David Russell
Director of Innovation at Cortado Group
At Cortado Group, he has pioneered initiatives that integrate advanced analytics, pipeline optimization, and AI-driven insights into client-facing solutions. His approach combines structured project management with innovation frameworks that help organizations adopt change, foster continuous improvement, and unlock measurable ROI.
David is also deeply engaged in developing next-generation AI tools, including agent-based workflows, sales enablement platforms, and marketing integrity frameworks. He is passionate about bridging the gap between cutting-edge technology and practical business value, ensuring teams can move faster and smarter.
Outside of his role, David explores the intersection of AI, innovation strategy, and organizational psychology, bringing fresh perspectives to how businesses adapt in a rapidly evolving landscape.
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The "Yes Reflex": Why Your AI Agent's Biggest Risk Isn't Hallucination
By David Russell
Discover how the "yes reflex" in AI approvals can lead to costly mistakes and why structural safeguards are essential for safe AI integration.
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From Idea to Produced Video in Under an Hour: How AI Works at the Top of the Funnel
By David Russell
Two-thirds of the work was research and planning. The actual production - recording, rendering, packaging - was under 20 minutes. This is the pattern AI unlocks everywhere: expertise becomes the bottleneck in a good way. You're not blocked by production capacity. You're blocked only by the quality of your thinking.
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AI TOFU - Level Up Quiz
By David Russell
For fifteen years, go-to-market has operated on a brutal tradeoff: you can have scale, or you can have relevance. Not both. AI breaks that tradeoff... and the companies recognizing it aren't reorganizing around cost reduction. They're building capabilities that didn't exist three years ago. This is what that looks like at the top of the funnel.
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Your AI is Blind, and Your "Clever" Naming Strategy is the Culprit
By David Russell
The first step in any AI implementation is data. This is the core truth **we** bring to every client engagement. AI inherently needs data to succeed-it can't forecast *your* close rates until it knows *your* current close rate. It can't tell if 90-day-old deals are dead if *you're* not accurately tracking open and close dates. It needs this fuel to do its magic.
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Turning Conversations Into Coaching: The Future of Personal Development
By David Russell
If you really want to understand how a company works, don’t look at the org chart - look at how people talk. Every meeting, every misfire, every “wait, that’s…
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Conversations to Conversations 4: Integrating AI Systems and Human Expertise
By David Russell
This week, our work on our AI focused on a dual objective: advancing the core architecture of our AI-driven meeting intelligence platform while simultaneously…
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Want Fewer Hallucinations? The AI Whisperer’s Most Underrated AI Prompt
By David Russell
Discover how a simple AI prompt can reduce hallucinations and transform your approach to AI governance for better business impact.
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Conversations to Conversions 3 - Smaller apps bigger lift
By David Russell
We shipped work that turns conversations into durable outcomes faster, cheaper, and with clearer audit trails. The headline this week is simple - smaller…
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One Prompt to Rule Them All? Not Quite
By David Russell
Discover how to effectively choose and adapt prompting frameworks to enhance your AI outputs, ensuring clarity and precision for every task.
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AI is a Chainsaw. Are You Using It Without a Guard?
By David Russell
AI can be a powerful tool, but without proper safeguards, its misuse can lead to costly mistakes and missed opportunities.
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How Fast Does Your Firm Learn? Introducing the Knowledge Velocity Metric
By David Russell
Discover how measuring Knowledge Velocity can transform your firm's ability to learn and apply insights swiftly for a competitive edge.
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Conversations to Conversions #2: Meetings become momentum
By David Russell
Transform your meetings into momentum with AI-driven insights that drive sales productivity and accelerate business growth.
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Choosing the Right AI Evaluation for Your Go-to-Market Strategy
By David Russell
Discover how to enhance your go-to-market strategy by choosing the right AI evaluation methods for trust and accuracy in sales.
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Go-to-Market AI Flywheel
By David Russell
Imagine a Go-to-Market engine that gets smarter with every deal. By wiring up signal capture and implementing a series of compounding AI flywheels, you can turn chaotic outreach into a self-improving system. This framework moves beyond vanity metrics to focus on what actually shortens cycles and creates predictable revenue. Learn how to connect raw signals to winning content, package your best plays with lightweight AI agents, and build momentum that feeds itself.
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SKU 101 Foundations
By David Russell
Solid SKUs are essential for effective Go-to-Market AI, as they ensure accurate insights and boost ROI by preventing costly data errors.
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Rethinking GTM: How Custom AI Delivers Real Pipeline Impact
By David Russell
For go-to-market (GTM) leaders, AI has moved past the "what if" stage and is now a critical "how-to" for hitting aggressive targets. The real challenge isn't…
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Conversations to Conversions #1: Welcome to the Conversation
By David Russell
Conversations to Conversions is Cortado Group’s build-in-public series on how AI transforms everyday business meetings into structured outcomes. From sentiment alerts and action items to risk signals, training material, and marketing ideas, our Go-to-Market AI engine ensures no conversation goes to waste. Learn how we turn unstructured conversations into conversions that drive growth.
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Getting AWS Q running isn’t about getting Q running
By David Russell
Amazon just rolled out Amazon Q, promising to make BI as easy as asking a question. Sounds magical-until you realize the hard part isn’t Q itself. It’s the messy groundwork: stitching together source systems, wrangling permissions, and proving that spreadsheets aren’t just folklore. The real story? Success with Q has far less to do with turning it on, and everything to do with whether your data foundation is ready to support it.
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MIT NANDA Report – Major Statistics & Findings
By David Russell
MIT NANDA Report – Major Statistics & Findings 95% of organizations are getting zero return on their GenAI investments, despite $30–40B spent. (p.3) Just 5%…