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Who We Are

We've Run Companies.
Now We Run on AI.

Cogitant Partners was founded in 2020 by operators who spent their careers running companies rather than writing about them, and who watched too many capable leadership teams make consequential technology decisions on instinct alone. We built the AI Exposure Index™ because a decision this size deserves the same rigor as any capital decision of its magnitude, and we built the firm to run on the same AI we help you adopt.

Our Own Case Study

We Built This Business
on the Promise of AI.

We are, in a real sense, the case study for what we sell. The framework, the diagnostic, the way we run an engagement, and the deliverables you receive were all built with AI and are all run with AI. We moved the same four numbers we measure for you inside our own firm first: productivity, efficiency, cost, and scalability. If we could not transform our own business with AI, we would have no standing to tell you how to transform yours.

Innovation in the Framework

A method built from the inside

A published framework, calibrated to thirty industries, that Dave built from running the systems and then wrote down. Anyone can read the whole method before they ever talk to us.

Innovation in the Tool

We built the engine ourselves

Our diagnostic produces two independently benchmarked indexes and a board-ready read in minutes, work that used to take a slide team weeks.

Innovation in the Engagement

Senior people on every engagement

Senior operators stay in the room while AI carries the load a large firm would bill you for. You get partner-level attention without an analyst pyramid or a six-figure retainer.

Innovation in the Outputs

Board-ready in days

Deliverables calibrated to your industry and produced in days, ready for your CFO to act on rather than a templated deck with a logo dropped on top.

How We Scale

We do not scale by stacking a pyramid of junior analysts. A core team runs client delivery, the back office, and partner management. When an engagement needs more hands, we bring in vetted specialists under the Cogitant brand and draw on our certified partner network, with AI carrying the work a large firm would staff and bill by the hour. That is how a lean firm delivers the rigor of a large one at a fraction of the cost and time.

What We Believe

AI Strategy First.
Always.

We're not a tool vendor, and we're not an implementation shop looking for billable hours. We're strategists who happened to build the instrument the strategy requires. Three convictions shape every engagement.

You can't lead a transition you haven't measured

Most AI business cases fail for the same reason: they substitute enthusiasm for measurement. Before a roadmap means anything, you need a clear, structured read on where you actually stand.

Skeptical of hype and denial

The loudest voices are selling either inevitability or dismissal. Both are wrong. We're rigorous about evidence, we label estimates as estimates, and we'd rather hand you a conservative number that survives your CFO than an optimistic one that doesn't.

Risk and advantage are one conversation

Telling a leadership team they're exposed without telling them where to win is half a job. Every engagement measures both, because the sequence of what to fix and what to chase is the strategy.

Leadership

Operators,
Not Analysts.

Between them, six decades of building, running, merging and turning around real organizations, the experience that decides which questions actually matter once a leadership team is in the room.

David Dickinson
David Dickinson
Co-Founder & President
B.S. Computer Information Systems, Arizona State University · M.S., Cornell University · attended Pepperdine Law School · certified mediator

He created the Seven C's from the inside

David works directly with business leaders, executive teams and boards navigating the AI transition, helping organizations move from AI awareness to AI execution through the Seven C's framework he developed. His consulting spans AI readiness assessment, roadmap development, governance policy design, and organizational capability building.

He brings more than thirty years with Fortune 100 companies to that work, grounded in real-world business challenges, rigorous about evidence, and deeply skeptical of both AI hype and AI denial.

  • Leadership roles at Intel, MCI, USWest, Qwest, Employers Council and Catholic Health Initiatives
  • Former VP / Chief Technology Officer at Catholic Health Initiatives, directing the architecture behind a five-year electronic health record strategy and a 99.999% uptime target
  • Former CEO of Concerned Women for America and COO of Touch Inc.
  • Built large-scale CRM and ERP systems, and the telecom industry's first fraud detection system
  • Managed organizational integration through three corporate mergers, the largest assessing 3,500+ systems and $350M of capital spend
  • Codified the method in The AI Decision and the four white papers behind it, the framework in the open for anyone to interrogate
IntelMCIQwestUSWestCatholic Health InitiativesEmployers Council
Steve Maegdlin
Steve Maegdlin
Co-Founder & CEO
B.S. Business Management & Administration, minor in Economics, Bradley University · M.B.A. Finance, DePaul University

Thirty years of running, growing and exiting companies

Steve is a seasoned senior executive with 30+ years of global experience at the CEO, CMO, COO, SVP and VP levels, across large and small for-profit companies, public companies, nonprofits and startups. He brings experience spanning every aspect of starting, running, growing and exiting an organization: strategy, sales, marketing, finance, business development and product management.

He has founded or co-founded seven companies and has worked with or consulted to more than 100 organizations around the world, and has built AI strategies and tools inside his own companies, not only for clients.

  • Executive roles at Oracle, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards and Comdisco, spanning global product strategy, product management, industry marketing, sales enablement and revenue performance
  • Led efforts that grew top-line revenue by $400M in two years
  • Led solution integration between two multi-billion-dollar public companies as part of a $9B merger; deeply involved in six significant M&A transactions
  • Redeveloped product and go-to-market strategies that drove stock-price increases and premium acquisition outcomes
  • Has served in multiple interim CXO roles, leading sales, marketing, IT, operations and global strategy
  • Works with executive teams and boards through critical inflection points: executive transition, new product and technology launches, and revenue performance
OraclePeopleSoftJ.D. EdwardsComdisco
The Framework, Published

The Seven C's aren't a sales tool.
They're a published method.

The AI Decision: The Seven C's Framework for Leaders Who Cannot Afford to Wait sets out the entire method in the open, alongside the four Cogitant white papers behind it. David did not write it from the sidelines. He wrote down a method he built running technology inside Fortune 100 companies. If you want to interrogate the thinking before you ever talk to us, you can.

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Ready to measure
where you stand?

We work with mid-market leadership teams who would rather know their position than guess at it. One conversation is enough to tell whether we're a fit.

See the Framework