 From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Accenture TechVision 2020. Brought to you by Accenture. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Accenture San Francisco Innovation Hub on the 33rd floor of the Salesforce Tower in downtown San Francisco. It's 2020, the year we know everything with the benefit of hindsight. It led better way to kick off the year than to have the Accenture TechVision reveal, which is happening later tonight. So we're really happy to have one of the authors who's really driving the whole thing. He's Michael Biltz, the managing director of the Accenture TechVision 2020, a very special edition. Michael, great to see you. Hey, thanks for having me. Absolutely. So you've been doing this for a while. I think we heard earlier this thing's been going on for 20 years. It is. You've been involved for at least the last eight. I think a little bit more than that. So what's kind of the big theme before we get into some of the individual items? So I mean, I think right now what we're really talking about is that our real big theme is this we the digital people. And it's that recognition that says that we fundamentally changed. I mean, when you start looking at yourself and your lives is that you've gotten to a point where you're letting your cell phone track you. Your car knows you where you are probably better than your spouse does. You're handing your key to Amazon and Walmart so they can deliver packages and help. And more than that is that actually we're trying to start to revolve our lives around this technology. I look at my own life and we just sold our second car specifically because we know that Uber and Lyft exist to build that board. Right. Well, you don't have to look much further than phone numbers. How many people remember anybody's phone number anymore? Cause you don't really have to. And I think it's a 15th anniversary of Google Maps this year. And to think of a world without Google Maps without that kind of instant access to knowledge is really hard to even fathom. But as you said, we're making trade-offs when we use all these services. And now some of the costs of those things are being maybe more exposed, maybe more cuter in your face. I don't know, what would you say? I mean, I think what's happening now is that what we're realizing is that it's changed our relationship with companies. Is that suddenly we've actually brought them into our lives. And on one hand they're offering and have the ability to offer services that you could never really do before. But on the other hand is that if I'm gonna let somebody in my life, suddenly they don't have to provide, just provide me value and this is useful, is that they actually are expecting them to retain their values too. So how they protect your data, what they're good for the community, for the environment, for society. Whether it's sustainable or not is that suddenly, whereas people used to only care about what the product you're getting, now how it's built and how your company is being run is starting, like it's just starting, to become important too. Right, well it's funny, cause we used to talk about kind of triple bottom line, shareholders, customers and your employees, and you talked about really kind of this fourth line, which is the community and really being involved in the community, people care, suddenly you go to conferences where we spend a lot of time and all the utensils are now compostable and the forks are compostable and a lot of the individual packaging stuff is going away. So people do care. They do and there's a fourth and a fifth that says your community cares, but it's also your partners do too. Is that you can't, I'm gonna say downgrade the idea that you're B2B folks care, is that suddenly we're finding ourselves tied to these other companies and not just in a supply chain, but from everything. And so you're not in this alone in terms of how you're delivering these things, but now it's becoming a matter that says the, well man, if my partners are gonna get pummeled because they're not doing the right thing or they don't have that broad scope is the that's gonna reflect on me too. And so now you're suddenly in this interesting position where all of the things that we suspected were gonna happen around digital connecting everybody is just starting to and I think that's gonna have a lot of positive effects. Yeah. So one of the things you talked about earlier today in earlier presentation was kind of the shift from kind of buyer and seller, seller consumer to provider and collaborator really kind of reflecting a very different kind of a relationship between the parties as opposed to kind of this one shot transactional relationship. No, and that's right. And it doesn't matter who you're talking about is that if you're hiring folks for skills that you're assuming that they're gonna learn, that's gonna be different in three years and five years, you're essentially partnering with them in order to take all of you on a journey. When you start talking about governments is that you're now partnering with regulators. You look at companies like Tesla who are working on regulations for electric cars, they're working on regulations around battery technology and you see that this go it alone approach isn't what you're doing, rather it's becoming much more holistic. Right, so we're in the innovation hub and I think number five of the five is really about innovation DNA and you guys are driving innovation and rest of peace Clayton Christensen passed away innovators dilemma my all time favorite book but the thing I love about that book is that smart people making sound decisions based on business logic and taking care of existing customers will always miss discontinuous change but you guys are really trying to help big companies be innovative, what are some of the things that they should be thinking about besides obviously engaging with Mary and the team here at the innovation hub? And that's the really interesting thing is that when we talked about innovation five or even 10 years ago, you were talking about just how do I find a new product or a new service to bring to market? And now that's the minimum stakes like that's what everybody's doing and I think what we're realizing as we're seeing tech become such a big part is that we all see how it's affecting the world and a lot of times the things are good is that there's no reason why you wouldn't look at somebody like a Lyft or Uber and say that it's had a lot of positive effects but from the same standpoint is that you ask questions of is it good for public transit? Is it good for city infrastructure? And those are hard questions to ask and I think where we're really pushing now is that question that says we've got an entire generation of not tech companies but every company that's about to get into this innovation game and what we want them to do is to look at this not the way that the tech folks did that says here's one service or one technology