bible).
• SpaceIL started as a Google Lunar XPrize team and is backed by South African billionaire Morris Kahn.
• If the Beresheet lunar mission works, it'd make Israel the fourth country ever to pull off a moon landing.

SpaceX, the rocket company founded by Elon Musk, is about to launch the first private lunar lander.

Whether or not the moon mission succeeds, the effort will carry lasting significance to Israel and the country's nascent space industry. But if everything works as planned, Israel will become the fourth nation ever to land on the lunar surface. (Japan, India, and Europe have crashed probes into the lunar surface but not gently set down any robots.)

The $100 million mission is headed by a nonprofit called SpaceIL (the "IL" in the name stands for "Israel"), which designed and built a 1,300-pound robotic spacecraft called "Beresheet." That's Hebrew for "in the beginning," which is the first phrase in Genesis in the Bible.

Beresheet — which is equipped with cameras, magnetic sensors, and transmitters to relay data to and from to Earth — now awaits launch inside the top of a Falcon 9 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Florida. SpaceX's rocket should lift off on Thursday evening at 8:45 p.m. EST, barring technical glitches and bad weather. (The US Air Force predicted an 80% chance of launch as of Wednesday.)

Morris Kahn, a South African-born entrepreneur and billionaire who lives in Israel, is the biggest funder of the SpaceIL mission. In an interview with Business Insider, Kahn said he's shouldered about $43 million of the $100 million that has been spent on development and on the SpaceX rocket launch.

"I wanted to show that Israel — this little country with a population of about 6 or 8 million people — could actually do a job that was only done by three major powers in the world: Russia, China, and the United States," Kahn said. "Could Israel innovate and actually achieve this objective with a smaller budget, and being a smaller country, and without a big space industry backing it?"

This week, the world will find out.

'Without money, you're not going to get anywhere'

In early 2011, Kahn attended an international space conference in Israel, where a presentation by three young Israeli engineers — Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari, and Yonatan Winetraub— caught his attention.

"They said that they were going to participate in a Google competition. It was an XPrize competition to put a spacecraft on the moon and win a $20 million prize," Kahn said. "They seemed very proud of themselves, and I thought that this was rather neat."

That competition was the Google Lunar XPRIZE, which started in September 2007. It dangled tens of millions of dollars in prize money with the hope of spurring a private company to land a robot on the moon by 2014.

After the SpaceIL presentation, Kahn — who at the time had a net worth to close $1 billion— asked the group's leaders if they had any money.

"They said, 'Money? Money, what's that for?' I said, 'Without money, you're not going to get anywhere,'" Kahn said. "I said to them, 'Look, come to my office, I'll give you $100,000 — no questions asked — and you can start.' And that was how I innocently got involved in this tremendous project."

Kahn said "the project really began to chew up money" early on, so he asked for a budget. The team came back with estimate of $8 million for research, development, and testing, and about $5 million for a rocket launch — "quite a lot of money," Kahn said. But he initially agreed to pay for the rocket launch.

"I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery. I'd like to feel that I've used my money productively," Kahn said. "I'd also like to see that I've used it in a way that I enjoy. I enjoy this process."

Over time, the organizers of the Google Lunar XPrize kept pushing back the contest's 2014 deadline, but the competition was ultimately shuttered in January 2018 without a winner.

Nevertheless, SpaceIL was intent on moving ahead, and Kahn kept supplying cash.

"Slowly, I sucked myself into this project and I had no idea where it was going to take me," Kahn said. "Today I know. It's taken us roughly $100 million. That's a tremendous amount of money."

He also helped fundraise from other sources, including roughly $2 million from the Israeli government. Kahn said it was not easy to raise the money, but he appealed to the national pride of Israelis.

"Putting a spacecraft on on the moon is a little bit of a kind of a weird project," Kahn said. "It almost seems un-doable, and even if it was doable, it takes somebody with imagination to actually see why you would do it."

Read more: NASA's first moon landings in nearly 50 years may happen in 2019. The agency thinks these 9 companies can get it to the lunar surface.

Still, $100 million is a pittance compared to the $469 million that NASA spent in the 1960s on seven similarly sized Surveyor lunar landers. When adjusted for inflation, that sum is roughly $3.5 billion today — about $500 million per mission.

How SpaceIL will use SpaceX to land on the moon

The moon is about 239,000 miles away from Earth, but the biggest challenge in getting there is harnessing enough energy to climb out of our planet's gravity field. For example, sending three Apollo astronauts, a small space capsule, and a two-person lunar lander vehicle required a 36-story Saturn V rocket filled with millions of pounds of fuel.

To achieve a lunar landing on a tight budget, SpaceIL claims its robot "will be the smallest spacecraft to land on the moon to date." Beresheet is just shy of 5 feet tall when tucked into position for launch, making it relatively easy to squeeze aboard a rocket. Because the spacecraft was built to be light, it has no cooling system and will overheat in the blistering sun on the moon after perhaps three days.

The robot is also cutting costs by not launching alone. It will instead "piggyback" into space with a much larger payload: an Indonesian communications satellite called "Nusantara Satu" or PSN 6.

On SpaceX's end, the plan is to launch both spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket with an already twice-used booster. Launching the refurbished booster for a third time could net SpaceX millions (if not tens of millions) of dollars.

Read more: Elon Musk beat a world record for rocket launches in 2018. Here's every history-making SpaceX mission of the year.

SpaceIL declined to share how much it's actually paying for the launch. But pricing tables from the company in charge of arranging the rocket rideshare, called Spaceflight Industries, suggest that Beresheet's launch may cost about $22.5 million — far less than the $62 million list price of an exclusive ride on a Falcon 9.

To lower Beresheet's weight and launch price, SpaceIL also chose a roughly 2.5-month trip from launch to landing. (By comparison, it took Apollo astronauts just four days after launch to land on the moon.)

"Once it disengages from the launch rocket, the spacecraft will begin orbiting Earth in continuously larger elliptical orbits, ultimately covering a total distance of 9 million kilometers [5.6 million miles]," SpaceIL said. "This long and complex course was chosen as it will allow completing the journey to the moon with minimal fuel consumption."

About 75% of Beresheet's mass is made up of fuel, which will propel it into lunar orbit — a trip that will take the probe about six weeks. Once the moon's gravity captures the robot around April 4, it will shrink its orbit over the next week.

A final burn of Beresheet's rocket engine on April 11 will bring it down to the lunar surface in about 15 minutes. The probe will navigate its lunar landing using autonomous software and a computer about as powerful as a smartphone. A set of 3D-printed legs will cushion the last 16 feet of its free-fall.

"The spacecraft will use various sensors to measure its location and height in relation to the moon's surface," SpaceIL said. "The ground team will not be able to intervene during the landing process."

During its descent and after landing, the lander is supposed to record video and panoramic photos while beaming footage to a control room at Israel Aerospace Industries in Yehud.

"It will be possible to operate all the spacecraft's systems from this control room," SpaceIL said.

What the first private lunar lander will do on the moon

The planned landing site for Beresheet is Mare Serenitatis, or the "Sea of Serenity," in the northern hemisphere of the moon. It's a dark lava-covered site of an ancient volcanic eruption. The area is also a source of magnetic and gravitational anomalies, and — in popular culture — the left of of the "man in the moon."

Until it overheats, Beresheet will take measurements of the moon's magnetic field there using an instrument supplied by the University of California, Los Angeles. SpaceIL plans to share the data it collects with NASA and other space agencies.

Read more: The American flags on the moon are disintegrating

Kahn says the scientific mission is not as important as what Beresheet's landing would symbolize, true to the meaning of its name.

