2025 Vation Ventures Executive Summit Recap

The 2025 Vation Executive Summit brought together a curated group of senior technology leaders for three days of connection, reflection, and collaboration at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. Unlike a traditional conference, the Summit was intentionally designed as a retreat; one that stripped away formal presentations in favor of meaningful dialogue and relationship-building opportunities.

Throughout the experience, executives engaged in a mix of structured and informal settings. From an opening reception and guided golf outing to morning discussions and shared meals, each designed to spark authentic conversation about innovation, leadership, and the evolving role of AI.

This year’s Summit centered on a powerful theme: navigating the AI revolution while preserving the human element of innovation. As organizations rush to implement AI solutions, the discussions focused on balance between innovation and responsibility, speed and governance, experimentation and measurable value.

We’d like to extend a big thank you to Elevation Staffing Partners and Kamiwaza for their partnership in bringing this event to life. Their contributions not only supported the event experience but also reflected the broader power of collaboration across the technology ecosystem. Elevation Staffing Partners continues to help enterprises fill critical technology gaps with speed and precision, while Kamiwaza enables organizations to orchestrate intelligent, secure, and distributed AI at scale. Together, they embody the spirit of innovation and partnership that defines the Vation community.

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Key Takeaways from the 2025 Vation Executive Summit

• Human connection drives innovation. Every element of the Summit was designed to foster authentic relationships, reminding attendees that meaningful progress in technology begins with trust and collaboration.

• AI is deeply personal. When asked what they wish AI could do for them, both executives and their spouses shared reflections that revealed AI’s role far beyond the enterprise, helping people save time, make better decisions, and simplify everyday life.

• Governance and readiness remain top priorities. Discussions throughout the Summit and insights from the 2025 AI Recap Report reinforced that responsible adoption, clear governance, and workforce enablement are the critical foundations of enterprise AI success.

• Talent and trust are shaping the future. Participants agreed that the real challenge isn’t just building better technology. It’s preparing people to use it responsibly. Upskilling, alignment, and organizational culture will define who succeeds in the next phase of AI adoption.

• Community accelerates transformation. The event underscored the power of connection across Vation’s ecosystem of executives, innovators, and partners, demonstrating that collaboration, not competition, is the key to navigating the AI revolution together.

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Insights from the Group: Current Perspectives on AI

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During the Summit, participants, both technology executives and their spouses, were asked to reflect on two simple yet revealing questions:

1. Personally, what do you wish AI could do for you?

2. What surprised you most about AI?

Each person submitted anonymous, handwritten responses displayed during the evening reception. The exercise created an open, human-centered dialogue around technology—capturing not just executive-level thinking, but personal curiosity, humor, and vulnerability. After reviewing all responses together, five main themes emerged. These insights provide a unique view of how both leaders and everyday users are experiencing the rapid growth of AI, not through strategy decks or data models, but through daily life and reflection.

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AI Perspective themes:

• AI as a time saver: Participants want AI to simplify daily routines and eliminate repetitive tasks, giving them back valuable time.

• AI as a collaborator: There’s a desire for AI to better understand context and act as an intuitive partner rather than a one-dimensional tool.

• AI as a powerful yet imperfect system: Attendees expressed awe at AI’s sophistication—but also concern over its pace, implications, and limits.

• AI as a decision guide: Many see AI as a tool to bring clarity and confidence to personal and professional choices.

• AI as a connector: Across responses, people emphasized AI’s potential to bridge communication gaps, accelerate learning, and foster collaboration.

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1. Free Up Time

Across the board, participants expressed a desire for AI to give them back one of their most valuable resources: time. Whether through automating tasks, organizing priorities, or simplifying daily routines, AI was seen as a potential liberator from both professional and personal overload.

This perspective speaks to a fundamental truth: people want AI to help them live better, not just work faster.

• “AI is saving me so much time with note-taking, from adapting to changing activities to creating reminders and automating time throughout the day.”

• “I wish AI could analyze what I’m doing for more than a day and, in summary form, suggest what I should be doing.”

