356 episodes listed below
Operational wisdom for building better things.
Building Better connects automotive and manufacturing problems to larger questions about leadership, purpose, and change. Solo reflections sit alongside interviews with people building companies, production systems, autonomy, and mobility technology.
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Building Better is a business show with one foot on the factory floor and the other in questions of purpose. Its center of gravity is manufacturing, automotive work, mobility, autonomy, and the leadership required to make difficult systems improve. The show is not just about products. It keeps asking what kind of person, team, and company can build them well. Interviews often run through the messy middle of execution: cost structure, assembly choices, remote support, simulation, ownership transitions, and organizations built too tightly around one person. The pace is conversational, but the questions tend to widen. A point about autonomous sidewalk robots can become a point about unit economics. A discussion of APQP can become a larger argument for parallel thinking in product development. Solo episodes give the show a more personal edge. Brandon Bartnik reflects on pressure, public failure, the Olympics, self-transcendence, faith, family obligations, and the difference between running from fear and moving toward something wanted. That mix makes the show more intimate than a standard interview series. It cares about strategy, but it also cares about whether the work is forming better people. The recurring theme is improvement without self-congratulation. Change is framed as hard, necessary, and often badly led. Manufacturing details are treated as a proving ground for broader leadership principles. People such as Quincy Lee, Scott Snider, and Ali Kashani bring concrete company contexts, while solo episodes show how those ideas echo in ordinary life and personal responsibility. The result is steady, curious, operator-minded audio for people who like plain talk about systems and stakes. It is especially useful for listeners who want business thinking that does not stop at growth, funding, or polished success stories.
Made for: For founders, engineers, manufacturing leaders, mobility operators, and reflective professionals who care about execution and meaning. It also fits listeners drawn to leadership lessons grounded in real production and company-building problems.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart by tying manufacturing and mobility details to purpose, obligation, and personal growth. It treats better products and better lives as connected work, not separate lanes.
Focused on the people, products, and companies that are creating a better tomorrow, often in the transportation and manufacturing sectors. This show was previously called the Future of Mobility podcast.I aim to have real, human conversations to explore what these leaders and innovators are doing, why and how they’re doing it, and what we can learn from their experiences. If you care about making an impact then this show might be for you.Topics include manufacturing, production, assembly, autonomous driving, electric vehicles, hydrogen and fuel cells, impact, leadership, and more.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It makes company building concrete by connecting product ambition to manufacturing choices, cost discipline, acquisitions, and organizations designed to outlast an owner.
Brandon Bartnick keeps returning to the machinery behind a durable company: how leaders turn ambitious products into production systems, control complexity, combine teams, and build organizations that do not depend on one person. His interviews stay close to operating decisions.
A sidewalk robot gets stuck; you get the economics of the human helping it from afar.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A practical conversation about stripping complexity, finding the right people, and building systems that keep improving.
Quincy's view of company-building is grounded in cost discipline as a habit, not a slogan. He keeps returning to the same pressure points: reduce complexity, challenge each extra feature, and push toward the simplest low-cost solution that still works.
What happens when a founder leaves a company built around his expertise?
Brandon Bartnik brings up a company nearing 45 years old. Its founder ran and scaled it for roughly 30 to 35 years before leaving, and its operations, engineering systems, and knowledge management had been built around his expertise.
How simulation training and remote support fit into running robots in the field.
A robot getting stuck turns autonomy into a staffing problem. The guest argues that remote staff need to assist multiple robots, because sending someone to each machine would be expensive. Remote help also depends on a reliable connection.
Brandon Bartnick looks back at 2024 and asks whether his work lives up to his values.
Looking back at 2024, Brandon Bartnick asks whether the values he talks about on the show are visible in his work. He says he tries to be the same person in public, at work and in his personal life. More pointedly, he invites listeners to tell him when they have seen a gap.
The speakers weigh rail routes by where their stations take travelers.
A rail project in England leads the speakers to a practical question: where does a useful train route begin and end? They compare it with California high-speed rail, which they describe as having been cut back over time.
A LiDAR merger raises practical questions about shared goals, old habits and bringing teams together.
Two established 3D LiDAR companies have merged, and Brandon Bartnick asks how their teams can become stronger together. His guest draws on a previous acquisition: give people a goal that crosses the old team boundaries, then put them in the same room to work through a common…
Field-tested startup talk for oil and gas.
Energy leadership, told from the field.
Insider conversations on how pipelines are run and regulated.
An equipment maker's view of the changing power grid
Power-sector interviews on fuels, threats and grid strain.
Angus Pacala, CEO and co-founder of Ouster, joins Brandon Bartnik to explain why digital LiDAR — built on a single silicon chip rather than hundreds of analog components — is set to become the dominant sensor technology for machine vision across industrial, automotive, smart infrastructure, and robotics markets.
Brandon Bartnick interviews Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO of Cyclic Materials, about revolutionizing rare earth recycling and creating a circular supply chain for critical materials to support the clean energy transition.
In a podcast swap episode, Brandon Bartneck of the Future of Mobility podcast features a Transit Unplugged conversation between host Paul Comfort and Adam Hill, editor-in-chief of ITS International Magazine, covering high-speed rail struggles in both the UK and US, and the political fallout from London's Ultra Low Emission Zone expansion.
Brandon Bartnick explores the concept of self-transcendence and critiques the common misinterpretation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, drawing from a Tim Ferriss blog post.
Brandon Bartnik reflects on a personal experience of choking during a public piano performance honoring his grandmother, and connects it to broader themes of motivation and direction setting, drawing parallels to Olympic athletes.
Brandon Bartnick discusses why change management often fails and what makes it stick, emphasizing its importance for individuals and organizations in a rapidly changing world.
Brandon Bartnick explores the differences between serial and parallel processing in product development, using the automotive industry's APQP process as an example to argue that sequential design limits outcomes.
Brandon Bartnick reflects on 2025, exploring purpose, obligation, and making a meaningful positive impact through life and work.
The cost answer starts with making the thing simpler.
["Scott Snyder says 75% of owners regret selling within a year, and he ties that statistic to exit planning as a way to design a good life instead of just a transaction.", "Brandon Bartnik, who leads Edison Manufacturing and Engineering, steers the discussion toward how a founder builds systems that work beyond one person's judgment.", "Snyder answers with the three-legged stool of business, personal, and financial goals, then uses a $20 million lifestyle target, $2 million of net worth, and an $18 million gap to show how planning gets quantified.", "The conversation closes on the four C's of decentralization, a 'we, not me' culture at EPI, and the warning that roughly 50% of U.S.
Ali Kashani says Serve Robotics started inside Postmates in 2017, spun out from Uber in 2021, and went public last year.
Brandon Bartnick interviews Mark Reich about his book 'Managing on Purpose' and the application of Hoshin Kanri and lean leadership in manufacturing.
Brandon Bartnick interviews Tony Olivo and Ken Rahn from FlexGen about their software-centric approach to revolutionizing energy storage and balancing supply and demand.
In this year-end solo episode recorded in late December 2024, Brandon Bartnik recaps 2024 for the Building Better podcast, explaining the name change from 'Future of Mobility' and the three values — love, growth, and joy — that guide his life and work.
Brandon Bartnick interviews Suman Sehra, Global VP at HARMAN, about connected vehicles, new opportunities with data, and future-proofing in the automotive industry.