"This project of ours will take Israel into deep space. I think this is a new frontier and actually what we're doing — this is the first nongovernmental project to go to the moon," Kahn said. "I think others will follow us. In fact, I'm sure others will follow us."

Retired NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski also sees the mission as stepping stone to a larger future for Israel's space industry.

"Israel is such a incredible technological powerhouse. And so I think it’s extraordinary that now, non-space-faring nations — in other words, those that don’t have the capacity to necessarily launch their own astronauts — are now able to launch major payloads like this," Parazynski told Business Insider. "Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, they will be able to also launch their own astronauts."

Kahn said there is "no guarantee" the mission will succeed — "It just takes one little glitch and we'll actually fly off into space and lose control," he added.

But even if it fails, he thinks the "Apollo effect" of encouraging young Israelis to dream big about their futures in science and engineering is already a success.

"We've actually gotten to more than a million young students and we excited them about space," Kahn said. "That objective, I think, we've actually already achieved."

SEE ALSO: 'This is more than just a landing': Why China's mission on the far side of the moon should be a wake-up call for the world

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• A FedEx employee who scootered through Manhattan was the star of a viral video today.
• "Someone give this man a raise," pop culture media brand Complex said on Twitter.
• Unfortunately, the shipping company told Business Insider that the employee actually broke company standards on professionalism. 

The internet's favorite person on Wednesday was a FedEx employee. 

Posted on the Instagram story of "tellmehowyoufill" and then circulated on Twitter, the FedEx worker was using a delivery cart like a scooter while holding several packages in a New York City bike lane. He made a bold lane change across several lanes of car traffic and also some turns. 

More than a few folks heavily endorsed the worker.

And others were quick to compare the FedEx employee's skills to e-commerce behemoth Amazon, which is quickly developing its own package delivery service. 

FedEx said cruising through one of the busiest cities in the world isn't actually endorsed by the company. Indeed, it's a violation of company safety rules.

The company said this in a statement to Business Insider:

The behavior depicted in this video is inconsistent with the professionalism FedEx Ground service providers demonstrate every day in safely and securely delivering millions of packages to our customers. We are committed to treating our customers’ shipments with the utmost care and will take the appropriate steps to address this matter.

It doesn't seem like Twitter's favorite FedEx guy will receive that raise, after all. 

SEE ALSO: An Arkansas court quietly ruled that truck drivers need to be paid minimum wage even when they're not driving on the job — here's what it means for drivers around the US

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• A US Coast Guard lieutenant, Christopher Paul Hasson, was arrested on Wednesday after authorities found a cache of weapons in his Silver Springs, Maryland, apartment, The Washington Post reported.
• Federal authorities said these weapons and ammunition, which he had allegedly been collecting since 2017, were intended for a "massive" terrorist attack aimed at lawmakers and journalists.
• "The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country," court documents say, according to The Post.

A US Coast Guard lieutenant, Christopher Paul Hasson, was arrested last week after authorities found a cache of weapons in his Silver Springs, Maryland, apartment, The Washington Post reported.

Federal authorities said these weapons and ammunition, which he had allegedly been collecting since 2017, were intended for a "massive" terrorist attack aimed at lawmakers and journalists.

He was arrested on illegal weapons and drug charges, but in court documents the government said, "The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country."

Hasson is a self-described white nationalist, The Post reported, and court documents say he wanted to "establish a white homeland" and commit "focused violence."

"I never saw a reason for mass protest or wearing uniforms marching around provoking people with swastikas etc.,” Hasson wrote in a letter, which was addressed to a neo-Nazi leader but allegedly sent to himself, according to court documents. "I was and am a man of action you cannot change minds protesting like that. However you can make change with a little focused violence."

According to the court documents, he stockpiled 15 firearms and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition. He also allegedly had a spreadsheet of targets, which included Democratic lawmakers and journalists.

Hasson had been working at the US Coast Guard headquarters since 2016.

"An active duty Coast Guard member stationed at Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, DC, was arrested last week on illegal weapons and drug charges as a result of an ongoing investigation led by Coast Guard Investigation Services, in cooperation with the FBI and the Dept. of Justice," Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Scott McBride told The Post in a written statement. McBride also said he was no longer working at the headquarters.

This story is developing, please check back for more information.

Read the full story at The Washington Post »

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• PepsiCo has kicked off a round of layoffs impacting employees in multiple offices, two people who were laid off by the company told Business Insider. 
• The company announced in a quarterly earnings call last week that it expects to incur $2.5 billion in restructuring costs through 2023, with 70% of charges linked to severance and other employee costs.
• Roughly $800 million of the $2.5 billion is expected to impact 2019 results. 
• PepsiCo also recently announced plans to restructure the organization and "relentlessly" invest in automation. 

PepsiCo has kicked off a round of layoffs as it begins a four-year restructuring plan that is expected to cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars in severance pay.

This week, PepsiCo employees in offices including Plano, Texas, and the company's headquarters in Purchase, New York, were alerted that they are being laid off, according to two people who were directly impacted by the layoffs. These two workers were granted anonymity in order to speak frankly without risking professional ramifications. 

At least some of the workers who were alerted of layoffs will continue to work at PepsiCo until late April as they train their replacements in the coming weeks, the two workers told Business Insider. 

Due to the secrecy surrounding the layoffs, these workers said that it was unclear how many teams or individuals had been impacted. PepsiCo declined to comment on the layoffs. 

By PepsiCo's own estimates, the company's layoffs are expected to be a multimillion-dollar project in 2019. 

Last Friday, PepsiCo announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it is expected to incur $2.5 billion in pretax restructuring costs through 2023, with 70% of charges linked to severance and other employee costs. The company is also planning to close factories, with an additional 15% tied to plant closures and "related actions."

Roughly $800 million of the $2.5 billion is expected to impact 2019 results, in addition to the $138 million that was included in 2018 results, the company said in the SEC filing. In February 2018, PepsiCo announced plans to lay off less than 1% of its more than 110,000 corporate employees, including 200 employees at its Purchase, New York, headquarters. 

PepsiCo also announced a commitment to save $1 billion annually through 2023. Efficiency and restructuring were major themes in PepsiCo's quarterly earnings call with investors on Friday. 

"Our second set of priorities ... involves becoming more capable, leaner, more agile and less bureaucratic," CEO Ramon Laguarta said. "In doing so, we will drive down cost and that enables us to plow the savings back into the business to develop scale and sharpen core capabilities that drive even greater efficiency and effectiveness creating a virtuous cycle."

Being leaner and more agile seems to be linked to cutting jobs, with CFO Hugh Johnston confirming to CNBC that the company plans to lay off workers in positions that can be automated. Laguarta said on Friday that PepsiCo is "relentlessly automating and merging the best of our optimized business models with the best new thinking and technologies." 

Last week, PepsiCo announced it would reorganize its beverage business into four US regional divisions and a single Canadian division, according to an internal memo obtained by trade publication Beverage Digest. According to Beverage Digest, the memo states the restructure will "simplify the way we work, remove red tape and push decision-making and resources into the market." 

If you were impacted by the PepsiCo layoffs and have a story to share, contact ktaylor@businessinsider.com.

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• After a shaky start, wearables like smartwatches and fitness trackers have gained traction in healthcare, with US consumer use jumping from 9% in 2014 to 33% in 2018.
• More than 80% of consumers are willing to wear tech that measures health data — and penetration should continue to climb.
• The maturation of the wearable market will put more wearables in the hands of consumers and US businesses.

The US healthcare industry as it exists today is not sustainable. An aging patient population and rising burden of chronic disease have caused healthcare costs to skyrocket and left providers struggling to keep up with demand for care. 

Meanwhile, digital technologies in nearly every consumer experience outside of healthcare have raised patients’ expectations for good service to be higher than ever.

