The Only Constant

In this episode of The Only Constant, Lasse Rindom speaks with Nikki Barua, serial entrepreneur, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and co-founder of FlipWork. Named Entrepreneur of the Year and one of Entrepreneur Magazine's 100 Most Influential Women, Nikki has spent 25 years at the intersection of people, technology, and transformation. Drawing on her own journey from Mumbai to building businesses in America, she brings a rare mix of optimism, pragmatism, and cultural depth to a sprawling conversations spanning agentic AI, identity, urban conformity, and what it really takes for humans to stay relevant.

Main topics they discuss include:

Why agentic AI is already reshaping management, culture, and trust inside enterprises — even before scaled adoption

The difference between chasing efficiency (a race to the bottom) and reallocating freed capacity into real competitive advantage

Why cognitive atrophy, not AI slop, is the real danger - and why originality, depth, and craftsmanship become more valuable when average is free

How "strategic metabolism" and trust, not technology, are the true bottlenecks for enterprise transformation

The Darwinian shake-out ahead for C-players, B-players, and short-term-thinking executives - and why lazy layoffs destroy institutional knowledge

Tune in for a wide-ranging, surprisingly personal conversation that moves from AGI ethics to hillbillies, from Manhattan's density of talent to the elephant in every boardroom.

Do you want to know more about Nikke Barua:

Nikki Barua is a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, bestselling author, and globally

recognized expert on transformation. She is the CEO & Co-Founder of FlipWork, the

transformation partner helping organizations reinvent their culture, capabilities, and competitive edge for the AI age.

For over 25 years, Nikki has worked with some of the world's most iconic brands, guiding them through digital transformation, workforce reinvention, and organizational change at scale. She knows firsthand that technology is only half the equation; the real breakthrough comes from building the people and culture ready to use it.

As a tech entrepreneur who has built and scaled high-growth businesses, Nikki brings both the strategic lens of a leader and the hard-won wisdom of someone who has navigated disruption herself. Her personal journey from humble beginnings to building global companies has made her a sought-after voice on resilience, reinvention, and what it actually takes to lead through change. Her story has been featured in CNBC, Bloomberg, Fortune, and Forbes.

Nikki has been named Entrepreneur of the Year by ACE, honored as an EY North America Entrepreneurial Winning Woman, included in Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Most Influential Women, recognized as one of the 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, and celebrated as a Woman of Influence by The Business Journals, and Top Entrepreneur by Comerica Bank & LA Lakers.

Nikki Barua Links:

Newsletter: https://www.nikkibarua.com/newsletters/reinvention-roadmap/subscribe

Personal Website: https://www.nikkibarua.com/

Company Website: https://www.flipwork.ai/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkibarua/

Twitter: https://x.com/NikkiBarua

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thenikkibarua/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thenikkibarua

In this episode of The Only Constant, Lasse Rindom speaks with Dan French, Founder and CEO of Consider Solutions - a specialist consultancy and technology integrator serving some of the world's most recognised brands. With 25 years of experience advising on end-to-end business processes, operating models and finance transformation, Dan brings a sharp, no-nonsense perspective on what technology actually delivers - and what it doesn't.

Main topics they discuss include:

Why decades of technology investment have yielded surprisingly little improvement in economic productivity - and why silo efficiencies rarely make it onto the P&L

The data quality blind spot holding back both classical and AI-driven technologies in finance

How LLMs are making knowledge work more intense rather than less - and the real danger of abdicating critical thinking to AI

Why asking "why" before reaching for any technology remains the most powerful move a CFO or finance function can make

If you work in finance, technology, or anywhere near the intersection of the two, Dan French will challenge some of your assumptions - and sharpen the ones worth keeping.

Do you want to know more about Dan French?

Dan French is CEO at Consider Solutions, supporting global businesses with strategies, operating models and data insights to align, optimise and transform “end-to-end” business processes and create the maximum value from digitization.

The core focus is delivering measurable business results in P&L, Working Capital, Balance Sheet and Risk Management impact, with a significant focus on Revenue (Customer to Cash), Spend (Demand/Source to Pay) and Financial Accounting (Record to Report) business cycles.

With a background of 25 years in strategy, operations, general management, business processes, technology, performance improvement, risk management & compliance, Dan French also enjoys skiing, playing blues guitar and red wine though, for safety reasons, not all at the same time. www.consider.biz

In this episode of The Only Constant, Lasse Rindom speaks with Gry Hasselbalch - AI ethics researcher, digital rights advocate, and author of Human Power: Seven Traits for the Politics of the AI Machine Age. 

Gry has spent over two decades shaping the European conversation on digitalization, data ethics, and the politics of AI, including contributing to the EU's high-level expert group on AI and co-signing the Cannes Declaration on the sovereignty of human thought. In this wide-ranging conversation, she and Lasse explore what it really means to be human in an age that keeps trying to optimize it away.

