Dave Coplin brings decades of experience in transforming how organisations think about technology. As Microsoft’s first Chief Envisioning Officer and the founder of The Envisioners, he has led strategy and innovation globally, helping businesses, governments, and entrepreneurs shape smarter, human-centred futures.
A bestselling author of Business Reimagined and The Rise of the Humans, Dave challenges traditional tech narratives by focusing on how technology enhances—not replaces—human potential. His work blends insight, optimism, and practical vision to redefine what’s possible in the digital age.
In this exclusive interview with The Motivational Speakers Agency, Dave unpacks why businesses must balance efficiency with adaptability, the invisible service benchmarks every company should meet, and the mindset shifts required to thrive in a digital-first world.
Q: What changes can businesses make to harness the benefits of technology?
Dave Coplin: “There’s some really easy things to do. The first thing, and it really is super simple, is you just ask people. Talk to your employees, is a great example. Talk to your employees: what are the things that you could do to make their lives easier? What are their ideas, what are their experiences?
“And that’s the lovely thing about this. You know, when I started my career, there was a handful of people who knew how technology worked, right? And they were the people like me, who you’d employ to do your IT or whatever.
“What’s different now: every member of your organisation, every employee, is engaged with technology. They have their own experience; they’ve got their own ideas of what works and what doesn’t work.
“So, the first thing I would do – I would ask them. And that would… you know, the same goes for your customers as well. You’ve just got to talk to them, right, and find out: what can we do to help? What’s, you know, where are the pain points, what can we do to smooth out the experience?
“And I think that that’s the key issue – to be open-minded. The second thing is, as a business leader, you kind of need to learn to open your eyes.
“And I get that that sounds massively patronising, but as a business leader what you tend to do is you’ve got your head down in today’s, you know, business. And you’re worried about today’s priorities, and you’re doing all that stuff, and you’re in your industry, in your company, and you’re down like this.
“In a digitally connected world, actually what’s happening around the world, what’s happening in other sectors, in other markets, is really, really important for you. So sometimes you’ve got to learn just to take a bit of time and look around and see what’s going on.
“What are other organisations doing? And again, not just in your sector, but outside of your sector. What are other customers doing? How are they working? How are they relating?
“So, I think if you can talk to people and listen and get their input and canvas their input, and the second: be open-minded to looking at different ways of doing things.
“They’re the easiest, the two sort of quickest things that you can do to help set you up to be able to know which is the best thing to do, what’s the balance for you to strike, the right balance for you to strike for your organisation.”
Q: What is your top tip for businesses in this fast-changing high-tech world?
Dave Coplin: “I think my top tip is probably: learn to let go. And what I mean by that is, you know, before the pandemic in particular we were so stuck on: this is what we do, this is how we do it, these are the things we’re prepared to do, these are the things we’re not prepared to do.
“And one, again, one of the great opportunities of the terrible situation in the pandemic is it’s forced us to really analyse some of those things and break some of those rules that we said would never be broken.
“So, for example, pre-pandemic if I’d gone to any organisation, I’d guarantee you, and I said, will you hire someone without ever seeing them in person? The majority of organisations: like, are you mad? You know, there’s no way I would do that.
“I’m pretty confident every organisation that has been hiring has hired people without seeing them over the last 12 months. All of these sacred cows that we’ve had in our organisation, suddenly we realised aren’t so sacred anymore. And that’s really important.
“And going forward you need to be, and especially as a business leader, you’re constantly asking yourself: what am I doing today that I don’t need to do tomorrow, or I shouldn’t be doing tomorrow? And be really brutal about those things. Really understand where, no, absolutely we could never do that – or maybe we could.
“So, I think that’s just about being open-minded and about being flexible. The challenge – and this is part of our transition from this industrial era to a digital era – the industrial era is built on a series of standardised processes. So, we worship the god of efficiency. And in order to be efficient, we break everything down that we do into a series of standardised, interlinked processes.
“So, we all fulfil our own individual piece of the puzzle, and then it comes together as an entire organisation, or a product, or a service, or whatever. And that’s great if you all want to be efficient, but it’s terrible if you want to be agile, if you want to be able to adapt to changes in the market.
“Because what happens when an organisation like that, with those sort of rigid standardised processes all connected to each other, is the only way you can react to a change in the market, or a pandemic, or a recession, is you have to completely break the organisation before you can put it back together again.
“So, what you’re better to do is to, rather than worship efficiency, actually worship effectiveness. So, what is it that we need to do as a company to deliver the best product, to deliver the best service? Let’s understand what that is and then be a bit looser about how people go about doing that.
“And it sounds a bit counterintuitive, and we want to be efficient as businesses – of course we do – but if you’re efficient and the product that you make is no good, or not relevant to your customers, then I would argue, kind of, what’s the point in that?
“So I think it is about being flexible, I think it’s about being open-minded, and it’s being about being really critical about: what are the things that are core to you, that you cannot change, will not change, and what’s up for grabs.”
Q: What is the secret to maintaining audience attention in the digital era?
Dave Coplin: “Um, I don’t know, and I would love to find… no, I’m kidding. For me, it’s a number of things. Number one: it’s about being genuine and authentic. Nobody, nobody wants to hear from you if they’re reading something that isn’t genuine, authentic, or that they can read somewhere else.
“And I say this to brands all the time, especially in a public speaking kind of way or a webinar, you know, online sort of thing. Don’t tell me stuff that I can go and read on your website.
“I’m not interested in that. I want to know what you think. I want to know your personal view, and I can make my own opinion based on, you know, who I think you are and what I think you do. But it’s your colour, it’s your character – that’s the bit that makes it exciting.
“And I think, you know, think about the content that resonates most with all of us, and it is the stuff that grabs us. It gives us something that we wouldn’t normally find. And that to me has been, you know, I regard myself as a quintessential technology evangelist. So, my job is not to excite you with the technology but to excite you with what the technology can enable you to achieve.
“And for me, if I can do that in a genuine way, and I can do it in a personal way – so quite often I’ll talk about, you know, my own personal experiences and what happened to me, and quite often it’s when it went terribly wrong, you know, and what we can learn from that.
“Those are the things, those human things, are the bits that make any audience sit up and go: “Oh, that was really interesting.” And so I think that’s the thing for me, is whenever we’re talking about audience engagement, it’s: what am I giving you, what am I making here, and how is that going to connect on a human level to the people I’m interested in in the audience.”
This exclusive interview with Dave Coplin was conducted by Mark Matthews of The Champions Speakers Agency.