One of the key mechanisms through which healthcare providers can finally evolve their outdated practices and exceed these expectations is wearable technology.

Presently, 33% of US consumers have adopted wearables, such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, to play a more active role in managing their health. In turn, insurers, providers, and employers are poised to become just as active leveraging these devices – and the data they capture – to abandon the traditional reimbursement model and improve patient outcomes with personalized, value-based care.

Adoption is going to keep climbing, as more than 80% of consumers are willing to wear tech that measures health data, according to Accenture — though they have reservations about who exactly should access it.

A new report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, follows the growing adoption of wearables and breadth of functions they offer to outline how healthcare organizations and stakeholders can overcome this challenge and add greater value with wearable technology.

For insurers, providers, and employers, wearables present three distinct opportunities:

• Insurers can use wearable data to enhance risk assessments and drive customer lifetime value. One study shows that wearables can incentivize healthier behavior associated with a 30% reduction in risk of cardiovascular events and death.
• Providers can use the remote patient monitoring capabilities of wearable technology to improve chronic disease management, lessen the burden of staff shortages, and navigate a changing reimbursement model. And since 90% of patients no longer feel obligated to stay with providers that don't deliver a satisfactory digital experience, wearables could help to attract and retain them.
• Employers can combine wearables with cash incentives to lower insurance costs and improve employee productivity. For example, The Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority yielded $5 million in healthcare cost savings through a wearable-based employee wellness program.

Want to Learn More?

The Wearables in US Healthcare Report details the current and future market landscape of wearables in the US healthcare sector. It explores the key drivers behind wearable usage by insurers, healthcare providers, and employers, and the opportunities wearables afford to each of these stakeholders. 

By outlining a successful case study from each stakeholder, the report highlights best practices in implementing wearables to reduce healthcare claims, improve patient outcomes, and drive insurance cost savings, as well as how the evolution of the market will create new, untapped opportunities for businesses.

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• Deutsche Bank lost $1.6 billion on an investment in a portfolio of municipal bonds and related derivatives, according to the Wall Street Journal. 
• In 2007, the bank bought a $7.8 billion portfolio of municipal bonds, the report said. The following year, Deutsche purchased default protection from Berkshire Hathaway.
• After almost a decade of the deal, Deutsche Bank offloaded the bonds in 2016, incurring $1.6 billion in losses, the report said. 

Deutsche Bank lost $1.6 billion on an investment in which it purchased prior to the 2008 financial crisis, according to a report from Wall Street Journal.

In 2007, the bank bought a $7.8 billion portfolio of municipal bonds.  A year later, the German lender purchased  default protection from Berkshire Hathaway for the investment, paying $140 million up front for the transaction.

Internally, Deutsche Bank's executives had debated over the valuation of the bonds after the purchase, the report said. Financial auditors from KPMG also questioned whether the bank has set aside sufficient funds to cover potential losses, however, the bank shrugged off those concerns, according to the report. 

Deutsche Bank eventually decided to offload the bonds and related derivatives nine years after the purchase. 

"This transaction was unwound in 2016 as part of the closure of our Non-Core Operations" unit, a bank spokesman told the Journal in an email. "External lawyers and auditors reviewed the transaction and confirmed it was in line with accounting standards and practices."

Executives at Deutsche Bank never decided to restate its financial statements to include the losses before an internal investigation closed last year, the report said. 

See also:

• JPMorgan is building a cloud engineering hub in Seattle minutes away from Amazon and Microsoft, and it's planning to hire 50 staffers this year
• Pimco and DoubleLine Capital are players in a tug-boat investment gone bad — and their struggles highlight the dark side of credit markets
• Human resources is the next battleground for Wall Street wealth advisers as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs jockey over new turf

Join the conversation about this story »

• Mark Zuckerberg recently spoke withHarvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain as part of his New Year's resolution to host more open dialogues about the impact of tech on society. 
• During the conversation, Zuckerberg said: "We definitely don’t want a society where there’s a camera in everyone’s living room."
• In turn, Zittrain pointed out that Facebook actually sells a camera-equipped device for the living room — Facebook Portal, its smart speaker with video calling.
• Reactions to Facebook's $200 Portal have been skeptical, with many voicing their unease at using a gadget from a company with a history of mishandling data.

It's always important to mind your metaphors — especially when you're a CEO of Mark Zuckerberg's stature. 

In an interview with Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain that spanned almost two hours, Zuckerberg was asked to discuss Facebook's efforts to bring more privacy to online messaging. The Facebook CEO invoked a metaphor in which he compared messaging platforms to people's living rooms.

"We definitely don’t want a society where there’s a camera in everyone’s living room watching the content of those conversations," Zuckerberg said during the interview, which made good on his New Year's resolution to hold more open dialogues about the intersection of tech and society. 

There's one problem, though — Facebook literally sells a camera that goes into people's living rooms.. In October, Facebook launched Portal, a video-calling device that's also equipped with the Amazon Alexa voice assistant. Portal is Facebook's first consumer hardware gadget, and starts out at $199.

The Portal announcement came at a time when Facebook was fresh off numerous privacy and data security scandals that proved detrimental to consumer trust of the company. People were quick to voice skepticism, and balked at the idea of letting into their home a Facebook-created device with a built-in microphone and camera.

Read more:The curious timing of Facebook's first hardware product, the $200 'Portal'

When Zittrain pushed him on the existence of Portal, Zuckerberg responded, laughing: "That is, I guess…yeah. Although, that would be encrypted."

To that point, Zuckerberg also discussed Facebook's use of end-to-end encryption, which gives private communications an added level of protection from outside parties like law enforcement. WhatsApp is Facebook's only platform to fully offer end-to-end encryption, but a potential reconfiguration of Facebook's family of apps could potentially bring end-to-end encryption to Messenger and Instagram as well.

Facebook, for its part, has said that video calls through a Portal device are encrypted, and not seen or stored by Facebook itself. 

SEE ALSO: Elon Musk says he's finally going to host PewDiePie's show about internet memes — here's why that's a big deal for the YouTuber

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NOW WATCH: How Apple went from a $1 trillion company to losing over 20% of its share price

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

The healthcare industry is undergoing a profound transformation. Costs are skyrocketing, consumer demand for more accessible care is growing rapidly, and healthcare companies are unable to keep up. 

Health organizations are increasingly turning to tech companies to facilitate this transformation in care delivery and lower health expenditures. The potential for tech-led digital health initiatives to help healthcare providers and insurers deliver safer, more efficient, and cost-effective care is significant. For healthcare organizations of all types, the collection, analyses, and application of patient data can minimize avoidable service use, improve health outcomes, and promote patient independence, which can assuage swelling costs.

For their part, the "Big Four" tech companies — Google-parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft — see an opportunity to tap into the lucrative health market. These same players are accelerating their efforts to reshape healthcare by developing and collaborating on new tools for consumers, medical professionals, and insurers.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence explores the key strengths and offerings the Big Four will bring to the healthcare industry, as well as their approaches into the market. We'll then explore how these services and solutions are creating opportunities for health systems and insurers. Finally, the report will outline the barriers that are inhibiting the adoption and usage of the Big Four tech companies’ offerings and how these barriers can be circumvented.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• Tech companies’ expertise in data management and analysis, along with their significant compute power, can help support healthcare payers, health systems, and consumers by providing a broader overview of how health is accessed and delivered.

• Each of the Big Four tech companies — vying for a piece of the lucrative healthcare market — is leaning on their specific field of expertise to develop tools and solutions for consumers, providers, and payers.
• Alphabet is focused on leveraging its dominance in data storage and analytics to become the leader in population health.
• Amazon is leaning on its experience as a distribution platform for medical supplies, and developing its AI-assistant Alexa as an in-home health concierge.
• Apple is actively turning its consumer products into patient health hubs.
• Microsoft is focusing on cloud storage and analytics to tap into precision medicine.

