Jeff Frick

I am not telling you something to sell you something. I am sharing something to entertain, educate, and get you to stop and think for a minute. | Top Voice | Friday Five | Turn the Lens | Work 20XX

With over 30 years of experience in the media industry, I am a podcast host and a media entrepreneur who is passionate about the future of work, leadership, and innovation. I have founded and led Menlo Creek Media, a company that helps leaders, marketers, and communications professionals navigate and leverage an AI-driven asynchronous world, by offering executive training for podcast hosts and guests, content creation and media library curation and amplification programs, and community development programs.

I also host two podcasts, Work 20XX and Turn the Lens, where I facilitate the spread of best practices, insights, learning, and wisdom on topics that matter to the modern workforce and society. I aim to be a trusted source of information and inspiration for my listeners, by featuring smart and diverse guests, engaging in lively and thoughtful conversations, and sharing nuggets of knowledge. My goal is to help people get more impact with their communications and content investments and to empower them to thrive in a time of rapid change and uncertainty.

Founder & Principal

Please visit www.MenloCreek.com for a more comprehensive list of services and resources. 

Helping Leaders, Marketers, and Communications professionals navigate and leverage an AI driver asynchronous world. 

Host of 'Work 20XX'  with Jeff Frick show on the Future of Work 
Host of 'Turn the Lens' with Jeff Frick on Leadership and of other topics of interest.

Manipulation is about negotiating with the world. Whereas a lot of robotics, there's not much negotiation. If you're in its way, you better hope you're stronger. - Jeremy Fishel

Compliance is critical because when you bump into something you want time to react to that information. - Jeremy Fishel
-----
Collisions. 
It's robot industry vocabulary for bumping into things.

Feeling isn't only about control, 
it's also about reacting to the world, in time to prevent harm.

Jeremy Fishel: Nature's Best Manipulator, Man's Best Controller: Hands | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick

Episode page with extensive show notes, transcript, links and references 
https://lnkd.in/gN9spBJb 
YouTube - https://lnkd.in/gdgMY8ie 
Spotify - https://lnkd.in/g9G8gbkM 
Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/gNZrG7tV
or where ever you podcast 

For more on Humanoids Summit, including May 2026 Summit in Tokyo visit 
https://lnkd.in/ga487tGq 

For more from Humanoids Summit SV 
https://lnkd.in/gyxXZcVT 

#Robotics #HumanoidRobots #Compliance #RoboticManipulation #EmbodiedAI #FutureOfWork #RobotSafety #AIRobotics #Innovation #HumanoidsSummit #TurnTheLens #EdColgate #HANDERC #DeepTech #TurntheLens #RoboticsEngineering #WorkplaceTechnology #SanctuaryAI #HumanoidsSummit #Robots #Hands

When you remove someone's sense of touch, their capabilities drop off tremendously. - Joe Michaels

Bringing that back into the robot equation and giving the human the feeling of what that robot is doing and creating a closed loop. - Joe Michaels

It makes a very natural and powerful control system. - Joe Michaels
--
Humans and machines working together for an enhanced version of both.

Teleoperation, for literal operation as well as fine grain training.

Feedback is an essential component to control, whether teleoperating from a distance in dangerous places, or rehearsing high-risk situations in the safety of digital worlds and simulation environments.

And yes, Sigourney Weaver and her P-5000 Powered Work Loader Exoskeleton from Alien immediately jumps to mind.

Joe Michaels: Teleoperation, Controlling Complex Robots by Feel | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Episode page with transcript, show notes, links, and references
https://lnkd.in/eYVnUAdT
YouTube - https://lnkd.in/g8TytYCb
Spotify - https://lnkd.in/gvfDZsnX
Apple Podcasts - https://lnkd.in/gA4UeFSy
or wherever you enjoy your podcasts.

Released in collaboration with Humanoids Summit. Humanoids Summit is sponsored and produced by ALM Ventures.
For more on Humanoids Summit, including the May 2026 Summit in Tokyo, visit
https://lnkd.in/ga487tGq

For more from Humanoids Summit SV 2025 -
https://lnkd.in/gA4XmZiE

#teleoperation #touch #feel #feedback #training #remoteoperation #finegrain #1HMX #humanoidssummit #turnthelens 1HMX #robots #robotics #Robotics #HumanRobot #HapticFeedback #Dexterity #FutureOfWork #Teleoperation #RoboticsEngineering #AI #Automation #PhysicalAI #HumanMachineInterface #Innovation #EmbodiedAI #Work20XX

Visiting Pakistan, I was seven, the first time I met someone missing a limb. She was living in poverty in the streets, missing her right leg and using a tree branch as a crutch. - Aadeel Akhtar, PhD

That's what inspired me to go into this field. - Aadeel Akhtar
--
Moment of impression.