• “Personally, I wish AI could cook me breakfast, lunch, and dinner so I don’t have to even think about cooking.”

• “Price comparison across our last store visits! Find me the best deal.”

Takeaway: The excitement around AI isn’t just about innovation, it’s about relief. Attendees are looking to AI to simplify complexity and restore balance to their days.

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2. Collaborative Partner

Many participants viewed AI as a partner with enormous potential, but one that’s still learning how to truly collaborate. The responses reflected both admiration for AI’s speed and frustration with its literalness. There was a consistent call for AI to become a more intuitive, context-aware partner rather than a passive assistant.

• “I wish AI could use better common sense reasoning to give insights, recommendations, and suggestions throughout the day.”

• “The thing that surprised me about AI is how much it can synthesize with bias, providing context and variation between diversity.”

• “Approached with resistance, recognition for speed of efficiency. We’re helping teams daily to move more to learn.”

• “AI in all the prompting! I was surprised how conversational it was, and how it can’t read your mind yet. You need AI and interaction.”

Takeaway: People want collaboration, not automation. They envision AI as an engaged partner that can interpret intent, adapt to nuance, and evolve through shared learning.

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3. Complex Capabilities

Several participants expressed both awe and caution at AI’s sophistication. For many, AI’s rapid leap from concept to reality has been startling, sparking both curiosity and unease. These reflections captured a moment of collective wonder: how a once-theoretical technology has become intertwined with daily decision-making and creative work.

• “The thing that surprised me most about AI is how quickly it moved from a subject of fiction to a real-world, everyday tool.”

• “AI can combine data from different sources to create new insights and patterns, even when the connections aren’t obvious.”

• “The thing that surprised me most about AI is how much it can combine data from different sources to create new insights and patterns, even when the connections aren’t obvious. That’s both exciting and scary.”

• “AI could be my personal assistant for everything—managing meetings, emails, travel, content, analysis, and follow-up.”

Takeaway: The fascination with AI lies in its unpredictability. While its capabilities continue to impress, participants also recognized the importance of human understanding and oversight to ensure it remains a tool for good.

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4. Guide Better Decisions

AI’s ability to guide decisions, large and small, emerged as another key theme. Participants expressed interest in AI tools that can help them make smarter, more confident choices by analyzing patterns, surfacing insights, or tailoring recommendations to individual needs.

• “I wish AI could give better advice based on past decisions, taking into account my habits, preferences, and goals.”

• “Grocery shopping by preference, price, and also pick up orders.”

• “The thing that surprised me most about AI is how much it can actually support creativity and innovation when used thoughtfully.”

Takeaway: AI is viewed as a trusted compass, like an intelligent filter that can reduce decision fatigue and empower better outcomes when used thoughtfully and ethically.

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5. Bridge the Gaps

The final theme centered around AI’s potential to connect, whether its people, departments, ideas, or data. Participants viewed AI as a bridge between human intention and digital intelligence, capable of improving communication, learning, and cross-functional collaboration.

• “AI bridges communication between departments by connecting insights from different tools.”

• “I’d love for AI to be my universal translator — it would make meeting new people and expanding new places much easier.”

• “I wish AI could help people learn new skills faster by curating and summarizing key information daily.”

• “I wish AI could understand the why to a greater degree… bridge human intention and machine interpretation.”

• “What surprised me about AI was how it could work alone, but it’s more powerful as a collaborator. AI needs the human mind to really apply it to your use cases.”

Takeaway: AI’s greatest potential may not be in its processing power, but in its ability to foster understanding by helping people and organizations connect, learn, and grow together.

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Exclusive Preview: The 2025 AI Recap Report

Troy Cogburn, Chief Technology Evangelist at Vation Ventures, shared highlights from our 2025 AI Recap Report: Perspectives from Technology Executives. While the handwritten reflections captured the human experience of AI, Troy’s data brought that experience into sharper focus, revealing how organizations are navigating the same opportunities and challenges on a larger scale.