• Health organizations can further tap into the opportunity presented by tech’s entry into healthcare by collaborating with tech giants to realize cost savings and bolster their top lines. But understanding how each tech giant is approaching healthcare is crucial.

 In full, the report:

• Pinpoints the key themes and industry-wide shifts that are driving the transformation of healthcare in the US.
• Defines the main healthcare businesses and strategies of the Big Four tech companies.
• Highlights the biggest potential impacts of each of the Big Four’s healthcare strategies for health systems and insurers.
• Discusses the potential barriers that will challenge the adoption of the Big Four tech companies’ initiatives and how these hurdles can be overcome.

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• Mark Zuckerberg took part in an interview with Harvard Law School professor Jonathan Zittrain.
• It's part of the billionaire Facebook CEO's challenge for 2019 to take part in public debates about the impact of tech on society. 
• The discussion touched on a number of topics, including privacy and the blockchain.
• He also had one awkward gaffe, when he apparently forgot about the Facebook Portal speaker.

Mark Zuckerberg has kicked off his personal challenge for 2019 of engaging in public debates about Facebook.

Every year, the 34-year-old billionaire chief exec sets himself often-whimsical challenges — from only eating meat from animals he killed himself, to building an AI assistant to help around his home. For 2019, after months of sustained criticism around Facebook's endless scandals, Zuckerberg said that"every few weeks I'll talk with leaders, experts, and people in our community from different fields and I'll try different formats to keep it interesting."

Nearly two months into year, we've now seen the first take place: A discussion with Professor Jonathan Zittrain at Harvard Law School.

Here are some of the key highlights, from Zuckerberg's ruminations on the potential for the blockchain, to an awkward gaffe.

People don't really want to pay not to see ads, the CEO argues.

One topic of discussion was the idea of an ad-free Facebook that users would pay to access. 

Mark Zuckerberg discussed how Facebook might one day implement blockchain.

It's not secret that Facebook has a team working on blockchain tech — but it has kept what it's working on tightly under wraps.

Zuckerberg suggested that the tech could be used to authenticate people on apps and services, in the same way Facebook Connect, the company's login tool, is used now.

“One of the things I've been thinking about a lot is a use of blockchain ... around authentication and basically granting access to your information to different services. So basically replacing the notion of what we have with Facebook Connect with something that's fully distributed. Basically you take your information, you store it on some decentralized system and you have the choice to log in to places where you are not going through an intermediary," he said.

Mark Zuckerberg said people don't want cameras in their living rooms — seemingly forgetting that Facebook has built exactly that.

In one awkward snafu during an exchange about privacy, Zuckerberg said "we definitely don’t want a society where there’s a camera in everyone’s living room watching the content of those conversations."

The only problem? Facebook is literally selling this, in the form of the Portal, a smart speaker powered by Amazon Alexa that also lets you video chat with friends. 

Facebook might turn to users to crowdsource fact-checking.

Facebook's fact-checking program is in seeming disarray, with third-party partners like Snopes dropping out and being strongly critical of the efforts. Zuckerberg suggested that in future, Facebook might try and move away from using experts in favour of crowdsourcing efforts from regular users.

"I think the real thing that we want to try to get to over time is more of a crowdsourced model where people, it's not that people are trusting some sort, some basic set of experts who are accredited but are in some kid of lofty institution somewhere else. It's like do you trust, yeah, like, if you get enough data points from within the community of people reasonably looking at," he said.

Some obvious problems present themselves with this approach. Is "crowd-sourcing" the right way to find the truth when there are widely believed hoaxes out there — like the idea that vaccines are dangerous, or Hillary Clinton is the head of secretive pedophile ring? And, as Zittrain pointed out, if you turn to users for fact-checking, the likelihood that the system gets gamed by bad actors goes up.

Zuckerberg added: "There are a lot of questions here, which is why I'm not sitting here and announcing a new program."

Do you work at Facebook? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via Signal or WhatsApp at +1 (650) 636-6268 using a non-work phone, email at rprice@businessinsider.com, Telegram or WeChat at robaeprice, or Twitter DM at @robaeprice. (PR pitches by email only, please.) You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

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• Apple's problems in China are likely to linger, HSBC's Erwan Rambourg said in a new research note.
• Wealthy Chinese are starting to shift their brand preferences to Huawei from Apple, Rambourg said, citing a proprietary survey.
• They also don't want to spend what Apple charges for its latest phones, according to the survey.
• And many want their next phone to support 5G, but Apple isn't expected to offer an iPhone compatible with the new wireless standard until late next year.

Don't expect Apple's China woes to get better anytime soon.

Wealthy Chinese consumers are still swapping out their phones at a fairly rapid rate, HSBC Global Research analyst Erwan Rambourg said in a new note Wednesday, citing a proprietary survey. But Apple could lose out as they do. Such customers are starting to prefer Huawei's phones over iPhones, and more than half of such consumers say when they upgrade they're unlikely to spend what Apple charges for its latest devices, Rambourg said.

Apple's "China issues [are] likely to continue beyond the short term," he said in the note.

Greater China — China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong — is Apple's third largest geographic market, accounting for about 20% of the company's sales in its last fiscal year. But a slowing Chinese economy and trade tensions with the United States, among other factors, appear to have hurt the iPhone maker's business there. During the holiday quarter, Apple's overall revenue fell by about 5%, thanks in large part to a 27% year-over-year drop in its Greater China sales.

Read this: The most important things we learned from Apple's earnings call

HSBC's survey data indicates a rebound won't happen anytime soon, Rambourg said.

Chinese consumers still love to upgrade their phones

In past years, consumers in the United States and other countries swapped out their phones around every two years or so. But with the devices becoming more expensive and with fewer new must-have features, owners have been upgrading them less frequently in many places.

But that trend hasn't really hit China yet, according to HSBC's data, which it derived from surveying 2,000 affluent consumers there. About 64% of those customers say they swap out their phones at least every two years, according to the survey.

That poses a danger to companies if consumer loyalties or brand images start to shift; they could lose customers relatively quickly. Unfortunately for Apple, that seems to be happening.

Among the Chinese consumers HSBC surveyed, 33% have a Huawei phone and 32% have an iPhone. However, for their next phone, 39% say they'll buy a Huawei device, while just 31% said they would buy and iPhone. By contrast, about 40% of such consumers said they had an iPhone last year, while less than 25% said they had a Huawei phone.

"There is clear evidence of shifts in consumer preference with Apple losing in terms of aspiration to Huawei," Rambourg said.

Apple's phones are too pricey for Chinese consumers

Another dangerous sign for Apple: Even many of these wealthy Chinese customers say they don't want to pay what it costs to get the newest iPhones. Only 16% said they were likely to spend more than RMB 8,000 (about $1,190) for their next smartphone, and less than half — 49% — said they were likely to spend more than RMB 5,000 ($744) for their next phone.

The only iPhone model Apple sells that's priced less than RMB 5,000 is the iPhone 7, which is more than two years old. It starts at RMB 3,899 ($580). The least model expensive among Apple's latest iPhones — the XR — starts at RMB 6,499 ($967). The XS, meanwhile, starts at RMB 8,699 ($1,294), and the XS Max has a base price of RMB 9,599 ($1,428).

"Local competitors are perceived as having a better price/performance ratio than Apple," Rambourg said.

Apple seems to be trying to address its pricing problems, in part by offering generous trade-in amounts for older phones. But the company could face other problems in the near future in luring new customers or convincing older ones to stay loyal.

