Speed to Impact: The Only Metric That Matters Now

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The industry is moving faster than ever, and those who can't keep pace will be left behind. From Listen Labs' $69 million Series B to Google's invisible AI shopping agents, this episode unpacks what happens when AI becomes so seamless you don't even notice it's there. We explore why the GRIT Data Collection's six-month turnaround matters, how Protege is solving AI's messiest infrastructure problem, and what the IFT 2026 food trends reveal about emotional decision-making.

Plus: Why contextual intelligence, not just AI access, will separate winners from losers in customer experience.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript

Karen Lynch: And there we go. And there we go.

Lenny Murphy: Hi. Hi. And hello, everybody. We should say that we're doing this on Thursday afternoon because I have to go to a dance convention this weekend with my daughter.

Karen Lynch: I do miss those days. I'm not going to lie. I know that was some of the best times of my life going to those dance competitions.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is a convention, not a competition. Oh, yeah. So a slight difference. But yes. But I will be spending the weekend at a Marriott in beautiful downtown.

Karen Lynch: For those of you who are not in the competitive dance world, the conventions are like the place where you sit in the back of a very large room while your child is dancing in a masterclass and you're on your laptop. Like that's pretty much that was the drill for me for hours.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. Except she's 13 and she's like, mom, dad, I don't need you. Please don't embarrass me. Just let me go. So, I probably won't be doing that. Instead you're sitting in doing whatever. Is she okay? I hope she's okay.

Karen Lynch: My daughter's probably last, you know, performance of her life is coming up in May. I'll be talking about it then. Okay, cool. You know, cause it's the end of an era, you know, she's 21, she's a senior in college and it's going to be one final show and it's probably going to break me.

Lenny Murphy: So, yeah, I can't imagine that. Although I think she's right. It's 13, but she keeps talking about wanting to maybe be a teacher. So a dance teacher, so we'll see but yeah in our stuff. So anyway, we're recording this on Thursday Something that has popped on Friday morning.

Karen Lynch: Sorry guys, but boy it was a busy week Anyway, I don't know what else could pop between now and then I know I know it is really there was a lot going on So yeah, so hopefully I want to say hopefully nothing does hopefully we have a quiet. It's 3: 25 p.m Eastern when we're actually recording this so hopefully we have a quiet, you know, 12 to what is that? 12 to 18 hours.

Lenny Murphy: I hope so. Speaking of quiet apologies, if you're a phone in the background, I actually just realized I can't reach to go turn it off.

Karen Lynch: Barely hear it. Barely hear it. So, but yeah, that's a, mine is off too. So, um, so yeah, let's get the plugs out of the way, right? The shameless plugs for the things coming up. We are so deep into conference season here. So, you know, we have our APEC event that is coming up really in, I think, like two weeks or something. Karley's got the prices up on the screen for registration. Go ahead and take advantage of this, these prices, and get yourself to Bangkok. It's such a special event. I think I talked a lot about it last week, so I won't get too into details, but use the code EXCHANGE for a sweet little discount on your general admission ticket. Ticket. And then we are very quickly going to shift gears to IX North America. And then we're going to even more quickly probably shift gears. But North America is our flagship event. It is in the heart of DC. I know I'm sitting here thinking like, Oh, we should tell them about the venue change for 2027. But we're not going to.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, it was soon to be an FBI building but not yet.

Karen Lynch: So we have a soon to be FBI building. So last year, if you were there, you know that it was in the Ronald Reagan Convention Center and that building will be taken over by the FBI. And we don't believe that we can be there next year. It's going to be FBI headquarters. 

Lenny Murphy: Interesting.

Karen Lynch: I want to be there if it's going to be FBI headquarters. So, yeah. So we're thinking this will be our final year at this venue. So if you want to check it out, it is a spectacular building. And it's in a great area of the heart of D.C. And there's our pricing up there. Thank you so much, Karley. Also code exchange for 50% off general tickets. And then on its heels, it's going to be Europe. So I don't know. We have prices for that, too. So thank you, Karley. Same code applies across the board. You know, we're just where we are in it.