Call it a calling, an obsession, a mission.
In a world that feel anything but certain or stable,
some experience a moment of clarity that sets a course that will not be denied. 

Very helpful if you want to be an entrepreneur. This was the ninth version of Aadeel's hand. Some lessons can only be learned by doing, not drawing.

Transforming Lives and Robotics: Jeff Frick talks with Aadeel Akhtar, PhD, PSYONIC - via Humanoids Summit
https://lnkd.in/gjw5GeSV
For more on Humanoids Summit
https://lnkd.in/ga487tGq
#Robotics #BionicLimbs #Prosthetics #FutureOfWork #HealthTech #MedTech #Innovation #SocialImpact #Entrepreneurship #Founders #PurposeDriven #HumanAugmentation #EmergingTech #TechForGood #Robots #Hands #InclusiveTech #Humanoids #HumanoidsSummit #TurnTheLens #PSYONIC

For robots, we have a term in the industry. My robot 'collided.' — Bernt Børnich

Everything we do through our life is a collision. When I pick up this bottle, I'm colliding with it. If I put my hand on this table, I'm colliding with the table. If I take a step, I'm colliding with the ground. — Bernt Børnich

Humans don't collide. We just interact with the world.
I can do this in a very stable manner, very low impact, not dangerous to myself or the environment. — Bernt Børnich
----
High energy with gears and ratios.
or
Low energy that moves slowly and has time to
react before something significant happens.

Bernt and the team worked 10 years on the motors to bring low-energy capabilities to their humanoids.

Safety first. That includes 'collisions,' or as we say in the human world, bumping into things.

How 1X is Changing the Game: Jeff Frick Chats with Bernt Børnich, 1X
Humanoids Summit YouTube Channel
https://lnkd.in/g8jYtFjb

Who's going to Tokyo? 
https://lnkd.in/ga487tGq

#Robotics #HumanoidRobots #RobotSafety #FutureOfWork #Automation #AIHardware #Cobots #RoboticsDevelopment #EmergingTech #EnterpriseRobotics #ManufacturingTech #HumanRobotInteraction #TechInnovation #IndustrialRobotics #SafetyFirst #1X #HumanoidsSummit #TurnTheLens #Robots #Humanoids

Pursuing vertical integration for its own sake is actually to be a bit misguided. Vertical integration should always be in service of either making the best thing or actually optimizing in the short or the long term for iteration speed. - Evan Wineland

We're able to control that much more of the end user experience. - Evan Wineland 

We only do it as much as is necessary to make the thing right. - Evan Wineland 
----------------------
Vertical Integration

Guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Both Evan and Kaan Dogrusoz, his co-Founder at Weave Robotics were most recently at Apple.

But the specific qualifier, 'in service of iteration speed' 
is notable and a little counter intuitive.

Seems logical that off the shelf components from multiple suppliers would develop faster as a group. And Evan qualified, they only do as much as necessary. And necessary is that which interacts with the objective, and the environment. The OS, the grippers, and more, they write and develop from scratch to increase the iteration speed to accomplish their list of task objectives. A large part of at this stage, folding laundry.

Evan Wineland: Deploying is the Point. Affordable Robots that Work | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick 
Episode page with transcript, show notes, links, and references https://lnkd.in/gZnpAQSc 
YouTube - https://lnkd.in/gb-HbVxZ  
Spotify - https://lnkd.in/gHtgWHYw 
Apple Podcasts - https://lnkd.in/gk3Mnzja 
or wherever you enjoy your podcasts.

Release in collaboration with Humanoids Summit. Humanoids Summit is sponsored and produced by ALM Ventures. 

For more on Humanoids Summit, including May 2026 Summit in Tokyo visit 
https://lnkd.in/ga487tGq 

For more from Humanoids Summit SV 2025 - 
https://lnkd.in/gHDGNhdX 

#VerticalIntegration #ProductStrategy #TechLeadership #Innovation #FutureOfWork #IterationSpeed #UserExperience #StartupStrategy #EnterpriseTech #WeaveRobotics #HumanoidsSummit #WorkTwentyXX #TurnTheLens #ProductDevelopment #TechInnovation #BuildingProduct #FounderMindset

People have been working on robotic hands gosh, for 40, 50 years, really as long as we've been thinking about robots. What's new? AI. - Ed Colgate

The ability to take something so complicated as this hand and actually do something useful with it. That wouldn't be possible without AI. - Ed Colgate
--
AI, GenAI, Foundation Models, Transformers, and the relentless pace of better, faster, cheaper hardware (from GPU to mechanical parts) means robotic hands finally have the potential to mirror the performance of the most dexterous manipulator in nature, the human hand.