When asked what new feature might spur them to upgrade to a new phone earlier than they were planning, the top reason surveyed consumers gave was to get more memory. But the no. 2 reason — cited by well more than half of those surveyed — was support for 5G, or fifth generation wireless, a fast new standard for cellular data transmissions. That's a problem for Apple, because while some of its competitors — including Huawei — are expected to debut 5G phones this year, the iPhone maker isn't expected to release a 5G device until late next year at the earliest.

• Read more:
• Here's why Apple's coming streaming video service won't rescue it from plunging iPhone sales
• Here's why Angela Ahrendts' departure could be a good thing for Apple
• One of Apple's best-known analysts says an all-time low iPhone upgrade rate is going to cause more pain than investors realize
• Here's why Apple's iPhone sales won't get better anytime soon

SEE ALSO: Here's why Apple's China situation is at 'code red,' and why it needs to take dramatic action to plug up a key weakness in the business

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This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here. Current subscribers can read the report here.

Smart speakers comprise one of the fastest-growing device segments in the consumer technology market today. Ownership levels have nearly doubled from early 2017 to summer 2018. 

With this rapid growth, there are a few pivotal questions that both companies looking to develop and sell smart speakers as well as those looking to sell products, deliver media, and offer access to services like banking over these devices need answers to in order to craft successful strategies. In particular, they need to know who is and isn’t buying smart speakers, and what consumers who own smart speakers are actually doing with them. 

To offer these stakeholders insight, Business Insider Intelligence asked more than 500 US consumers about their knowledge of smart speakers, the devices they do or don’t own and what led them to their purchase decisions, as well as the tasks they’re using their smart speakers for.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence will look at the state of the smart speaker market and outline how each of the major device providers approaches the space. We will then focus on the key factors that affect whether or not someone owns one of these devices. Next, we will use our survey data to outline the reasons why people don’t own devices in order to offer guidance for who to target and how. Finally, we will discuss what consumers are actually doing with their smart speakers — specifically looking at how the devices are used and perceived in e-commerce, digital media, and banking — which can help companies determine how well they’re publicizing their smart speaker services and capabilities.

The companies mentioned in this report are: Amazon, Google, Apple, Samsung, Facebook, Sonos, LG, Anker, Spotify, Pandora, Grubhub, Netflix, Hulu, Instagram, Snap.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Despite their growing popularity, nearly half of respondents still don't own a device — which presents a long runway for adoption. Our survey data reveals a number of key factors that impact whether or not someone owns one of these devices, including income, gender, and age.
• Smart speakers are establishing themselves as a key platform for e-commerce, media, and the smart home.
• The introduction of a screen to some smart speakers will expand the possibilities for companies developing for the device — but developers will need to resist the compulsion to use speakers to accomplish too much.

In full, the report:

• Provides an overview of the key players and products in the smart speaker market.
• Highlights critical adoption rates broken out by key factors that define the segment.
• Identifies how consumers are using devices in important areas where companies in various industries are trying foster greater use of the voice interface.

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• Earlier in February, Antonio Neri celebrated the one-year anniversary of his ascension to CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, replacing prominent industry figure Meg Whitman.
• In October, HPE reported 7% revenue growth for its fiscal year from the year-ago period, and recently announced a new round of dividends.
• Neri first joined HP in 1995 in customer support, and worked his way up the ladder. He says that HPE's competitive advantages are its legacy of innovation and the quality of its culture. 
• To that end, he's launched a sweeping initiative to practice what the company preaches and modernize its internal IT infrastructure. It helps the company move faster, while also making HPE simply a better place to work. 
• In terms of the tech, Neri is placing HPE's bets on edge computing, a market that could very well be bigger than cloud computing. And it's especially important, given that HPE gave up several years ago on competing directly with the market-leading Amazon Web Services cloud. 
• However, he says that he still has to convince investors of his vision: When HPE reports earnings on Thursday, Wall Street is expecting to post revenue and profits that are flat from the year ago period, and the stock is trading well below its 52-week high. 

As the five-year anniversary of the Hewlett Packard breakup nears, there are reasons to celebrate at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, one of the offspring of the legendary tech company's split.

Earlier in February, Antonio Neri completed his first year as CEO of HPE, after replacing prominent industry figure Meg Whitman. HPE has beaten analyst expectations on profit for the last four quarters running, it grew revenue by 7% in its 2018 fiscal year, and just announced a fresh round of dividends. It even just moved into a swanky new San Jose headquarters, reflecting its plans to grow after an era of shrinkage. 

At the same time, there are still reasons to be skeptical. When HPE reports earnings on Thursday, Wall Street is expecting the company to report revenue of $7.6 billion and profit of $0.35 per share — just about flat from the year-ago period. At about $16 a share, HPE is valued at $22 billion. The stock is up some 14% since the start of the year, but still below its 52-week high of $19.48.

More broadly, the rise of cloud computing providers like the market-leading Amazon Web Services has cast a shadow over HPE, and any other data center hardware manufacturer — the more customers move their IT infrastructure to the cloud, the less they're going to need expensive servers, storage arrays, and networking gear. It's a trend that has previously eaten significantly into HPE's business.

Still, Neri tells Business Insider that there's plenty of reason to be optimistic, too. He believes that over the next several years, HPE is poised to overtake even Amazon when it comes to edge computing, a technology some see as the next big market after cloud computing.

Before that happens, though, Neri says that he's focused on reinvesting in HPE's culture, including practicing what the company preaches by modernizing its internal IT systems. The general upshot, he says, is that HPE will always be competitive so long as it has the "best talent and the best innovation"— two things that are, to him, a hallmark of the 80-year legacy of Hewlett-Packard, one of the very first Silicon Valley companies. 

And investors, he says, are starting to see the light — beyond dividends and share prices, he suggests that the markets will come to value HPE for its forward-looking nature, the quality of its workforce, and the ways in which it sees tech working to make the world a better place. 

"Investors want to work with companies who care about the future and care about communities," says Neri. 

Started from the bottom

Neri joined Hewlett Packard in 1995, in a role that's about as far down the corporate ladder as it's possible to go — answering phones in its customer service division. As Bloomberg reported last year, his started-from-the-bottom story, and his long tenure at the company through thick and thin, have made him very popular with HPE employees.

He says that his time in customer support taught him some lessons that he uses to inform his decisionmaking today. Specifically, that your best intentions as a company don't matter — things are going to break. What defines you as a company is how seriously you take the feedback, and what you do about it.

"What I took with me was the customer point of view," says Meri. "Customers are the source of truth."

Another benefit of his long tenure, Neri says, is that he "knows every process in every part of the company." That's part of why he's launched a sweeping initiative to modernize the way the company does business. The finance team, for example, is in the process of standardizing on one single financial tracking system, down from ten. 

Rather than just an administrative reform, Neri sees this push as a "strategic weapon." Just for starters, it means the company can move faster — in the case of the finance team, standardizing on one system means it can close the books much more quickly than before, Neri says. 

More existentially, Neri says, it just makes HPE a better place to work, and a living example of what the company is trying to do — help companies reinvent the way they do business by using technology. It's the same reason why Neri gave the design of the new headquarters his personal attention: He wants to attract, and keep, the very best talent.

"This is a capitol for employee morale," says Neri. 

The big opportunity 

Back in 2015, not long after the big split that created HPE, the company pulled the plug on HP Helion, its homegrown competitor to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and other cloud giants. 

Now, Neri sees HPE carving out a new niche in the so-called hybrid cloud, where customers keep some of their data in their own servers, and some in the cloud. To that end, HPE last year launched Greenlake Hybrid Cloud, a service that helps companies manage their infrastructure, across AWS, Azure, and their own data centers. 

