The Zero100 Podcast

Backflips and kung fu routines make great viral videos, but what's the actual business case for humanoid robots? Zero100’s Lauren Acoba (VP, Head of Research & Advisory), Kevin O'Marah (Chief Research Officer), and Jenna Fink (Senior Director, Research & Advisory) cut through the hype to explain why we predict a 1000% jump in real humanoid workflows this year. Turns out, the biggest advantage isn’t the robot itself – it’s that humanoids can drop into existing workflows without expensive facility redesigns, cutting integration costs by 80%. The team explores lessons from BMW’s approach in Spartanburg, why China's robotics lead matters, what makes a use case worth pursuing, and how to tell when a demo is operationally credible or just impressive theater.

Zero100’s Forum brought CSCOs and COOs to the Arizona desert to tackle the question keeping operations leaders up at night: how do you scale AI when insights outpace execution? Caroline Chumakov and Justin Gillebo (Senior Directors, Research & Advisory) sit down with Sophia Pouzyrev (Account Executive) to unpack the candid conversations that defined the event – from the Rt Hon Sir Tony Blair’s insights on the unwinding of 30 years of globalization to Scott Galloway's challenge on designing work for Gen Z. The verdict: leaders have moved past pilots. 2026 is about production, orchestration, and building talent that can keep pace with technology. If you're stuck between insight and action, this debrief captures what's actually working.

As war in the Middle East disrupts one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints, container shipping networks face unprecedented operational challenges. Rabab Boulos, Chief Operating Officer at A.P. Moller - Maersk, joins Kevin O’Marah, Chief Research Officer at Zero100, to discuss how the company is managing through extraordinary disruption in the Gulf – from suspending bookings and rerouting vessels to redesigning fuel supply chains in real time. Rabab shares Maersk’s crisis management framework, how technology enables visibility when conditions change by the hour, and what it will take to restore normal service.

Two years ago, building an app required an engineering team and weeks of back-and-forth. Now, it can be done in two and a half hours using plain English. In this episode, VP, Research & Advisory Kelly Coutinho, Data Analyst Andreas Arghyrou, and Head of Digital Member Experience Ryan Mahoney dive into the wonderful world of vibe coding. None of them are developers, yet all three are using tools like Replit and Lovable to create prototypes, dashboards, and monitoring systems without writing a line of code. From prompt patterns and early demos to the guardrails needed to move from MVP to production, this conversation offers a practical lens on what leaders should do now as the tech–ops gap narrows fast.
The Zero100 team’s first “Wait – I just built that?” moments (01:29)
Ops, meet your new superpower: building MVPs without engineers (03:03)
First vibe coding faceplants and why iteration beats “failure” (04:52)
Prompting that works: context, clarity, and a little finesse (07:07)
Getting buy-in fast – bring a demo, not a deck (09:35)
When prototypes need to graduate to production (11:18)
Separating experimentation from enterprise rigor (13:22)
The supply chain future where everyone codes (but the real skill is knowing what to build) (15:20)

Companies are running tons of AI pilots, yet most struggle to move from experimentation to scaled impact. Zero100’s latest research reveals why: only 15% of organizations say their data foundation is ready to support AI at scale, while the rest wrestle with fragmentated data and meetings where teams spend more time debating which numbers to trust than making decisions. This week, Kelly Coutinho (VP, Research & Advisory), Julia “JD” Dahlgren ( Director, Data Science), and Justin Gillebo (Senior Director, Research & Advisory) explore what “decision safe data” actually means, why agentic systems raise the bar on clarity, and working from one source of truth.
The data cleanliness issue that gave 500,000 free gas and electricity (01:11)
Why 85% of companies aren’t ready for “decision-safe” AI (02:18)
How humans and AI fail differently (07:40)
How "good enough" data can lead to misaligned metrics and escalating operational costs (10:04)
The human in the loop – from training a replacement to becoming a collaborator (13:57)
The “decision agreement” test: How to know when your AI is ready for production (15:49)
The ultimate prize? Compressing the time between signal and response (17:37)