I help organizations translate AI from experimentation into durable competitive advantage.
I have spent my career at moments when computing shifts redefine how organizations compete.
Personal computing.
The early internet.
Ecommerce platforms.
Now AI.
I have seen this pattern repeat across multiple technology waves.
Access to the technology arrives first. Institutional advantage comes later for the organizations that redesign how decisions flow through the enterprise.
Across these shifts my work has centered on one question:
How do organizations process information to make better decisions?
Over the past two decades I have watched board attention move through successive technology mandates. First digital. Then social media. Now AI.
In each case the initial challenge for leadership was not access to the technology. The challenge was redesigning the organization so the technology could actually change how decisions get made.
I began in management consulting grounded in information processing theory and decision support systems.
In 1997 I co founded PriceSCAN, one of the earliest comparison shopping engines, building structured consumer decision tools before Google defined search.
In the ecommerce era I led digital platform transformation at national retail scale. Re architecting commerce infrastructure, migrating enterprise stacks, launching mobile products, and building first party data and engagement systems.
Today I focus on the next platform shift.
Operationalizing AI inside enterprise workflows and decision systems so it enhances human capability, improves decision quality, and scales responsibly.
Most companies already have talented technology teams. What the AI moment often requires is an architectural layer that identifies where decisions happen, where information slows down, and where AI can meaningfully accelerate both.
My work sits at the intersection of:
• Platform transitions
• Organizational design
• Information architecture
• Consumer decision systems
• Enterprise AI adoption
I translate emerging technical capability into durable systems that people actually use and organizations can operate with discipline.
I write about decision systems, technology waves, and how AI is reshaping how organizations compete.
Open to executive and advisory roles where AI and emerging technologies are redefining how enterprises operate and how people discover, decide, and transact.
David Cost has been a guest on 1 episode.
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The Anti-Headcount Billion-Dollar eCom Playbook | David Cost, CDO (Rainbow Shops)
March 17th, 2026 | Season 2 | 26 mins 57 secs
business, digital experience, product management, technology
How many engineers does it take to run the ecommerce site for a retail company that does over a billion dollars in revenue per year?
Well, if you’re Rainbow Shops, the answer is just 2.
Most ecommerce teams assume scale requires more engineers, more tools, more complexity. Chief Digital Officer David Cost has built something many people in ecommerce would say isn't possible — a lean, fast-moving digital operation that runs on vendor partnerships instead of a massive internal team. Two engineers, hundreds of programmers' worth of output, and none of the overhead that comes with scaling the traditional way.
In this episode, David shares:
- A detailed, under-the-hood look at the specific vendors they use to stay so lean
- His playbook for using strategic partnerships with vendors as an external dev team
- How being a testbed for new tech gives them a competitive edge
- And why their choice of ecommerce platform was vital in enabling Rainbow’s digital strategy