Ed Colgate and the extended HAND ERC community are building the foundational technology for the next decade's technological advances in robotic hands, including sensing, actuation, design, simulation, learning, control, social, legal and industrial studies.

Ed Colgate: Soft Hands, Dexterous Robots | Turn the Lens with Jeff Frick
Transcript and Show Notes https://lnkd.in/grjhZf2y 
YouTube - https://lnkd.in/gsv4UKKs
Spotify - https://lnkd.in/gTCHeBx2 
Apple Podcast - https://lnkd.in/ghkjsVgY 
Substack - 
or wherever you podcast 

HAND ERC 
The National Science Foundation 'Human AugmentatioN via Dexterity' Engineering Research Center (HAND ERC)
https://hand-erc.org/

Released in collaboration with Humanoids Summit. Humanoids Summit is sponsored and produced by ALM Ventures. 
For more on Humanoids Summit, including May 2026 Summit in Tokyo visit 
https://lnkd.in/ga487tGq 

For more from Humanoids Summit SV 2025 - 
https://lnkd.in/gPcYu2Xt 

#Robotics #Robots #PhysicalAI #Hand #Hands #RoboticHand #HANDERC #ProstheticHand #Humanoids #HumanoidsSummit #TurntheLens #AI #GenAI #EmbodiedAI #RoboticHands #AIInnovation #FutureOfWork #ManufacturingTech #Automation #HumanoidRobots #MachineLearning #RoboticsEngineering #DeepTech #AIApplications #IndustrialRobotics #EmergingTech #TechLeadership

- I am a pragmatic hands-on leader. Experienced in establishing, nurturing and empowering Data Science and Value Engineering teams, I uncover and monetize the business value buried in the organization’s data.  
I am customer-facing. The Value Engineering methodology, which I created, drives customer collaboration (co-creation) and organizational alignment in identifying, validating, valuing and prioritizing the organization’s most important business use cases where data and analytics can have material impact.

- I am value focused. Called the “Dean of Big Data,” I bring a business-first approach to helping organizations leverage advanced analytics and data science to uncover the customer, product and operational insights buried in the organization’s data that power digital transformation.

- I drive data monetization. Uniquely integrated Design Thinking with Data Science I employ a “Rapid exploration, rapid testing, failure-empowering, continuously-learning” data science development methodology that enables the monetization of the insights buried in the data.

- I am an influencer and innovator. Recognized as an industry leader in Big Data, Data Science, Design Thinking and Data Monetization, I integrate these disciplines to drive organizational empowerment and digital transformation.

-I am a Professor and Educator. I developed and teach the “Big Data MBA” – a course for integrating data and analytics into the operations of the business – at University of San Francisco School of Management and National University of Ireland-Galway School of Business & Economics. I also lecture to numerous universities and organizations worldwide.

-I am an author. I have written 4 books “Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business,” “Big Data MBA: Driving Business Strategies with Data Science” and the forthcoming “Economics of Data, Analytics and Digital Transformation;” and published over 350 industry-leading articles and educational videos on the application of Big Data, Data Science, AI / ML and IoT to drive data monetization and digital transformation.

Jump directly to my blogs at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schmarzo/detail/recent-activity/posts/ 


Bill Schmarzo

Anthropic stood up for all Americans by refusing to support Trump's demands to use Claude AI for fully autonomous weapons and American citizen mass surveillance.  Dang, someone is finally thinking beyond just becoming another billionaire.

I'm sure other less scrupulous vendors (can you say Elon Musk and GrokAI) will try to fill the void.  But I will vote with my wallet and my voice, and focus my AI efforts using Claude. 

BTW, it's better than the other AI products anyway.

“We held to our exceptions for two reasons,” the statement read. “First, we do not believe that today’s frontier A.I. models are reliable enough to be used in fully autonomous weapons. Allowing current models to be used in this way would endanger America’s warfighters and civilians. 

Second, we believe that mass domestic surveillance of Americans constitutes a violation of fundamental rights.”

#WeThePeople #HumanRights #ProDemocracy #ProConstitution #ProThrowingPedophilesinJail

📣 Keynote Speaker and Corporate AI Educator || Dean of Big Data || 📚 Author 7 Books || Recognized global innovator, educator, and practitioner in Data Science, AI, & Design Thinking || Lecturer at Iowa State University

Open article: Trump Orders Government to Stop Using Anthropic After Pentagon Standoff by nytimes.com

Trump Orders Government to Stop Using Anthropic After Pentagon Standoff

IBM has realized "The AI-Human Edge."

