Microsoft’s Path to Adopting and Scaling AI Across its Sales Organization
From Cold Call by HBR Presents / Brian Kenny
May 12, 2026 · 27 min · Episode 282
About this episode
The episode discusses Microsoft's journey in adopting AI tools within its sales organization and the challenges faced during this transformation.
In early 2024, six months after the highly anticipated launch of Microsoft Copilot across the 62,000-person Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) organization—one of the world’s largest sales organizations—the initial excitement had not yet materialized into widespread adoption and transformation. But, two years after initiating their AI transformation journey, the organization’s daily active usage of AI tools had reached over 60% and monthly active usage over 98%, significantly altering how sales professionals approached their work. The path to adoption had required Microsoft to evolve its approach based on early deployment insights. Harvard Business School Associate Professors Iav Bojinov and Shunyuan Zhang join Brian Kenny to discuss the case, “Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions: The Deployment of Copilot and Agents.” They explore the company’s journey to successfully mobilizing AI adoption within the sales process, the challenges it faces integrating autonomous sales agents, what it takes to get thousands of employees to fundamentally change how they work.
People in this episode
Host: Brian Kenny
Guests: Iav Bojinov, Shunyuan Zhang
Topics covered
- AI adoption
- sales transformation
- Microsoft Copilot
- organizational change
- autonomous sales agents
Keywords
- Microsoft
- AI tools
- sales organization
- Copilot
- adoption
- transformation
- autonomous agents
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Microsoft, Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions
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