>> Announcer: From San Francisco, it's theCUBE,
covering Accenture Tech Vision 2020.
Brought to you by Accenture.
>> Hey, welcome back, everybody.
Jeff Frick here from theCUBE.
We are high atop San Francisco at the Accenture
Innovation Hub, 33rd floor of the Salesforce Tower.
It's a beautiful night, but we're here
for a very special occasion.
It's the Tech Vision 2020 reveal,
and we are happy to have the guy that runs
the whole thing, he's going to reveal on stage
a little bit later, but we got him in advance.
He's Paul Daugherty, the chief technology
and innovation officer for Accenture.
Paul, great to see you as always.
>> Great to see you, Jeff, too.
It is a beautiful evening here, looking out over the Bay.
>> If only we could turn the cameras around,
but, sorry, we can't do that.
>> Yeah. >> All right, so you've been
at this now, the Tech Vision's been going on
for 20 years, we heard earlier today.
>> Yeah. >> You've been involved
for almost a decade.
How has this thing evolved over that time?
>> Yeah, you know, we've been doing the Vision
for 20 years, and what we've been trying to do
is forecast what's happening with business and technology
in a way that's actionable for executives.
There's lots of trend forecasts and lists and things,
but if you just see a list of cloud, or--
>> Jeff: Mobile's going to
be really big. (laughs) >> AI, mobile,
it doesn't really help you.
We're trying to talk a little bit about the impact
on business, impact to the world,
and the decisions that you need to make.
What's changed over that period of time is
just the breadth of the impact that technology's
having on people, so we focus a lot of our
Visions on the impact on humans, on individuals,
what's happening with technology,
what the impact on business, we can talk about
that a little bit more, but business
is certainly not the back office of companies anymore.
It's not just the back office and front office, either.
In business, it's instrumental in the fabric
of how every part of the company operates,
their strategy, their operations,
their products and services, et cetera,
and that's really the trajectory we've seen.
As technology advances, we have this
accelerating exponential increase in technology,
the implications for executives
and the stakes just get higher and higher.
>> It's weird, there are so many layers to this.
One of the things we've talked about a lot is trust,
and you guys talk about trust a lot.
But what strikes me as kind of this dichotomy is
on one hand, do I trust the companies, right?
Do I trust Mark Zuckerberg with my data,
to pick on him, he gets picked on all the time.
That might be a question, but do I trust
that Facebook is going to work?
Absolutely.
And so, our reliance on the technology,
our confidence in the technology,
our just baseline assumption that this stuff
is going to work, is crazy high, up to and including
people taking naps in their Teslas, (laughs) which are
not autonomous vehicles! >> Not an advisable practice.
>> Not autonomous vehicles!
So it's this weird kind of split
where it's definitely part of our lives,
but it seems like kind of the consciousness
is coming up as kind of the second order.
What does this really mean to me?
What does this mean to my data?
What are people actually doing with this stuff?
And am I making a good value exchange?
>> Well, that's the, we talk in the Vision
this year about value versus values,
and the question you're asking is getting
right at that, the crux between value and values.
You know, businesses have been using
technology to drive value for a long time.
That's how applying different types of technology
to enterprise, whether it be back to the mainframe days
or ERP packages, cloud computing,
et cetera, artificial intelligence.
So value is what they were talking about in the Vision.
How do you drive value using the technology?
And one thing we found is there's a big gap.
Only 10% of organizations are really getting full value
in the way they're applying technology,
and those that are are getting twice the revenue growth
as companies that aren't, so that's one big gap in value.
And this values point is really getting to be important,
which is, as technology can be deployed
in ways that are more pervasive and impact
our experience, they're tracking our health details--
>> Right, right. >> They know where we are,
they know what we're doing, they're anticipating
what we might do next.
How does that impact the values?
And how are the values of companies important in other ways?
The values you have around sustainability
and other things are increasingly
important to new generations of consumers
and consumers who are thinking in new ways.
This value versus values is teeing up
what we call a tech-clash, which isn't
a tech-lash, just, again, seeing people reacting
against tech companies, as you said earlier,
it's a tech-clash, which is the values
that consumer citizens and people want
sometimes clashing with the value of the models
that companies have been using to deliver their
products and services. >> Right.
Well, it seems like it's kind of the
"What are you optimizing for?" game,
and it seems like it was such an extreme
optimization towards profitability
and shareholder value, and less,
necessarily, employees, less, necessarily, customers,
and certainly less in terms of the social impact.
