Making a million from new-age tat

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop business is widely mocked. She’s laughing all the way to the bank.

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Gwyneth Paltrow: grabbing people's attention by annoying them
(Image credit: Copyright (c) 2017 Shutterstock. No use without permission.)

Ever since one of our ancestors died of a Porterhouse Blue, we Slides have been sceptical about the value of higher education. Indeed, I viewed my time at university as an unwelcome interlude between boarding school and the smoky pubs of Fleet Street. So when I learned a few months ago that Harvard Business School had invited Gwyneth Paltrow to talk, it confirmed all my long-held suspicions about academia. According to Taffy Brodesser-Akner in The New York Times, the film star was there to talk to them "about Goop, her lifestyle-and-wellness e-commerce business", and how they could learn from her example to create a "sustainable competitive advantage".

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