This is a big bet for HPE: Big businesses, especially in regulated industries — like finance, for example, or retail — can't or won't move all of their data to the cloud. Neri says that the company is wagering that it can help those companies modernize their infrastructure, without having to make that big switch.

"The world will always be hybrid," says Neri. 

Ultimately, though, Neri has his sights set on the shift towards so-called edge computing, which he expects to play out more fully over the next 3 to 10 years.

The basic idea behind edge computing is that in a brave new world of internet-connected appliances, gadgetry, and even vehicles, it's just too inefficient to send data up to the cloud over the internet for processing — a self-driving car, for example, needs to know whether to stop right now, rather than wait for a response from the server.

The answer is to make the so-called edge — that is, the device itself — smarter, in the sense that it should be able to do lots of data processing on its own hardware, relying on the cloud only for the most intensive calculations. 

HPE is in a good place to conquer this market, argues Neri, because its hybrid cloud play already helps customers manage and process huge amounts of data right on their own servers. 

Unlike Amazon Web Services, which is only now dipping its toes in the hybrid cloud market, HPE is well-positioned to help move data back and forth from hardware and the cloud, says Neri. He also points to Aruba Networks, a networking company it bought in 2015 for $3 billion, as giving it the fundamental infrastructure to help those devices connect with each other and the cloud. 

As the number of connected devices in the world increases, says Neri, he expects edge computing to become a $400 billion market, reflecting the fact that almost everything is going to be "smart" in at least some capacity. For HPE, that's "the biggest opportunity," says Neri — much more so than the cloud market, pegged by analysts at $180 billion as of 2018.

"No matter how you slice it, it's bigger than the cloud market," Neri says. 

Under-appreciated

As HPE moves to take advantage of that opportunity, Neri says that he's had to learn some lessons in leadership. In general, he says, the move to replace Whitman was "the smoothest transition we've ever had"— right before becoming CEO, Neri had served as president of the company, getting plenty of mentorship from his predecessor.

Indeed, in many ways, his strategy is continuing a playbook originally created by Whitman, who left HPE once and for all in January after stepping down from its board. 

However, he says he still had some lessons to learn about what it meant to be the boss. 

"The CEO is the most lonely job on the planet because everything ends with you," says Neri. 

He says that he's most at home in terms of making product decisions; he knows how to work with engineering and sales teams. The "one to learn," he says, was how to talk to investors, and give them "clarity on the narrative" on what HPE is all about. 

"I think we are under-appreciated," says Neri.  

To Neri, everything at HPE is moving in the right direction: It's continuing to attract PhDs and other industry experts, the fundamentals of the business are strong, and it's making smart bets on where it fits into the future of computing. 

"I think that's pretty darn good," says Neri. 

SEE ALSO: Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins tells us how he led the $200 billion company to growth when everybody expected it to get crushed in the cloud wars

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What is eSports? History & Rise of Video Game Tournaments

Years ago, eSports was a community of video gamers who would gather at conventions to play Counter Strike, Call of Duty, or League of Legends.

These multiplayer video game competitions would determine League of Legends champions, the greatest shooters in Call of Duty, the cream of the crop of Street Fighter players, the elite Dota 2 competitors, and more.

But today, as the history of eSports continue to unfold, media giants such as ESPN and Turner are broadcasting eSports tournaments and competitions. And in 2014, Amazon acquired Twitch, the live streaming video platform that has been and continues to be the leader in online gaming broadcasts. And YouTube also wanted to jump on the live streaming gaming community with the creation of YouTube Gaming.

eSports Market Growth Booming

To put in perspective how big eSports is becoming, a Google search for "lol" does not produce "laughing out loud" as the top result. Instead, it points to League of Legends, one of the most popular competitive games in existence. The game has spawned a worldwide community called the League of Legends Championship Series, more commonly known as LCS or LOL eSports.

What started as friends gathering in each other's homes to host LAN parties and play into the night has become an official network of pro gaming tournaments and leagues with legitimate teams, some of which are even sponsored and have international reach. Organizations such as Denial, AHQ, and MLG have multiple eSports leagues.

And to really understand the scope of all this, consider that the prize pool for the latest Dota 2 tournament was more than $20 million.

Websites even exist for eSports live scores to let people track the competitions in real time if they are unable to watch. There are even fantasy eSports leagues similar to fantasy football, along with the large and growing scene of eSports betting and gambling.

So it's understandable why traditional media companies would want to capitalize on this growing trend just before it floods into the mainstream. Approximately 300 million people worldwide tune in to eSports today, and that number is growing rapidly. By 2020, that number will be closer to 500 million.

eSports Industry Analysis - The Future of the Competitive Gaming Market

Financial institutions are starting to take notice. Goldman Sachs valued eSports at $500 million in 2016 and expects the market will grow at 22% annually compounded over the next three years into a more than $1 billion opportunity.

And industry statistics are already backing this valuation and demonstrating the potential for massive earnings. To illustrate the market value, market growth, and potential earnings for eSports, consider Swedish media company Modern Times Group's $87 million acquisition of Turtle Entertainment, the holding company for ESL. YouTube has made its biggest eSports investment to date by signing a multiyear broadcasting deal with Faceit to stream the latter's Esports Championship Series. And the NBA will launch its own eSports league in 2018.

Of course, as with any growing phenomenon, the question becomes: How do advertisers capitalize? This is especially tricky for eSports because of its audience demographics, which is young, passionate, male-dominated, and digital-first. They live online and on social media, are avid ad-blockers, and don't watch traditional TV or respond to conventional advertising.

So what will the future of eSports look like? How high can it climb? Could it reach the mainstream popularity of baseball or football? How will advertisers be able to reach an audience that does its best to shield itself from advertising?

Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled an unparalleled report on the eSports ecosystem that dissects the growing market for competitive gaming. This comprehensive, industry-defining report contains more than 30 charts and figures that forecast audience growth, average revenue per user, and revenue growth.

Companies and organizations mentioned in the report include: NFL, NBA, English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, NHL, Paris Saint-Germain, Ligue 1, Ligue de Football, Twitch, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, ESPN, Electronic Arts, EA Sports, Valve, Riot Games, Activision Blizzard, ESL, Turtle Entertainment, Dreamhack, Modern Times Group, Turner Broadcasting, TBS Network, Vivendi, Canal Plus, Dailymotion, Disney, BAMTech, Intel, Coca Cola, Red Bull, HTC, Mikonet

Here are some eSports industry facts and statistics from the report:

• eSports is a still nascent industry filled with commercial opportunity.
• There are a variety of revenue streams that companies can tap into.
• The market is presently undervalued and has significant room to grow.
• The dynamism of this market distinguishes it from traditional sports.
• The audience is high-value and global, and its numbers are rising.
• Brands can prosper in eSports by following the appropriate game plan.
• Game publishers approach their Esport ecosystems in different ways.  
• Successful esport games are comprised of the same basic ingredients.
• Digital streaming platforms are spearheading the popularity of eSports.
• Legacy media are investing into eSports, and seeing encouraging results.
• Traditional sports franchises have a clear opportunity to seize in eSports.
• Virtual and augmented reality firms also stand to benefit from eSports.  

In full, the report illuminates the business of eSports from four angles:

• The gaming nucleus of eSports, including an overview of popular esport genres and games; the influence of game publishers, and the spectrum of strategies they adopt toward their respective esport scenes; the role of eSports event producers and the tournaments they operate.
• The eSports audience profile, its size, global reach, and demographic, psychographic, and behavioral attributes; the underlying factors driving its growth; why they are an attractive target for brands and broadcasters; and the significant audience and commercial crossover with traditional sports.
• eSports media broadcasters, including digital avant-garde like Twitch and YouTube, newer digital entrants like Facebook and traditional media outlets like Turner’s TBS Network, ESPN, and Canal Plus; their strategies and successes in this space; and the virtual reality opportunity.
• eSports market economics, with a market sizing, growth forecasts, and regional analyses; an evaluation of the eSports spectacle and its revenue generators, some of which are idiosyncratic to this industry; strategic planning for brand marketers, with case studies; and an exploration of the infinite dynamism and immense potential of the eSports economy.