Main topics they discuss include:

The age-old tension between mechanistic order and human complexity - and why the AI machine age is one of history's most aggressive bids to tip the balance

Henri Bergson's distinction between intellect and intuition, and why AI captures one brilliantly while remaining fundamentally incapable of the other

The homogenization of language and culture - how AI is colonizing human expression before we've even noticed what we've lost

The Cannes Declaration on the sovereignty of human thought, and what it means to legally protect the mind from algorithmic manipulation

EU regulation, digital sovereignty, and the geopolitical asymmetry that threatens to dismantle the very frameworks built to protect fundamental rights

If you've ever felt that something quietly important is slipping away in how we think, write, and relate to each other - this conversation is for you.

 

Do you want to know more about Gry Hasselbalch

Gry Hasselbalch is a Danish author and scholar specialising in the politics and power dynamics of technology, with a focus on data, AI ethics, and the historical forces shaping technological development. Her work bridges policy, academia, and public engagement, and she is widely recognised for promoting a humanistic approach to technology.

Through two decades, she has contributed to EU and global discussions on digitalisation, AI and data. She was a member of the EU's High-Level Expert Group on AI (2018-2020) which developed the EU's AI ethics guidelines that were transferred into the EU's momentous AI Act.

Gry Hasselbalch holds a PhD in data/AI ethics and power and is the author of several critically acclaimed books including Human Power – Seven Traits for the Politics of the AI Machine Age (2025), Data Ethics of Power (2021), and Data Ethics – The New Competitive Advantage (2016).

She has advised governments and international organisations, spoken at leading global events, and moderated high-level conferences for the European Commission and others. Her expertise is has been sought by major media, including CNN International, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, Euronews, and Wired.

In this episode of The Only Constant, Lasse Rindom speaks with Mikkel Flyverbom, Professor of Communication and Digital Transformations, about why technology is never neutral and why the real challenge is not what technology is but what it does to us. Together, they explore how digital tools become infrastructure, how power and ideology get embedded in platforms, and why Europe now faces a defining moment for digital sovereignty.

Main topics they discuss include:

Why digital transformation is about alignment and misalignment rather than success or failure  

How AI, platforms, and social media both democratize access and create new gatekeepers  

Why digital infrastructure should be governed like roads, electricity, and public institutions  

What it takes to balance individual responsibility with political action, regulation, and European alternatives

 

Do you want to know more about Mikkel Flyverbom?

Mikkel Flyverbom is Professor of Communication and Digital Transformations at the Department of Management, Society and Communication,and the founding academic director of the BSc in Business Administration and Digital Management program, both at Copenhagen Business School.His research on digital transformations, data, tech governance and tech companies has been published in leading international journals, such as Business & Society, The Information Society, Telecommunications Policy, Organization Studies, Management Communication Quarterly, Organization, as well as a number of books. His most recent book, titled ‘The Digital Prism: Transparency and Managed Visibilities in a Datafied World’ has been published by Cambridge University Press. His research is cited widely, placing him among the top 2% of scholars worldwide according to the most recent Ioannidis/Stanford list.

Mikkel Flyverbom has been a visiting professor at Stanford University, University of California, Santa Barbara, LUISS University and Rutgers University. He is a member of the Danish government’s Data Ethics Council and Expert Group, Digital Task Foce for AI and former chairman of the Expert Group on Tech Giants, and a widely used media expert on digital transformations and the tech industry.

In this episode, Lasse Rindom speaks with Walter Quattrociocchi, complexity scientist and professor of computer science, about what really happens when language becomes automated and answers arrive without the effort of thinking.

Their conversation circles around:

Why large language models simulate judgment rather than possess it, and why benchmarks miss the point

The concept of "Epistemia" - when fluent wording replaces verification and we feel we know without having evaluated

How AI increases content production while quietly eroding trust in content itself

Reliability, error, and the danger of delegating decisions to systems that cannot recognise their own mistakes

Whether expertise becomes rarer - and more valuable - in a world full of convincing but ungrounded answers

It is less a debate about machines becoming intelligent, and more a question of what happens to human judgment when fluency becomes cheap and cognitive labour optional.

Do you want to know more about Walter Quattrociocchi?

Walter Quattrociocchi is Full Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, leading the Center of Data Science and Complexity for Society (CDCS). His research interests encompass data science, network science, cognitive science, and data-driven modeling of dynamic processes in complex networks. Professor Quattrociocchi has an extensive publication record in peer-reviewed conferences and journals, including Nature and PNAS. His research on misinformation spreading has informed the Global Risk Report 2016 and 2017 of the World Economic Forum. International media have extensively covered his work, including Scientific American, New Scientist, The Economist, The Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Fortune, Poynter, and The Atlantic.

 

In 2017, Professor Quattrociocchi coordinated the round table on Fake News and the role of Universities and Research in countering fake news, chaired by the President of Italy's Chamber of Deputies, Mrs. Laura Boldrini. In 2018, he served as the scientific advisor to the Italian Communication Authority (AGCOM), and in 2020, he was a member of the Task Force to Counter Hate Speech, appointed by the Minister of Innovation. He has recently been one of the Principal Investigators of the IRIS research coalition (UK/G7) focused on combating misinformation about vaccine hesitancy and climate change.

 

In 2023, the US State Department appointed him to the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) on the topic of Data-Driven Policies.

Professor Quattrociocchi is regularly invited to deliver keynote speeches and guest lectures at major academic institutions and other organizations.