"The AI-Human Edge: Winning with Intelligence Technologies—On the Field and Beyond" 
https://shorturl.at/pIxOE

IBM is doing something most executives think is crazy right now. They're TRIPLING entry-level hiring. For software developers. 

The exact roles everyone says AI will eliminate.

While the rest of the market is cutting junior headcount, IBM is deliberately going the opposite direction.

And that's not accidental.

In a world where every tech company is competing the same narrative - "AI will do more with less people" - IBM just handed themselves a massive talent differentiation advantage.

Think about it from a recruiting perspective alone.

When your competitors are telling graduates "your role might not exist in 3 years," IBM is saying "we're building the future around you." That's not just good optics. That's a pipeline of motivated, committed people who will grow with the company.

But the strategic thinking goes deeper.

When you cut your junior layer today, you don't just lose entry-level capacity.

You destroy your future leadership pipeline.

Today's graduate is your director in 5 years. Your VP in 8. The institutional knowledge, cultural understanding, and systems expertise that can't be bought at senior level gets built slowly, over years, from the ground up.

IBM's CHRO said it plainly: companies that doubled down on entry-level hiring now will be the most successful in 3-5 years. Korn Ferry data backs the risk - 37% of organisations plan to replace early career roles with AI. That's a future mid-management shortage hiding in plain sight.

Now about the Gen Z narrative.

I'd push back on the idea that younger workers are automatically more AI-fluent than anyone else.

What IBM is/should be actually hunting for is something more specific: curiosity, adaptability, and the willingness to work alongside AI rather than resist it. 

Those qualities aren't owned by any generation.

What IS true is that IBM has rewritten what these roles actually look like.

Software engineers now spend less time on routine coding - more time with customers. HR staff manage AI interventions - not answering every query themselves.

This is where most companies fail completely. They drop AI tools onto 2015 job descriptions and wonder why adoption stalls.

IBM asked a better question: "Where does human judgment add value that AI cannot?"

Then they designed the role around that answer.

95% of companies using AI aren't seeing clear ROI yet. (MIT Media Lab, 2025)

The bottleneck was never the technology.

Me: The real play here is threefold - talent differentiation, pipeline protection, and job redesign. IBM isn't just hiring more people. They're building an organisation where humans and AI both perform at their best. 

That's a very different ambition than most boards are currently discussing.

Are you redesigning roles in your organisation - or still running AI on top of old job descriptions?

💥📘The Art of Thinking Like a Data Scientist🏋🏻‍♀️🧠

Several individuals have asked about taking my class online. However, because the course heavily focuses on soft skills development—such as thoroughly understanding problems, creating alignment, and engaging with key stakeholders—it is crucial that the class remains in person. After all, human-to-human interaction remains vital. In the era of AI, it’s important that we continue to develop and leverage our unique human skills and capabilities.

But if you want to follow along virtually, here is the textbook we use for the class.  It details the methodology and exercises that we use in the class.

But like any good methodology, it is constantly evolving.  Two big additions to the methodology are:
1) Data-driven, AI-fueled storytelling where we are introducing vibe coding as a means to build more effective customer engagements and simulations
2) Converting Conflict to Innovation, building upon the Strategic Doing methodology.

Why are these two additions to the class essential, especially in complex and conflicting situations, before diving into your AI model development?
- AI will only do what you train it to do
- AI will relentlessly optimize the desired outcomes and metrics you give it
- AI amplifies existing biases, silos, and misalignment

I promise to continue posting book and methodology updates on LinkedIn.  In fact, you will find the Conflict-to-Innovation blogs in the comments.

I hope you join me and my students on this journey.  It is better when we learn together.

#DataStrategist #DataScience #AI #DataEconomics #AILiteracy #AIHumanEdge #DeanofBigData #AI4IA Iowa State University - Ivy College of Business Coe College Mouwafac Sidaoui

The Art of Thinking Like a Data Scientist - Second Edition

The AI Era Business Card - ChatGPT Prompt: Who is Bill Schmarzo, what does he typically lecture about, and why should I care?

Open article: The Art of Thinking Like a Data Scientist - Second Edition by shorturl.at

The Art of Thinking Like a Data Scientist - Second Edition

An #AI company with some standards?  I already love Anthropic (Claude).  Guess I'll be pushing all my business towards them!

We can vote with our wallets.

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