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• Shares in the sportswear giant Nike were sliding in premarket trading Thursday after a star college basketball player was injured when his sneaker malfunctioned during a high-profile rivalry game.
• No. 1 Duke's Zion Williamson, who is expected to be the top pick in this year's NBA draft, sustained a knee injury after his shoe split open just 33 seconds into a game against No. 8 North Carolina.
• The sportswear company was quick to point out that the problem was an "isolated occurrence," but its shares were still down 1.6%.
• Follow Nike's share price live at Markets Insider.

Shares in the sportswear giant Nike were sliding in premarket trading Thursday after a star college basketball player was injured when his sneaker malfunctioned during a high-profile rivalry game.

No. 1 Duke's Zion Williamson, who is expected to be the No. 1 pick in this year's NBA draft, injured his right knee when his Nike 2.5 PE's exploded just 33 seconds into a game against No. 8 North Carolina. He missed the rest of the game, which North Carolina went on to win, 88-72.

Nike shares were down 1.6% in premarket trading at 6:40 a.m. ET on Thursday.

"We are obviously concerned and want to wish Zion a speedy recovery," Nike said in a statement, per Bleacher Report.

"The quality and performance of our products are of utmost importance. While this is an isolated occurrence, we are working to identify the issue."

Duke basketball players have been wearing Nike since 1993. Williamson's recovery time is unclear, as is the effect his injury will have on No. 1 Duke's chances this season.

The incident was viewed in person by former President Barack Obama, who could clearly be seen saying "His shoe broke" in the crowd.

Williamson, 18, was sent messages of condolences by well-wishers including Obama and LeBron James.

SEE ALSO: Zion Williamson's shoe exploded and he injured a knee in first minute against North Carolina

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Here is what you need to know.

1. The Fed admits it contributed to the stock market's wild ride in December. "A variety of factors —including FOMC communications, weaker-than-expected data, trade policy uncertainties, the partial federal government shutdown, and concerns about the outlook for corporate earnings — were cited by market participants as contributing to a deterioration in risk sentiment early in the period," the Federal Open Market Committee's minutes said Wednesday.
2. A no-deal Brexit could push the UK's credit rating to its worst level in decades. The ratings agency Fitch on Thursday placed the UK on "Ratings Watch Negative," threatening its AA rating, because of the "heightened uncertainty over the outcome of the Brexit process, and an increased risk of a disruptive 'no-deal' Brexit, where the UK would leave the EU without a withdrawal agreement in place."
3. Soc Gen says the sell-off in late 2018 reminded it of the periods before the past 2 financial crises and lays out its plan for how investors should respond. The bank says heightened volatility is here to stay and investors should enter long-volatility strategies that have low carry costs.
4. Nike slides after Zion Williamson's shoe split in 2. Shares of the sneaker giant were down 1.6% Thursday morning after Zion Williamson, who is projected to be the top pick in June's NBA draft, injured his knee after his Nike sneaker fell apart.
5. Lyft's IPO road show is coming in March. The ride-hailing app plans to launch its initial-public-offering road show the week of March 18 and is expected to receive a valuation of $20 billion to $25 billion, according to Reuters.
6. Garmin soars to an 11-year high. The maker of fitness and navigation devices soared 17% Wednesday, to its best level since January 2008, after delivering strong fourth-quarter results and forecasting full-year revenue and profits above Wall Street estimates.
7. A bear market in stocks could be good news for legal weed. People are more tolerant of marijuana during periods of stock-market calamity, and vice versa, Chuck Thompson, a researcher with the Socionomics Institute, told Markets Insider.
8. Stock markets around the world were mixed. Hong Kong's Hang Seng (+0.41%) paced the advance in Asia, and Britain's FTSE (-0.63%) lagged in Europe. The S&P 500 was set to open up 0.16% near 2,789.
9. Earnings reports keep coming. Domino's Pizza and Wendy's report ahead of the opening bell, while Caesars Entertainment, Dropbox, and Kraft Heinz release their quarterly results after markets close.
10. US economic data is heavy. Philly Fed, initial claims, and durable-goods orders are scheduled for release at 8:30 a.m. ET before Markit manufacturing and services cross the wires at 9:15 a.m. ET. Data concludes at 10 a.m. ET with existing-home sales. The US 10-year yield was up 2 basis points at 2.66%.

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• Bloomberg LP is rolling out a new product that will offer its customers access to alternative datasets from more than 20 different companies.
• The alternative datasets will not be hosted on Bloomberg's main product, the terminal, but instead through its growing enterprise data business. 
• The alternative data industry over the last couple of years has exploded with new firms offering obscure information to hedge funds seeking a trading edge. 

Alternative data is about to be normalized.

Bloomberg LP is the latest mainstream financial company to wade into the once-obscure alternative data field with a new product that will give clients access to data from more than 20 niche firms.

The datasets will be immediately available, according to a release expected later on Thursday from Bloomberg, and will include stats on drug approvals, retail foot traffic tracked through cell phones, construction permits, and more.

"It's not just about Bloomberg data, but really any data from a provider that wants to be hosted by Bloomberg," said Gerard Francis, global head of the Enterprise Data business for Bloomberg, in an interview with Business Insider. 

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As hedge-fund managers seek out ways to beat the market, they're increasingly turning to alternative-data providers to identify trends before their competitors.

And as the data industry has grown, so have fears about a potential crackdown from regulators about hedge funds and other asset managers information that may have been obtained in an illegal way. Bloomberg's portal, data companies say, allows them to get their information in front of some of the largest financial institutions in the world without the extended due diligence program typically required to onboard them. 

"The market is in need of something like this," said Hazem Dawani, CEO of Predata, a data company that analyzes geopolitical risk and one of the companies partnering with Bloomberg. "There are so many alternative data providers available and data sets that are available for trading firms and hedge fund managers and all institutional traders to consume, but it is hard for these customers to be subscribing to each one of these data sets individually," 

The access through Bloomberg fast-tracks the compliance and legal process for datasets like Dawani's, letting massive banks be more "nimble" in working with new data vendors, he said. 

See more: A growing alternative data company helps hedge funds determine if CEOs are lying using CIA interrogation techniques

The Enterprise Data business, which launched its Access Point website last year, is a quickly growing unit within Bloomberg as the company looks to shift away from its heavy reliance on selling $24,000 terminals and towards data feeds.

The data companies working with Bloomberg will also be able to grow alongside it with their access to Bloomberg's "salesforce and infrastructure," Francis said. Dawani said that his sales team grew from the two people he employs to 202 thanks to Bloomberg's new product.

While Predata will share its roughly 2,000 out-of-the-box signals with Bloomberg clients, custom signals will only be available through a premium service only available directly from Predata, Dawani said. 

Bloomberg is OK with "providers determining what their strategy is," Francis said, but there is an expectation that the data made available on the portal deliver what the providers say they are going to deliver. 

See also: A leaked memo shows Bloomberg reached $10 billion in annual revenue last year, and some insiders will receive a special bonus

"We would expect key datasets to be shared on the platform," Francis said. 

And as those key datasets become more mainstream, longtime alternative data players foresee a future where they are simply known as data companies.

"Just because the technology didn't exist to measure something before, does that make it an alternative measurement?" said Greg Skibiski, CEO of Thasos, a Bloomberg partner and a data company that tracks foot traffic in malls. 