Lenny Murphy: Lenny, we are in it and our other big initiative grit. We don't have a code to bring up, but there will be a link that we can share if you haven't got one in your email. But the new round of Grid Data Collection is out. Please participate. There's been times we're doing it twice a year, which seems like overkill. This is not that time. Things are changing so quickly and they truly are, and this is how we measure that so we can give the data back to you. We're using this definitely from the view of let's separate or a hype from Real Signal. So please, look in your inbox, see the links on social media, take a few minutes, and participate in GRIT. It's how we help you.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, and I think that was one of the most poignant conversations that we've had this week. Internally, it's just the speed of change right now, or the rate of change right now is so great that this is the only industry research effort that is completed and shared in a six-month period. Lots of people might be doing, there's other reports out there, right? But they are not as, they are not being fielded and analyzed and shared out as quickly as this one is. This one is as real-time as we can get in the industry. And I think that's worth pointing out. There's a real point of differentiation for this initiative of ours. 100%.

Lenny Murphy: You said it so much better than I could, as usual. Well, speaking of change, can I with this next one because this was something I was waiting for and we've hinted at for quite some time. Yeah, it was coming. If you pay attention to these things. Listen Labs, who won the Insight Innovation competition at IIX just two years ago. First moderated. Technology just did their Series B at 69 million, which brings their total through a hundred million raised. Yeah. In less than two years. Yeah. The, uh, and guys, that's just following the money. Um, we, we kept saying that this, I, this, this actually, my understanding was this closed at the end of last year. I did have knowledge that it was coming, uh, was waiting for it to be announced because I think it's just, and look at the investors. Yeah. So the, uh, major heavy hitters, folks that have invested in most of the major tech platforms. And I don't think that necessarily needs to be indicative of thinking that, oh, are they going to become the next big, maybe they will, maybe they won't. That's not important. What's important was the trend. The trend of this, the revolutionary aspects of these types of technology on a mature business, mature category, the inside space. Yeah.

Karen Lynch: Well, and I mean, this Forbes article.

Lenny Murphy: Yes.

Karen Lynch: Great to see them in Forbes also. So Karley will share all these links out. You know, I think what's really talking about their, you know, five, 500 mil valuation, or, you know, being valued at that amount. But what I think is really interesting about them is they. I was just sharing, I think I also shared on LinkedIn, you know, the moment that they presented is locked in my brain, because, you know, when Alfred was up there and he and his colleague, they dropped the survey. I don't think you were there at the moment, but they had a kind of a gimmick on stage where they shared the survey that was thick as can be, a good old-fashioned survey, old-fashioned survey, dropped it to the stage with a thud. So they created this sensorial like, ooh, that was a lot of paper reaction to an old way of doing things. And they were wearing lab and those, anyway, it was one of those things where I had that moment of, oh, they're gonna win. And it was, you could see it, you know, and then we kind of went on the journey with them the first year where they were working things out. And then when they got their first round of funding last year, they're a great combination of talent and timing, right? They just hit it right. They had all the right kind of, they had the right personalities, they had this right entrepreneurial, you know, well-educated spirit, but they also just hit it at the right time. And I feel like there's been other players too that have come out and been, but we're doing it too, but we're doing it too. And it's like, nope, they nailed it timing wise. So.

Lenny Murphy: They did. They did.

Karen Lynch: Well connected and a little bit of luck.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. And Alfred, there's another link where, where Alfred, uh, the CEO, um, was talking about their journey this, this, you know, this particular milestone. Uh, and I would really encourage you to follow him because he shares a lot about the founder's journey. Um, uh, well they're masterful marketers and you know, that's the, uh, but it, it really has been interesting. You're being very transparent. And do you remember when all this first started AI research goat, remember the reaching out and I think you did the demo. Um, I did not, but you did the demo. And that was the first iteration, right, of trying to get this right. So there is a lot to learn from them as entrepreneurs or just as researchers, as business people. And hats off to them. Congrats.

Karen Lynch: I mean, and they also, you know, there was another post that Alfred had shared. You know, he does, he recognized a turning point in their lives when he was winning the competition. And I love that.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, I love that too.