but rather look at it holistically that says how am I actually gonna implement this and what are the real effects that it's gonna have on all of these different aspects? Lava and attendant consequences is always good and I remember hearing years ago with this concept of curb management. I'm like curb management, who ever thought of that? Well, drive up and down in Manhattan when they're delivering, groceries are delivering, Amazon packages and FedEx packages and Uber Eats and delivery dog food now where's that stuff being staged? Now the warehouse has kind of shifted out into the public space so you never kind of really know where these things are gonna end up. No and I'm not saying that we're gonna be able to predict all of it, I think rather it's that starting point that says that we're starting to see a big push that says that these things need to be factored and considered and then similarly it's the if you're working with them up front it becomes less of a fault on a site of who's fault it is at the end and it becomes more of a collaboration that says how much more can we do if we're working with our cities, if we're working with our employees, if we're working with our customers. Now another follow up, you guys have been talking about this for years is every company is a tech company or a digital company depending on how you wanna spin that but as you were talking about earlier today in doing so and in converting from products to service and converting from an ongoing relationship to a one-time transaction it's not only at that point of touch with the customer but you've gotta make a bunch of fundamental changes back in your own systems to support kind of this changing business model. And that's right and I think this is gonna become the big challenge of the generation is that we've gotten to a point where just using their existing models for how you interact with your customers or how you protect their data or who owns the data, all of these types of things is that they were designed back when we were doing single applications and they were loading up on your Windows PC and where we're at now is that we're starting to ask questions that says all right in this new world what do I have to fundamentally do differently? And sometimes that can be as simple as asking a question that says there's a consortium of pharma folks who have created a joint way for them to develop all of their search algorithms for new drugs but they're using blockchain and so they're not actually sharing the data. So they do all the good things but they're pushing that but fundamentally that's a different way to think about it. You're now creating an entirely new infrastructure because what you're used to is just handing somebody the data and what they do with the data afterwards is kind of their issue and not yours and so now we're asking big new questions to do it. Right, another big thing that keeps coming up over and over is trust. And again we talked a little earlier but I find this really ironic situation where people don't necessarily trust the companies in terms of the people running the companies and what they're going to do with their data but they fundamentally trust the technology coming out of the gate and this expectation of of course it works, everything works on my mobile phone but the two are related but not equal. No, I mean they're not. I mean and it's really pushing this idea that says we've been looking at all of these I'm going to say scary headlines of people not trusting companies for the last number of years while at the same time the adoption for the technology has been huge. There's this dichotomy that's going on in people where at one point is they like the tech. I think the last stat that I saw is that everybody spends up to six and a half hours a day involved on the internet in their technology but from the same standpoint is that they worry about who's using it and how and what it's going to be done and I think where we're at is that interesting piece that says we're not worried about a tech clash. We don't think that people are going to stop using technology rather we think it's really this tech clash that says they're not getting the value that they thought out of it or they're seeing companies that may be using this technology that don't share the same values that they do and really what we think this becomes is the next opportunity for the next generations of service providers in order to fill that gap. Right, yeah don't forget there was a Friendster in a MySpace before there was a Facebook so nothing lasts forever. So last question if I let you go, it's a busy night. The first one was the eye and experience and I think the user experience doesn't get enough light as to such a defining thing that does move the market. Again, I'd love to pick on Uber but the Uber experience compared to walking outside on a rainy day in Manhattan and hoping to hail down a cab is fundamentally different and I would argue it's that technology put together in this user experience that defined this kind of game changing event as opposed to it's a bunch of API stitching stuff together in the back. No that's right and I think where we're at right now is that we're about to see the next leap beyond that. Is that most of the time when we look at the experiences that we're doing today they're one way, is that people assume that yeah I have your data, I'm trying to customize and whether it's an ad or buying experience or whatever but they're pushing it as this one way street and when we talk about putting the eye back in experience it's that question of the next step to really get people both more engaged as well as to I'm gonna say improve the experience self means that it's gonna become a partnership so you're actually gonna start looking for input back and forth and it's sometimes it's gonna be as simple as saying that that ad that they're pushing out is for a product that I've already bought or maybe even just tell me how you knew that that's what I was looking for but it's sometimes that little things that back and forth is how you take something from which can be a mediocre experience even potentially a negative one and really turn it into something that people like. Yeah, well Michael I'll let you go I know you got a busy night we're gonna present this and really thanks to you and the team and congratulations for coming up with something that's a little bit more provocative than cloud's gonna be big or mobile's gonna be big or edge is gonna be big so this is great material and thanks for having us back look forward to tonight. Happy to do it and you know next year we'll probably do it again. I don't know we know already know everything it's 2020 what else does none know? Everything's going to change. All right, thanks again. He's Michael I'm Jeff you're watching theCUBE we're at the San Francisco Innovation Hub at Ascension headquarters on the 33rd floor high above San Francisco thanks for watching we'll see you next time.