So that definitely seems to be changing,
but is it changing fast enough?
Are people really grasping it?
>> Well, I think the data's mixed on that.
I think there's a lot of mixed data
on "What do people really want?"
So people say they want more privacy,
they say they want access and control of their data,
but they still use a lot of the services
that it may be inconsistent with
the values that they talk about,
and the values that come out in surveys.
So, but that's changing.
So consumers are getting more educated
about how they want their data to be used.
But the other thing that's happening
is that companies are realizing
that it's really a battle for experience.
Experience is what, creating broader experiences,
better experiences for consumers
is what the battleground is.
A great experience, whether you're a travel company
or a bank or a manufacturing company,
or whatever you might be, creating the experience
requires data, and to get the data
from an individual or another company, it takes trust.
So this virtuous circle of experience,
data, and trust is something that companies
are realizing is essential to their
competitive advantage going forward.
We say trust is the currency of the digital
and post-digital world that we're moving into.
>> Right, it's just how explicit is that trust,
or how explicit does it need to be?
And as you said, that's unclear.
People can complain on one hand,
but continue to use the services,
so it seems to be a little bit
kind of squishy. >> It's a sliding scale.
It's really a value exchange,
and you have to think about it.
What's the value exchange and the value
that an individual consumer places on their privacy
versus free access to a service?
That's what's being worked out right now.
>> Right, so I'm going to get your take
on another thing, which is exponential curves,
and you've mentioned time and time again,
the pace of change is only accelerating.
Well, you've been saying that, probably,
for (laughs) 20 years. (Paul laughs)
So the curve's just getting steeper.
How do you see that kind of playing out over time?
Will we eventually catch up?
Is it just presumed that this is kind of the new normal?
Or how is this going to shake out?
'Cause people aren't great at exponential curves.
It's just not really in our DNA.
>> Yeah, but I think that's the world we're operating in now,
and I think the exponential potential is going to continue.
We don't see a slowdown in the exponential
growth rates of technology.
So artificial intelligence, we're at the early days.
Cloud computing, only about 20% enterprise adoption,
a lot more to go.
New adoptions are on the horizon, things like
central bank digital currencies that we've
done some research and done some work on recently.
Quantum computing and quantum cryptography
for networking, et cetera.
So the pace of innovation is going to accelerate,
and the challenge for organizations is rationalizing that
and deciding how to incorporate that
into their business, change their business,
and change the way that they're
leveraging their workforce and change the way
that they're interacting with customers.
And that's why what we're trying to address
in the Vision is provide a little bit
of that road map into how you digest it down.
Now, there's also technology foundations of this.
We talk about something at Accenture called living systems.
Living systems is a new way of looking
at the architecture of how you build your technology,
because you don't have static systems anymore.
Your systems have to be living and biological,
adapting to the new technology,
adapting to the business, adapting to new data over time.
So this concept of living systems is going to be
really important to organizations' success going forward.
>> But the interesting thing is, one of the topics
is "AI and Me," and traditional AI
was very kind of purpose-built.
For instance, Google Photos, can you find the cat?
Can I find the kids at the beach?
But you're talking about models where the AI
can evolve and not necessarily be quite so
data-centric around a specific application,
but much more evolutionary and adaptable,
based on how things change.
>> Yeah, I think that's the future of AI that we see.
There's been a lot of success in applying AI today,
and a lot of it's been based on supervised learning,
deep learning techniques that require
massive amounts of data.
Solving problems like machine vision
requires massive amounts of data to do it right.
And that'll continue.
There'll continue to be problem sets that need large data.
But what we're also seeing is a lot of innovation
and AI techniques around small data.
And we actually did some research recently,
and we talk about this a little bit in our Vision,
around the future being maybe smaller data sets
and more structured data and intelligence
around structured data, common-sense AI,
and things that allow us to make
breakthroughs in different ways.
And that's, we used to look at "AI and Me,"
which is the trend around the workforce
and how the workforce changes.
It's those kinds of adaptations
that we think are going to be really important.
>> So another one is robotics, "Robots in the Wild."
And you made an interesting comment--
>> Paul: Not "Robots Gone Wild," "Robots in the Wild,"
"Robots in the Wild." >> Well, maybe they'll go wild
once they're in the wild.
You never know.
Once they get autonomy.