Karen Lynch: I love that they are like, we are not going to overlook that small, you know, that small thing. So for those of you who are thinking about entering our inside innovation competition this year, um, you know, keep in mind that that is a momentum builder for a story like this one. It was, it's been a momentum builder for a lot of people, but in this case there's, but, um, you know, we've had some, we had some talks with them that first year, whether it was you having them or me having them, or it's like, we're like, let's just give you some, you know, some advice or let's just give you some experience because they were like so young and energetic and excited. And there's, I feel, and I'm sure you do too, there's just something about them that it's like, all right, they heeded people's advice. They learned, they were anxious to learn. And I bet that's something that the investors saw in them and liked, you know, in the world of sports, of the things that you always look for is somebody who's coachable. And I think that Alfred and his team represented that. They took it in. Like it or not, they took in feedback. And I think that that mattered to these investors.

Lenny Murphy: Good stuff. And clearly a signal on the acceleration of all the trends we've been talking about. And we saw a lot of A rounds last year. Uh, smaller now, again, it's two years old guys already at the B round at a 500 million valuation. Um, uh, and that's an incredibly strong signal, uh, on the pace of change impacting the industry. So, um, pay attention to that.

Karen Lynch: They're also, by the way, plugging, plugging our, um, our, our newest events that we're launching this year, which is, I, they will be our title sponsor there. So if you are like, I really want to see what they're all about, you know, stay tuned for information about IAX West, because they will have a nice presence there. They're in San Francisco, we'll be in San Francisco. They'll be a big part of what we're doing out there, so.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, cool stuff.

 Karen Lynch: Speaking of money.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, speaking of money, now this should be clear. So this AI data platform, There's a lot of people like what protege the sample provider. No, no, no, no. This is protege, P R O T E G E, not D E G. 30 million series. Hey, uh, uh, yeah, this was, why is this, this interesting? Um, the, the, So protege would likely be selling through, selling their data assets into protege. This is weird.

Karen Lynch: There's others that are like this also. I know we've tripped on this before. Yes. All good.

Lenny Murphy:  But so their point was to take lots of different data sources, normalize them for LLMs. And we've talked about that, the opportunity now to take lots of data that different companies in the industry have and to be fed for AI training sets. But there is a certain structure that those data feeds need to be in for that to be effective. Yeah, that is what protege is doing. And they got 30 on a series a million to do that. So the ecosystem of data monetization is expanding. We already had snowflake and Databricks and you know, all And now we have another one that's really built on the refinement process. So.

Karen Lynch: So it's nice to talk about a week where, you know, two companies in our ecosystem get a hundred million dollars.

Lenny Murphy: It's nice. It is. It is.

Karen Lynch: All right, friends.

Lenny Murphy: It is. And then we had some, you know, cool, cool tie-ins.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. I think this, this, this next story we're happy to share. Norbert Sari is really, you know, kind of another good friend to Greenbook. He's, you know, kind of a great marketer in the industry and, you know, frequently helping us out at all of our events, you know, chairing or facilitating or moderating and or just speaking himself. So he acquired the marketing division of Harpeth Marketing. So Steve is taking a step not back, not away, but taking a step towards kind of a focus area of, you know, kind of teaching webinars, sales, you know, kind of helping people do that as opposed to, you know, his marketing clients. So he has transitioned to that business over to Norbert. So we wish Norbert luck. We hope it's a smooth transition for all of those clients. And it's always nice to hear, you know, friendly partnerships that evolve into the next level. So that's good stuff.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And hats off to Steve Henke. If you guys follow Harpeth, he's been doing this for a long time.

Karen Lynch: And I believe he still helps us out too with our pre-event webinars for sponsors and exhibitors about how to behave, or how to get the most out of it, or how to maximize and leverage the opportunities. So yeah, we're grateful for all of it.

Lenny Murphy: Yep, cool stuff. And then Curian merged with Blue Yonder. So now a trans-Atlantic leader in innovation. Their real focus is product testing, like true product testing. Like Kieran was built off of, I have a soft spot for them, because one of my very first clients was Q Search, when I threw out my shingle many years ago, and that's what they built off of Q.

