Investigating the transition to a computational world.
AI Won’t Save Companies That Don’t Know What To Build
Most companies spent the last twenty years trying to become digital. But AI is now testing whether they actually learned how to build, adapt and create value. In this episode of BASELINE, Ian Smith speaks with Malcolm Seagrave, CEO of Hedgehog Lab, about the next phase of digital transformation and why AI adoption is not just about buying tools, rolling out licences or launching proofs of concept.
Malcolm has spent decades inside the reality of large organisations trying to transform and stay relevant. He compares the current AI moment to the early internet era, when companies knew they had to move but often did not yet understand the risks, the operating model or the scale of change ahead.
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Why Enterprise AI Begins with Data
Enterprise AI is changing the way organisations invest in infrastructure. While public attention remains focused on GPUs and large language models, many enterprises are discovering that the real challenge lies elsewhere. Data, storage, networking, security and governance are becoming the foundations of successful AI deployment.
In this episode of BASELINE, Ian Smith speaks with Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer at Lenovo, about why enterprise AI is driving renewed investment in storage infrastructure, hybrid cloud and on-premise systems. Together they explore why AI workloads are moving closer to enterprise data, how proprietary data creates competitive advantage, why GPUs alone are not enough, and what enterprise leaders need to understand before deploying AI at scale.
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Why More People Are Starting To Build - Ian Sutherland
For decades, turning an idea into a product required funding, developers, technical expertise and a team. Today, that barrier is beginning to disappear. In this episode of BASELINE, former Tide CFO Ian Sutherland shares how a career break after helping scale Tide from less than $1 million to more than $200 million in revenue led him to an unexpected discovery: modern AI tools had dramatically reduced the distance between an idea and a working product.
We explore why more people are starting to build, how AI is changing entrepreneurship, what it means for startups and investors, and why some of the most interesting products of the next decade may come from people who understand the problem rather than those who simply know how to code.
Topics include AI-assisted software development, Claude Code, angel investing, startup economics, productivity, the future of work, niche software businesses, venture capital, and the changing relationship between expertise and execution.
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Why 93% of Enterprise AI Projects Miss the Point - Sol Enenmoh
Artificial intelligence is no longer just changing productivity tools. Inside large enterprises, banks and global institutions, AI and AI governance are beginning to reshape how organisations coordinate, decide and operate.
In this episode, former HSBC AI transformation lead Sol Enenmoh explores the growing tension between traditional enterprise structures and computational systems evolving at machine speed. From governance and organisational silos to agentic systems, AI literacy and sovereign infrastructure, this conversation examines what may become one of the defining transitions of the next decade:
What happens when enterprises are no longer structured around humans coordinating work… but around computational systems coordinating humans?
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Why One Engineer Thinks Humans Can’t Keep Up Anymore - Elie Talj
Modern engineering systems are becoming increasingly software-defined. From vehicles and aerospace systems to robotics and critical infrastructure, software is now the bottleneck limiting how quickly complex systems can be built, tested and deployed. In BASELINE088, former McLaren Principal Engineer and Arrival Director Elie Talj explores why engineering may be approaching the limits of human scalability, and how new forms of AI could radically accelerate the creation of deterministic control software.
The discussion explores the hidden complexity inside modern engineering systems, the tension between speed and reliability, and why current AI coding tools struggle in safety-critical environments.
Elie explains Hypercritical’s thesis that future engineering systems may no longer be manually programmed, but instead discovered by AI systems capable of inventing, testing and continuously refining entirely new control algorithms against real-world requirements. The conversation spans automotive systems, aerospace engineering, autonomous vehicles, simulation environments, AI verification, quantum algorithms and the future of industrial innovation.
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$2B to $10B: Why Quantum Suddenly Matters - Kirill Pyshkyn
BASELINE: What AI Is Actually Changing Billions are now flowing into quantum computing. But most people still think it’s too early. In this episode of BASELINE, Ian Smith sits down with Kirill Pyshkin, investor and physicist, to unpack what’s actually happening inside the quantum market. Investment has jumped from around $2 billion to over $10 billion in a year. Large institutions like HSBC and Moderna are already reporting real-world results. So why does it still feel like a science project?
This conversation breaks down what changed in 2025 and why it matters, where quantum is already being used today, why one breakthrough can shift an entire industry, the real risks around encryption and security, how investors separate signal from hype, and what happens next as quantum moves from research to deployment.
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I Didn’t Expect AI to Save So Much Money - Rob Paton
For a long time, creativity, marketing, and software were separate, outsourced functions. AI is collapsing those boundaries. In this conversation with independent brand consultant and creative Rob Paton, we explore what changes when execution becomes fast, cheap, and accessible to everyone. We talk about why traditional agency models are under pressure, why creativity still matters but shows up differently, and how AI-assisted tools are shifting work in-house.
From branding and production to custom software and “vibe coding,” this episode looks at what happens when teams can build directly instead of buying capability. We also ground the discussion in a real case study from a heating installation business, showing how AI-assisted tools can remove bottlenecks, reduce cost, and change how decisions get made.
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