Not a lot of autonomy, that's probably why.
But it's kind of interesting, 'cause you talk
about robots being designed to help people
do a better job, as opposed to carving out
a specific function for the robot
to do without a person, and it seems like
that's a much easier route to go,
to set up a discrete thing that we can
carve out and program the robot to do.
Probably early days of manufacturing
and doing spot welding in cars, et cetera.
>> Right. >> So is it a lot harder
to have the robot operate with its human partner,
if you will, but are the benefits worth it?
How do you kind of see that shaking out,
versus, "Ah, I can carve out one more function"?
>> Yeah, I think it's going to be a mix.
I think there'll be, we see a lot of application
of the robots paired with people in different ways,
cobots in manufacturing being a great example,
and something that's really taking off
in manufacturing environments, but also, you have
robots of different forms that serve human needs.
There's a lot of interesting things
going on in healthcare right now.
How can you support autistic children or adults
better using human-like robots and agents
that can interact in different ways?
A lot of interesting things around Alzheimer's
and dealing with cognitive impairment and such
using robots and robotics.
So I think the future isn't, there's a lot
of robots in the wild in the form
of C-3POs and R2-D2s and those types of robots,
and we'll see some of those.
And those are being used widely in business today, even,
in different contexts, but I think
the interesting advance will be looking at
robots that complement and augment
and serve human needs more effectively.
>> Right, right, and do people do
a good enough job of getting some of the case studies?
Like, you just walked through kind of the better
use cases, the more humane use cases,
the kind of cool medical breakthroughs,
versus just continued optimization
of getting me my Starbucks coupon
when I walk by out front? (Paul laughs)
>> Yeah, I'm not sure. >> Doesn't seem like I get
the pub, like they just don't get the pub,
I don't think. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, maybe not.
A little mixology is another
(Jeff laughs) inflection that robots
are getting good at.
But I think that's what we're trying to do,
is through the effort we do with the Vision,
as well as our Tech for Good work
and other things, is look at how we
amplify and highlight some of the great work
that is happening in those areas.
>> So, you've been doing it for a decade.
What struck you this year as being
a little bit different, a little bit unexpected,
not necessarily something you may have anticipated?
>> I think the thing that is maybe
a tipping point that I see in this Vision
that I didn't anticipate is this idea
that every company's really becoming a technology company.
We said eight years ago, "Every business
"will be a digital business," and that was,
while ridiculed by some at the time,
that really came true, and every business
and every industry really is becoming digital
or has already become digital.
But I think we might've gotten it slightly wrong.
Digital was kind of a step, but every
company is deploying technology
in the way they serve their customers,
in the way they build their products and services.
Every product and service is becoming technology-enabled.
The ecosystem of technology providers
is critical to companies in every industry.
So every company's really becoming a technology company.
Maybe every company needs to be as good
as a digital native company at developing
products and services, operating them.
So I think that this idea of every company
becoming a technology company, every CEO
becoming a technology CEO, technology leader,
is something that I think will differentiate
companies going forward as well.
>> Well, really, good work, you, Michael, and the team.
It's fun to come here ever year,
because you guys do a little twist.
Like you said, it's not "Cloud's going to be really big,
"mobile's going to be really big,"
but a little bit more thoughtful,
a little bit more deep, a little bit longer
kind of thought cycles on these trends.
>> Yeah, and I think the, if you read through the Vision,
we're trying to present a complete story,
too, so it's, as you know, "We, the post-digital people."
But if you look at innovation, "The I in Experience"
is about serving your customers differently.
"The Dilemma of Smart Machines" and "Robots in the Wild"
is about your new products and services
and the post-digital environment
powered by technology.
"AI and Me" is about the new workforce,
and "Innovation DNA" is about driving
continuous innovation in your organization,
your culture, as you develop your business into the future.
So it really is providing a complete narrative
on what we think the future looks like for executives.
>> Right, good, still more utopian than dystopian,
I like it. >> More utopia than dystopia,
but you got to steer around
the roadblocks. (Jeff chuckles)
>> All right, Paul, well, thanks again,
and good luck tonight with the big presentation.
>> Thanks, Jeff.
>> All right, he's Paul, I'm Jeff.
You're watching theCUBE.
We're at the Accenture innovation reveal 2020,
when we're going to know everything
with the benefit of hindsight.
Thanks for watching, (laughs) we'll see you next time.
(upbeat pop music)