Karen Lynch: It's so funny that you have a soft spot for them. So Insights Now, who also did a lot of food and beverage product testing, I always kind of watched Curion and we're like, what are they up to? With like a little bit more of that competitive thing. So like, you have a soft spot for them. I have them in that other category of what are they up to?

Lenny Murphy: You know, it was a private equity play to buy, you know, to buy Q Search and Patty Nelson, those who remember Q. I will tell this story really quick. I got laid off the day before Thanksgiving. Three. And I happened to have a call schedule with Patty, who's the CEO of Q research became Curion. And Patty said, don't worry about it. You work for me now. You're a consultant. Um, uh, there's a, I'm cutting you a check for your first month retainer. Uh, you'll have it, you know, by Monday. So, so there, when I say a soft spot, it really was like a personal, like, you know, Oh, I love you.

Karen Lynch: You know, I love, I love even just a story like that, which just really kind of shows you about, you know, human nature, and the human beings that you know and love. So absolutely. We can probably share a lot of those. Like there are people that really do use solids in this business. And I like that about our industry. It's probably elsewhere, but maybe not. Maybe we're unique that way.

Lenny Murphy: So I agree that my relationship, Greenbook started in a very similar way, but we don't get into all that. But the new product feature launches. You want to.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, well, D Scout and Hey Marvin launched an integration. Combining Search Execution, AI-Powered Analysis, Insight Management. I know of dScout. I don't know enough about Hay-Marvin, but to me, this is like an example of what we've been talking about, which is two people with different areas of expertise saying, how can we make each other better during this time?

Lenny Murphy: Well, we just released an interview with the CEO of Hay-Marvin. I did it for his part as the CEO of Hay-Marvin.

Karen Lynch: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. I remember that.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, so very cool. It came from outside the research space. You can build a research system with a qualitative framework primarily. So cool stuff, interesting, cool names. Hey Marvin.

Karen Lynch: Hey Marvin. Yeah, I like it too.

Lenny Murphy: SideX, our friends at SideX, their whole new AI powered open-ended text analysis. On their platform, they keep kind of building out their data collection platform with putting new features in. So that was cool, blurring the lines between Qual and Qual.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. And we have a few others that are sort of like this with these like rollouts, right? Some of these product launches, which to me, I'm like, you know, so AMC Global added a, it's called PFU Qualclipse AI. So again, AI moderated qualitative insights during early product launches. These, I felt like, yeah, okay, here they come. You know, here's more of them, and we're doing something too. And we're doing something too, because we've said, this is table stakes. Everybody needs to be doing something.

Lenny Murphy: Um, but it's all equal, right. And we said that, that was the shift. These are AMC global sizes. These are quants. They're quant, right.

Karen Lynch: And they're moving in. So I think, you know, I, as I mentioned, I'm excited because I'm going to the QRCA conference. So I'm really excited to get what the buzz is, what, you know, what's everybody doing out there in this, in that kind of niche of our industry. So, um, yeah, I'm sure we'll be talking a lot about this growing niche.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. Yes. Growing niche. The, uh, um, ampuarity, the customer data agent, um, uh, since these are not companies I would think I was playing in the research space per se the, but they're taking data, uh, I think it's primarily CX data. In their world, but creating segments, helping with identification and trends analysis, you know, off of a non-traditional research data feed, global data, their agentic AI, AVA, it's an analyst, reason, plan, and act to deliver insights. So, you know, so they're going down that fully agentic of like, you just do work for me, click, which will come up quite a bit in our next, as we get to that in a few minutes too.

Karen Lynch: Exactly, exactly, yes. Put that to the side for just a moment, but not a very long moment.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, yes, yes. Did you get a chance to look at the clinch?

Karen Lynch: No, I didn't. So clinch is launching these predicted IQ scores. You're more tapped into the kind of advertising measurements than I am. So what'd you take away from this story?

