Sleepless in Seattle: Reflections on the Future of Copilot, Agents and Adoption

The 2026 Copilot Summit: A memorable moment….

There is probably a reason Sleepless in Seattle became a film!! The West Coast to UK time difference is brutal!!

After several days fuelled by excitement, adrenaline and more coffee than I would normally admit to, I am finally home and have had enough sleep to properly reflect on what was genuinely one of the most energising few days I have had in a long time.

I travelled to Seattle to present at the Copilot 2026 Summit expecting to leave with pages of notes on what is next in Copilot, Agents and AI. And yes, the pace of innovation genuinely blew my mind. Sorry no big reveals here….much of what was discussed remains under NDA, but what struck me most was not actually the technology.

It was the people.

Firstly, credit where it is due. Microsoft put on an exceptional event. What impressed me was not simply the scale of the summit, but the intent behind it. There was a genuine effort to close the gap between customers and the teams building the products. The opportunity to hear directly from people shaping the roadmap, ask questions, challenge thinking and exchange experiences created a very different dynamic to many conferences. It felt collaborative rather than transactional and that matters in a space moving this quickly.

Over the three days, I spoke to people from organisations at very different stages of maturity and, despite different industries and contexts, the conversations kept coming back to remarkably similar themes. How do we move beyond early enthusiasm and into sustained adoption? How do we help people feel excited rather than exhausted by the pace of change? How do we create confidence and capability at scale? And how will we manage tokens!!

One thing became increasingly clear to me. While the technology has accelerated enormously, many of the human questions have not changed in the 18 months we have been on this journey.

People still want to know what is in it for them. They want to understand how these tools make their jobs easier or better. They want confidence that learning something new today will still matter tomorrow. And they want to feel supported rather than overwhelmed.

That reinforced something we have been leaning into at Kantar for some time: successful adoption does not happen through one lever.

You need leadership creating a clear direction and investment in capability. You need structured training and a constant drumbeat of communication so people can stay informed without feeling buried in updates. But equally, you need market-level and role-oriented use cases that translate possibility into practical value. Broad messages only go so far. Real momentum starts when somebody can see exactly how this changes their day.

Alongside that, I found myself thinking differently about community.

One of the unexpected highlights of Seattle was the community that formed around the sessions themselves. Some of the best conversations happened over coffee or walking between talks. There is something powerful about meeting people who are all trying to solve similar challenges from different angles. Sharing ideas openly, hearing what has worked and what has not, and occasionally getting that one insight that unlocks the extra shift you were looking for.

Presenting our journey at Kantar to a room of 250 people working at the frontier of this space was one of those moments that I’ll treasure . I felt incredibly proud that our work is being recognised as leading edge. Not because we have solved everything, but because we have been willing to experiment, learn and keep moving.

One final thought stayed with me on the flight home.

I increasingly think we are approaching a shift where this stops being viewed as a technology tool and starts becoming a different way of thinking about capability.

Historically, organisations have thought about growth through people, skills and labour. What struck me in Seattle is that the future may be more nuanced than that. Organisations may increasingly think about how capability is created through a combination of human expertise, AI capability and intelligent orchestration.

That is not about replacing people. If anything, it raises the importance of human skills even further. As Satya Nadella CEO of Microsoft said ‘it’s about reigniting human ambition.’

But it may fundamentally change how we think about access to skills, scaling expertise and where value gets created….Which means that adoption and change management become even more important.

“That All Sounds Great… But What Do I Need To Do Differently?”

One practical reflection I have brought home from Seattle is this.

Take this seriously.

Make a plan.

Create space for learning.

Keep up with what is changing.

And then accept that you probably will not keep up with all of it. None of us will.

The pace is extraordinary and trying to consume every update, feature release and new capability is neither realistic nor sustainable. But that does not mean standing still and trying!

The organisations making progress are not waiting until everything settles. They are creating a rhythm of trial, error and adoption. They are investing in capability, rethinking skills, creating regular moments to learn, translating change into role-relevant use cases and building communities that help people make sense of what matters.

Because this is no longer about rolling out a tool. It is about building a new organisational muscle. A new way to frame the work so that the work gets done in a totally different way

The organisations that succeed will not necessarily be those with the most licences or the biggest technology budgets (although that will definitely help!)

They will be the ones that combine clear direction, practical relevance, continuous learning and communities that help people keep moving together.

And after finally getting some sleep, I think that might have been my biggest takeaway from Seattle.