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AI Has Become a Strategic Imperative

AI has moved from an emerging technology to a top strategic priority across industries. Yet most organizations remain in early stages of adoption, focused less on bold, futuristic applications and more on building a strong foundation through governance, data quality, and workforce enablement. This reality connected directly to the Summit’s group reflections. The desire for AI to free up time and guide better decisions reflects what many executives strive for within their companies: turning AI from an abstract concept into a practical tool that enhances productivity and clarity.

Our research shows that while 96% of executives now identify AI as the most impactful technology of the next three years, only a small fraction have achieved organizational maturity in deployment. Most are still planning or experimenting, mirroring how many attendees personally described their own evolving relationship with AI.

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Governance and Guardrails Are the Cornerstones of Success

Governance is the top AI priority for technology leaders. Across industries, organizations are working to control data shared with generative AI tools, monitor business impact, and establish clear ethical and legal policies around AI use. Just as participants expressed a desire for AI to act responsibly and with context, executives globally are focused on ensuring their systems do the same, embedding transparency, accountability, and human oversight into every step of the AI lifecycle.

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The Talent Gap: AI’s Biggest Barrier and Opportunity

One of the most striking insights Troy shared was that talent, not technology, remains the leading barrier to AI adoption. Executives consistently report challenges in both technical and business readiness, highlighting the need for structured upskilling, time for experimentation, and practical ways to integrate AI into daily workflows. AI isn’t just a technical evolution; it’s a human one. People want support in adapting, growing, and finding confidence in this new era of work.

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ROI on AI: Defining and Proving Value

Another recurring challenge Troy discussed was proving return on investment (ROI). For most organizations, success metrics focus on productivity, operational savings, and time efficiency, but many still struggle to quantify outcomes. Benefits are often “felt” before they are formally measured.

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The Common Thread: Alignment Between Human and Machine

Throughout Troy’s presentation, one message consistently emerged: the future of AI depends on alignment. Alignment between people and data, governance and innovation, efficiency and ethics. The group’s reflections captured this intuitively. When participants described AI as a bridge, a collaborator, or a translator, they were expressing what the enterprise community is now striving for at scale: AI that works with us, not just for us.

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Conclusion: Connection and Community in the AI Revolution

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The 2025 Vation Executive Summit closed with a reminder that while artificial intelligence may be redefining the technology landscape, human connection remains the foundation of progress. Over three days at The Broadmoor, leaders and their guests stepped away from traditional conference formats to engage in meaningful conversation, discovering that innovation doesn’t just happen in labs or boardrooms, but around tables, fairways, and shared experiences.

The discussions and reflections throughout the event revealed a powerful truth: AI is as much about people as it is about technology. It challenges us to reimagine how we work, learn, and make decisions, but it also calls on us to lead with empathy, curiosity, and collaboration. The future our attendees envision is one where AI frees time, supports better decisions, and strengthens human relationships, not replaces them.

The Vation Ventures’ 2025 AI Recap Report reinforced that same message at scale. Enterprises across industries are facing the same questions raised in the room: how to deploy AI responsibly, measure its impact, and develop the skills to use it effectively. The insights shared at the Summit made clear that no organization can navigate this transformation alone.

That’s where the power of community comes in. The Vation ecosystem, spanning technology leaders, venture capitalists, innovators, and trusted partners, exists to accelerate progress together. By connecting experience, research, and execution, we’re helping the ecosystem move from experimentation to impact.

We extend our sincere gratitude to our event sponsors, Elevation Staffing Partners and Kamiwaza, whose partnership embodies this spirit of collaboration. Elevation Staffing Partners continues to connect organizations with the expertise they need to execute transformative projects at speed, while Kamiwaza enables enterprises to orchestrate intelligent automation securely across distributed systems. Their contributions helped make this gathering possible and reflect the shared vision driving the innovation community forward.

As we look ahead, community is the key to navigating the AI revolution. Technology will keep evolving, but the conversations, relationships, and collaborations built here will be what turn innovation into lasting impact. Contact our team to discover how we can help your team accelerate innovation through our customized consulting services.