Lenny Murphy: So they kind of position as in-flight corrections. So I guess they're leveraging, after you launch an ad, they're leveraging data on feedback and giving it back with AI predictions on how to change the ad or the campaign as it may be in relatively real time. So you're optimizing ad performance based off of other data. I mean, there's a lot of data exhaust that exists within and kind of programmatic advertising that works on users, et cetera, et cetera. 

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: And pulling all of that in so that you can keep, uh, keep refining to increase, uh, optimization in real time.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Yeah. So it's, to me, this isn't, doesn't seem like they're the first, but, um, but again, this is, everybody's got, you know, everybody's got to stay competitive now.

Lenny Murphy: So this is your business.

Karen Lynch: You must get competitive.

Lenny Murphy: Right. Right. I think that's, sorry, we glossed over that point. I think that was an incredibly important point that you made earlier, that that's, yeah. I don't think saying me too" is wrong. It's just everybody is realizing, oh, okay, yeah, here we are. And that's probably a good segue.

Karen Lynch: It's easier to get there. The thing about AI agents, so we're switching into like some now some higher tech talk, right? Google unveiled their purpose-built shopping agents for retailers. So helping customers find products and get support. And it's been, uh, you know, kind of, um, in, in pilot mode with Lowe's and with Kroger, we have this great kind of article straight from Google about it. Uh, this is a good time, by the way, to be subscribing to Google news, because Google is, you know, all of this, there's a lot about Google. There's a lot about, you know, Gemini, of course, there's a lot about Claude and Anthropic. And so if you are of this mindset, like, this is a good time to be on, to find out what they're talking about, because these stories are happening all the time. But yeah, you know, more of this agentic AI in the retail environment, helped me find I actually, it's I think that as a consumer, this is all going to feel really fluid for me, you know, like I'm looking for something, and then the next thing you know, do you want me to order it? And we'll come back to the software piece. But you know, similar to Google's announcement about this personal intelligent, which is built into your phones, kind of a Gemini app that's in beta testing about, you know, like, hey, you know, it's sort of what we're seeing all across the board is, do you want me to do this for you? Or, you know, hey, find me this photo. I don't know. It's a very personal use case. Do you guys have a, somebody in my family recently asked me if I had a picture of a dining room table that she had at her house in, you know, 2003 or something like that, you know, do I have that picture? Wouldn't it be great if I could say I can not only find the picture on my phone, but this Personal intelligence would be like found it Would you like me to send it to you know your niece and I'd say actually yeah Like not only find it but then take that next step for me, you know, like just make it brainless. I have a request. Do you want me to help you with this request? Yes, please. So literally we have a personal assistant for all of these things that use our phones for. So imagine my son says to me, can you babysit on Saturday, January 31st? And not only does my phone get that message, but it says, do you want me to check your calendar for you? I say, sure. And then it says, you're available. Would you like me to block the time? And I say, sure. Like I don't have to do the work for these personal tasks anyway.

Lenny Murphy: Um, well, and we should point out this particularly as my teacher, this one, Google, because, We didn't link it here and that's fine. Sure. We heard about it. You know Apple has struggled with AI. They solve that by using Google. Yeah, so they were talking about these Google and you're thinking I'm an Apple user Well, guess what? You're about to be a Google user, too. So you may not have an iPhone. Yeah, but the Gemini is what is going to, you know, it's gonna be embedded into the iOS operating system. And all of that, let's go back to the Steve Newman thing after we talk about Anthropic. Or the next day of the Google announcement around personal intelligence, everything you're talking about, there's this consumer agentic component. But then they also expand that out from a, I guess, work perspective of a series of agents that integrate across your device and, uh, now perform various functions from a work standpoint. And you can make that very personalized.

Karen Lynch: Um, your example, we're not even like, there are things when I'm, I'm not even, um, like I'll pull something up. So there's, you know, there's integrating Google testing, Gemini auto browser built into your Chrome browser. And I, I operate in Chrome, but there are times when I'm like, I, and I'm like, Oh, did I go into AI mode or is AI mode now the default? Like I got, I can, confused every now and then because I'm like, I'm getting an AI answer. And I didn't know that I asked for an AI answer. Do I mind that I got an AI answer? Like it is, it is going to become seamless and we're not even going to be mindful. It's just going to happen. We are just the users and things are going to change on us.

