According to an Accenture Technology Vision 2020 report, of 60,000 business and IT executives worldwide that Accenture surveyed, 83% of respondents acknowledge that technology has become an inextricable part of the human experience. The report also noted: Seventy-six percent of executives agree that organizations need to dramatically re-engineer the experiences that bring technology and people together in a more human-centric manner. All of these findings were before theCOVID-19 pandemic had hit the US. The report had identified 5 key findings, including Innovative DNA. Enterprises have access to an unprecedented amount of disruptive technology, such as distributed ledgers, AI, extended reality, and quantum computing. To manage it all – and evolve at the speed demanded by the market today – organizations will need to establish their own unique innovation DNA. “To truly bring a human touch to the next decade, the new models that enterprises build must be rooted in collaboration. As technology’s level of impact grows ever higher throughout society, successful businesses will be those that use new models to invite people – customers, employees, partners or the public – to co-create their new course for the future,” this according to Accenture. I believe the importance of this report and its recommendations are even more relevant at times of crisis. A very important portion of the Accenture Technology Vision 2020 report was a strong emphasis on companies building a foundation of trust. Every business must hold itself accountable for its role across society. Trust must be the number one core value of your company – this is true for my company, Salesforce. Paul Daugherty is co-author of Accenture’s Technology and Vision report. Paul Daugherty is Accenture’s group chief executive and technology and chief technology officer. Paul oversees all aspects of developing and delivering Technology’s capabilities, bringing innovation, intelligence, and deep industry experience together with leading technologies from ecosystem partners to help clients reinvent their businesses as intelligent enterprises and innovate at scale. As chief technology officer, Paul is responsible for driving innovation through research and development (R&D) activities in Accenture Labs and leveraging emerging technologies to bring the newest innovations to clients globally. He founded and oversees Accenture Ventures, which is focused on strategic equity investments and open innovation to accelerate growth. Paul is also responsible for managing Accenture’s alliances, partnerships. Paul is co-author of Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI. To learn more about what companies are doing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ray Wang, CEO of Silicon Valley-based research and advisory firm Constellation Research, and I invited Paul Daugherty to our weekly video podcast DisrupTV. Wang and I have interviewed nearly 600 guests since 2016 and Daugherty is one of our favorite returned guests – this was his fourth appearance on our show. You can view our 25-minute interview with Daugherty in the video below: Here are 10 takeaways of our interview with Paul Daugherty at Accenture:
Vision and hands-on leadership from the top. Every CEO is becoming a technology CEO. Deep empathy and personal connection. Giving people a sense of importance. Ability to grow and leverage the ecosystem of partners to co-create value at the speed of need
Daugherty was our first guest on episode 190 of DisrupTV. We also had an amazing conversation with Stacey Epstein, CMO and chief experience officer and ServiceMax, about will COVID-19 crisis allow more women to become leaders? “No one, regardless of gender, should ever be made to feel they have to choose between pursuing a big career and being a good and present parent,” said Epstein. Our final guest was Steve Wilson, VP and principal analyst at Constellation Research, spoke about the privacy-safety trade-off in the coronavirus crisis Please watch these amazing interviews with Epstein and Wilson who further expanded on Daugherty’s recommendations to businesses as the fight through the tough economic conditions during this crisis. Accenture is working on updates to their 2020 Technology and Vision Report in the upcoming weeks. I will summarize the updates in a future article.
