Your First AI Win: Why Internal is Often Best

Welcome to the first issue of Just Curious—built for business leaders turning AI curiosity into tangible results.

I've seen firsthand how generative AI can radically improve workflows, spark innovation, and drive results. Yet too many leaders get stuck experimenting with AI tools that don’t align with their goals.

Just Curious bridges the gap between curiosity and capability—helping you move from “What if?” to “Here’s what’s working.”

Education → Inspiration → Action

Let's dive right in.

🧨🧨Please share with anyone curious about AI and who wants to better understand how they can use it to transform their business. 🧨🧨

📌 Just Curious Originals

Featured highlights from our original interviews—actionable insights you can apply today.

🎙️ Justin Massa – Founder, Midwestern Quality Consulting

Building an AI Strategy for SMB Leaders

• Start with clarity, not confusion: Justin demystifies AI by first explaining how AI companies think and operate—easing teams into successful adoption.

• Practical experimentation: Introduces a straightforward framework (techniques → jigs → tools) that helps SMBs test AI ideas quickly, safely, and affordably.

• Rapid transformation: Discover how a once-skeptical team quickly embedded AI directly into their core product.

👉 Watch the full interview → [link]

🎙️Jeremy Utley – Stanford, Beyond the Prompt Podcast

How to Unlock Breakthrough Ideas with AI

• Break through incremental thinking: Jeremy shares how to foster a bold culture of repeatable innovation with AI.

• Frameworks for courage: Get Jeremy's practical methods for empowering teams to take creative risks—consistently generating high-impact results.

• Systematic innovation: Discover why true innovation is cultural, deliberate, and enhanced by structured, AI-driven processes.

👉 Watch the full interview → [link]

🎙️ Ross Hale (CEO) & Mike McCormick (CTO) – Artium

Enterprise-Grade AI Software That Scales

• Break out of the demo cycle: Ross and Mike reveal how Continuous Alignment Testing moves AI initiatives from prototypes to production-ready solutions faster.

• Scientific validation: Learn how targeted experiments rapidly validate ideas before major investment, accelerating your path from prototype to production.

• Real-world results: See how Artium built an AI-driven healthcare solution—from concept to production in just 10 weeks, significantly reducing prescription costs.

👉 Watch the full interview → [link]

📌 Expert Signal: Distilled

Curated highlights from the Just Curious network.

✍️ Ed Ortega (Partner, Machine & Partners)

AI’s quiet revolution in internet infrastructure.

Most AI headlines miss the bigger shift: AI is reshaping the infrastructure powering everything from search to supply chains—quietly and at massive scale.

👉 Read the full article →

✍️ Anna Tiomin (Founder, Blend2Balance)

How to become an AI-powered finance leader, fast.

Don’t wait for a company-wide mandate—AI gives finance leaders tools to quickly reduce busywork and shift to strategic impact.

 👉 Read the full article →

✍️ Nicola Smith (Senior AI Program Advisor, Southwest Airlines)

From automation to AI agents: The new intelligence spectrum.

Knowing when to move from simple automation to intelligent agents is key—get clarity on how and where to make smarter AI investments.

 👉 Read the full article →

🔍 Community Spotlight

This week’s best content on business experimentation, adoption, and transformation, curated by Just Curious AI Experts:

🛠 Denis Panjuta on budget-friendly AI tools: Compare free agents and premium AI suites—practical advice for any budget level.

 👉 Read the full post →

🤖 Jacob Bank on AI agents for productivity: A simple AI agent outperforming pricier options for quickly enriching contact data.

 👉 Read the full post →

🧠 Jessica Ferrell on AI adoption mindset: Adoption hesitation is rooted in fear; effective AI experimentation requires willingness to embrace vulnerability.

👉 Read the full post →

📋 Carl Miller on AI board questions: Essential AI strategy questions CEOs should prepare to answer today.

 👉 Read the full post →

📊 Glenn Hopper on automation strategy: Collapsing 30 decks into one AI-driven dashboard, saving 1,000 hours per month through smart automation.

 👉 Read the full post →

🔍 My Favorite Thing Last Week

Why AI's next breakthrough won’t come from more data

DeepMind researchers say AI’s next leap won’t come from more data, but from learning through its own experience.

And this move towards experiential AI—autonomous, interactive, and continuous—will unlock breakthroughs beyond current human knowledge limits.

 👉 Read the full post →

🔚 Final Thought: What Do You Want?

If you made it to the bottom, many thanks! 

A couple of questions: 

1️⃣ What Just Curious content would you like more of?

Would brief, step-by-step case studies (5-10 min) showing exactly how companies boosted revenue, reduced costs, or transformed user experiences be valuable?

2️⃣ How can we make this newsletter better?

3️⃣ What questions are you looking to answer? 

Reply to this email and tell us one AI question you're struggling to answer. We'll feature expert responses in the next issue.

🚀 Next Week: AI-driven value creation in Private Equity, reducing windfarm downtime by 40% and more.

The fastest AI wins often come from the inside. Curiosity is the spark—but momentum comes from small, strategic moves.

See you next week,

 —Stu

Ps. Please forward this to anyone curious about AI!