Lenny Murphy: End of story. 100%. And Google is, you know, of course, Microsoft as well, all the operating systems, and we've talked about this you know, kind of leapfrogging, you know, a few months ago seemed like the chat GPT. By all accounts, Google and their AI is now ahead of chat GPT by the things that are measured. Right before that, it was Grok, right? So they're all going back and forth and, but they're all going in the same direction.

Karen Lynch: That was my thought about this is, this is, this week's, as we were looking at these and, you know, when we have the other one about Anthropos, preview and co-work, which is a whole new way of bringing Claude's agentic powers into the mix. But I'm like, they are, this race is actually really interesting to watch. We are high speed. We have multiple players. They are all going in the same direction. This is not a, this is like, nope, we are all going and somebody's pulling ahead. We're not at the finish line. Somebody's pulling ahead. Somebody else falls behind. Maybe somebody has to stop to change the tire. You know, let's hope the pit crew is Let's stay with that analogy.

Lenny Murphy: I like it because you know, right? And it's like from a segment segment standpoint, right? So if you know Openly, I was first out of the gate. They have the largest user base. Yeah It's a mix of you know personal and business obviously Google Also has a huge user base, right? So I'm kind of by default when Google's playing in this game. Well, they say well we have more users because you know people that use chrome or you know anything and rolling that out and then you have anthropic Go for enterprise play. So let's talk about anthropology because I saw so much about this. It was just crazy anthropic their co-work So it's so it's already been kind of out there that caught for developers on the tech side of the industry Claude's the bomb, right? That it seems to be the default system that tech folks use for dev work. Now they rolled out this Claude co-worker, which Claude wrote. So my understanding was that this went from idea to execution in less than a week. And that Claude itself Yeah. Did this.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah.

Lenny Murphy: Created this with minimal human intervention.

Karen Lynch: Well, and I don't know about you, but have you used it because I have used like, one engine to like, tell me how to talk to this engine. That is one of my most favorite things to do. I got this back from you know, in per I did this work in notebook LM. Can you help me write a summary of it? Or whatever, like, I go back and forth. Because I've gotten myself confused. Like, I'm using them all for, for help understanding, like, you know, one of them might be really good at synthesis, one of them might be really good at, you know, just kind of communication, one of them might be good at the coding, as you're talking about, or the development. So I, I love the idea of using them to make themselves better and good to launch new products.

Lenny Murphy: Well, this, so this brought up in there, I was thinking that would be a good form as we wind down into the next, into our other stories and reads. I saw so much this week on X of developers that had implemented this cloud co-work. And I think the same thing we can argue, the personal intelligence, Google, we're talking about the same things, basically. The cloud co-work specifically has strength in coding. I worked an hour today. Yeah. Because every task was accomplished in an hour, because I set these things up, right, all my emails, my calendar, my, like, all I do is attend meetings, the and that, and the buried entry from technology creation of that goes back to this important or I thought the Steve Newman the co-founder rightly software too cheap to meter the so this is my concern for an industry like ours that is being rapidly transformed by technology and many of those technologies are companies and you're building a company off of a specific technology application. I have never written a lick of code in my life. A client asked me yesterday, hey, I was thinking about this, what do you think? And just on a lark, I said, hold my beer, right, basically. I went into Grok, I described exactly what I wanted, it wrote the entire base, gave the entire project plan, I sent it back to the client and said, give that to your developers. Right? There you go. So the barrier to entry of creating technology at an individual level is getting close to zero. What are the implications of that for software, the way we think about it, SAS, for any of this stuff? And I don't know the answer. All I know is it's getting weird and different.

Karen Lynch: And well, I'm jumping to the very bottom article, which is under our kind of other stories, but the Zendex article, so we have an article from Zendex, their 2026 CX trends report. And it's saying how contextual intelligence is becoming the new standard in customer experience. But if you read this piece, in particular, the very last line is, AI is not the differentiator anymore, how intelligently you apply it is. And so what you're talking about is that exact thing in action. How well can we use the AI tools at our disposal? If you're an insights professional, how well can you use the AI tools that are in this ecosystem? How can you design research projects to leverage those effectively? I think that's the ticket for me is just now we are at intelligent use of the tools available to us. That's what's going to set professionals apart and set businesses apart. How well can you do what you do?