"This concept of 'alternative' isn't going to be around too much longer." 

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• A data point often considered a "canary in the coalmine" for the global economy had a second consecutive dreadful month, according to preliminary data released Thursday.
• South Korean exports fell 11.7% compared to the previous year in February, following a nearly 15% drop in January.
• "Leading indicators, particularly out of China — Korea’s main export market — point to steeper declines in the coming months, with no real relief in sight until the latter stages of 2019," Freya Beamish, lead Asia economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics said.
• South Korean trade data is often held up as a canary in the coalmine for the global economy, as it often acts as an early warning sign for trouble ahead.

A data point often considered a "canary in the coalmine" for the global economy had a second consecutive dreadful month, according to preliminary data released Thursday.

South Korean exports, a data set often held up as a bellwether for wider economic sentiment, fell sharply in February, continuing a drop seen in the first month of the year.

Exports dropped 11.7% year-on-year in the first 20 days of the month, the Korean Export Service said Thursday. That follows a drop of 14.6% in the same period in January.

"February’s 20-day data suggest that exports contracted by 5.0% y/y for the full month, marking only a marginal improvement from the 5.8% fall in January," Freya Beamish, lead Asia economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics said in an email.

"Leading indicators, particularly out of China — Korea’s main export market — point to steeper declines in the coming months, with no real relief in sight until the latter stages of 2019."

Read more:This is the only chart to watch ahead of the world's impending economic slowdown

The data is usually released before the first trading session of the month in Asia, which makes it the first of the world's major economic indicators to be drop each month. While Thursday's data is not for a complete month, partly due to Lunar New Year celebrations, it signals that when the full month's data is made public in early March, things won't look great.

Because South Korea's exports are heavily exposed to China and Japan — the world's second and third largest economies — it is consider to have strong predictive power.

In addition to being an early report, the South Korean export data is also considered a leading indicator for world trade, meaning it tends to augur what's happening in trade globally.

The drop in South Korean exports comes at a febrile time for the global economy. China's economy slowed to its lowest annual growth since 1990 last year, while trade tensions with the US are ongoing, and investors around the world worry about the future of the global economy.

A Bank of America Merrill Lynch survey released this week showed that investors are more worried about the possibility of a global recession than anything else right now.

SEE ALSO: BAML: Investors are freaking out about the rising prospect of a global recession

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NOW WATCH: Roger Stone explains what Trump has in common with Richard Nixon

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

Relative to many other sectors around the globe, the US healthcare industry has been notoriously slow to embrace new payment systems and processes. 

For example, approximately 77% of healthcare providers still use paper-based patient billing methods, according to an MGMA and Navicure survey. The lack of urgency to innovate has resulted in confusion, inefficiencies, and security issues among stakeholders. 

However, this stagnation is enabling payments firms to capitalize on two key trends to disrupt — and capture a piece of — the $3 trillion healthcare industry:

• The consumerization of healthcare. Consumers are increasingly being urged to play a more prominent role in managing and paying for their own health. In effect, they've become better informed and more critical of the quality of health services. Considering that the billing process is typically the first and last interaction a patient has with a provider, a negative experience could directly impact a healthcare firm's bottom line — only 15% of patients who reported a less than satisfactory billing experience would recommend the hospital to others, according to Becker's Hospital Review. 
• The digitization of healthcare. Healthcare legislation, rising costs, and a shift from fee-for-service care to value-based care are incentivizing payers and providers to seek out digital solutions that drive down costs and improve services. 

Now is the time for payments hardware, software, and processing firms to introduce specific solutions that accommodate the shifting landscape. These could include digital payment options, such as online checkouts or point-of-service mobile wallet acceptance, or value-added services that enhance the overall payments and billing experience. However, before payments companies introduce new solutions, they must navigate the highly regulated and complex industry.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, explains how a typical healthcare transaction is structured, identifies the major players in the industry, and pinpoints the most pressing pain points for stakeholders. We then look at the opportunities available to payments companies, and explore specific solutions that could help them attract partners in the space. 

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Healthcare in the US is a key industry for payments firms — spending increased 3.3% to reach $3.3 trillion in 2016, according to the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
• Despite the size of the market, very few new opportunities have opened up for payments companies because of the healthcare industry's slow innovation and the complex regulations around entering the space. 
• However, two key trends — the consumerization of healthcare and the digitization of healthcare — will put some payments companies in a strong position to capture a larger share of the market. 
• The payments firms that rise to the top of the market will have to offer digital solutions that accommodate the shifting landscape, such as mobile wallet acceptance — 61% of consumers reported having interest in using mobile wallets, such as Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, to make healthcare payments, according to InstaMed. 
• Payments companies will also have to introduce value-added services that appeal to healthcare providers while differentiating their offerings from competitors, such as easy-to-understand billing, integrated check-ins, and AI-based engagement tools.  

In full, the report:

• Tracks the growth of US healthcare spending. 
• Identifies subsets of healthcare payments — specifically, where payments are coming from and where they're going. 
• Explains the intricacies of a healthcare transaction and pinpoints where there are potential bottlenecks. 
• Details what some of the leading players in the healthcare payments space are doing to differentiate themselves.
• Lists some specific solutions that payments companies could turn to in order to attract healthcare partners. 

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• Samsung just unveiled the Galaxy S10e, a less expensive version of the Galaxy S10.
• The phone is priced similarly to Apple'siPhone XR.
• Although the phones fall in the same price range, there are some key differences when it comes to their specifications.

Samsung unveiled a handful of new Galaxy phones on Wednesday, including a less-expensive version of the Galaxy S10 called the Galaxy S10e that competes directly with the iPhone XR.

Like the entry-level option in Apple's newest iPhone lineup, the Galaxy S10e compromises on certain features but retains many of the characteristics found on its pricier counterparts. Both the Galaxy S10e and iPhone XR are also priced similarly, with Samsung's phone starting at $749.99 and the iPhone XR base model costing $749.

Here's an early look at how both phones compare. It's not a comprehensive comparison, but rather a snapshot of how their specifications stack up on paper:

SEE ALSO: Apple is reportedly planning to make a big change to the App Store that follows in Microsoft's and Google's footsteps

Display

At 6.1 inches diagonally, the iPhone XR has a slightly larger screen than Samsung's Galaxy S10e, which has a 5.8-inch display.

But the display on Samsung's phone is made from an AMOLED panel, while the iPhone's is made from LCD. OLED screens generally offer better contrast and richer colors.

Samsung's Galaxy S10e also packs 522 pixels per inch while the iPhone XR's screen delivers 326 pixels per inch.

Camera

It's impossible to know exactly how these smartphone cameras compare without actually using them alongside one another. But there are a few key differences worth noting based on their specifications.

The Galaxy S10e includes two camera lenses — a 12-megapixel wide-angle lens and a 16-megapixel ultra-wide lens — while the iPhone XR only features one 12-megapixel wide-angle lens.

Apple's smartphone, however, does leverage the neural engine in the iPhone's processor to offer features like Portrait Mode and improved HDR, despite having one camera lens. The Galaxy S10e also uses neural processing to optimize camera settings depending on the scene.

One benefit the Galaxy S10e's camera poses over the iPhone's is a closer zoom: Samsung's phone offers an 8x digital zoom, while the iPhone XR's supports up to 5x.

When it comes to the phones' front-facing camera, the Galaxy S10e offers a 10-megapixel sensor while the iPhone XR features a 7-megapixel sensor.

Storage

The Galaxy S10e and iPhone XR are priced similarly, but Samsung’s base model offers much more storage space: The entry level model comes with 128GB of storage space, while the cheapest iPhone XR offers 64GB of storage.