The front-row seat
In 2023 I built the original Microsoft 365 Copilot demos and helped bring the product to market. Being that close to the first wave of enterprise AI taught me something the launch slides did not.
What actually moved the needle
The demo that landed was never the flashiest capability. It was the one tied to a workflow a real person did every single day — the meeting recap, the draft reply, the spreadsheet nobody wanted to touch. Adoption followed proximity to daily work, not raw capability.
Why it still shapes how I work
That is the lesson I carried into every engagement since: AI works when your people do. Pick the workflow they already live in, and the technology gets used. Chase the impressive demo, and it collects dust.