Lenny Murphy: There's going to be, so over the holidays, just because I had time to kill, I wanted to like synthesize all of the data, you know, of grit and all this, all of our data every week, blah, blah, put it all together, make sure we had the most current view. Right. Yeah. And from the standpoint of where are we going? Yeah. What do we need to inspect this year to your point? What, what's that really clearly is our industry and maybe most industries, um, going forward will not be defined by process.

Karen Lynch: Yeah.

Lenny Murphy: That it will be defined by data. Right. Got good data. Garbage in garbage out. What's the question I need to answer? Yeah. And then sensemaking of the results for business impact, right? Everything in the middle, there's going to be literally a million different tools and solutions to your point, you know, that, that do that. But the speed to impact, which is the answer for researchers, that will be the defining characteristic, which means we're right back to kind of where, you know, consulting versus technology, except now I think technology is what's being commoditized. Or at least has the potential to be commoditized because the barrier to entry to create technology is becoming virtually nothing. So interesting times for all of that. The Time had AI reshaped work in 2025. An interesting article around productivity, new task patterns. It echoed everything we just talked about.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, it echoed everything. And the last line of this Time article, by 2050, so bumping us out a little bit. What are we in, 2026 now? So we're, anyway, bumping out several years. But by 2050, the important question about AI will not be what it can do, but who gets to decide what it does. So again, UK.

Lenny Murphy: Well, that's why it'll probably be a super AGI. And it's probably presumptuous to think that we get a say in that.

Karen Lynch: I think it'll just be what the hell it wants If they're kind of like somebody's in charge right so Let's end on a lighter note we're gonna end on a lighter note so I have tea Institute food technologies outline top consumer priorities for 2026 just wanted to share this out because so many of our listeners are in the kind of food and beverage and CBT space And this is a great deep dive on what consumers are looking for in the year to come. And I digested this because, again, this is part of my background. I've said this before. I was a food and beverage girl, so I always did this. But value, getting the best for your money, is going to be a big thing. Can't ignore the trend towards even healthier. GLP-1s are still doing their thing, changing consumer behavior. But there is also this other thing, which I wanted to just kind of joke with you about. Consumers will be making food choices, kind of a portfolio based on their daily habits, but also their feelings and their actions. So we might be getting to a place where it's OK if we want to eat our feelings, because we're making a choice to eat our feelings. And I read that. I love human beings because this article is saying that they're doing away with good and bad choices, saying, no, let's not have judgment for what we do. Let's just look at what we do. So I thought that was great. If you're in food and beverage, have a Read.

Lenny Murphy: That's interesting. I don't need permission to eat my feelings. I own that shit.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, it's OK. I hear it's okay to do that.

Lenny Murphy: Well, as I have to say, I am being, now this is day 10 of really adhering to the low carb diet.

Lenny Murphy: So I may be able to eat my feelings, but nothing I like, this doesn't taste good. I had meat and cheese, meat and cheese. So, but yes, I want to get back to Svelte Lenny that I had for a very brief period of time around 2018 and 2020. Um, so, uh, so this whole eating topic is top of mind.

Karen Lynch: Well, you should really look at this because, um, I just thought it was so, I'm like, that is so interesting. And, uh, yeah, we're, we're, we want to be healthy and, uh, we also want to, you know, just be able to do what we're going to do at the same time. So interesting. Interesting.

Lenny Murphy: Make like healthy burgers, you know, healthy french fries. Can we just have healthy, healthy carbs? Can we have healthy carbs?

Karen Lynch: It's healthier. I would say these things exist.

Lenny Murphy: They do, but they also.

Karen Lynch: All right.

Lenny Murphy: We, uh, guys, that's it for this week. We will be back next week live. Um, and, uh, but thank you for tolerating the pre-recording, although I think it's still gonna be pretty topical and good.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, and we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.

Lenny Murphy: Thanks everybody.

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