 From the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, it's theCUBE, on the ground, with Accenture Labs 30th anniversary celebration. Hello everyone, welcome to the special CUBE coverage of Accenture Labs 30th years of celebration here at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Our next guest is John Walsh, who's the Northern California Office Managing Director, as well as the General Manager of the P&L of Telecom, Hi-Tech and Meat Entertainment, three big P&Ls, plus running the whole territory. You've got a big celebration here. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for coming, John. It's great to have you. So first of all, Northern California, you got the Warriors in the backyard. I'm sure Accenture's got a box, schmoozing customers. You guys working with them at all? Well, you know, it's funny you bring that up, John. We are working, we're pretty close with the Warriors as it turns out. As you know, the Warriors are building out their new stadium right down in the dog patch in San Francisco, and so we've been working with them to really design the fan experience before, during, and after the game, what that experience is going to look like. Being here in Northern California, you can imagine that's going to be a very, very tech forward experience. Hopefully it's going to kind of define the state of the industry. And we're proud to be a partner of the Warriors and part of that design. And what better topic to kind of, as a backdrop to the labs, Accenture Labs, 30 years here, looking forward to the next 30 years? I mean, the Warriors are the poster child, kind of like the Patriots are in football with respect to a culture, but they're innovative tech geeks too. They understand how to use technology for an outcome, not try to get an outcome out of their technology. They really understand that, and that's really kind of the ethos of the labs. I think that's exactly right. And obviously, you know, we can talk about the Warriors as much as you want, because I'm a huge fan, but you know, the way they've thought about actually changing the game through technology and embedding it in part of the way they actually build that experience out is one of the reasons why we partner well with them. Obviously, we'll leverage our labs capabilities and a lot of our labs practitioners in order to actually innovate, co-innovate with the Warriors. And I think all of us here in the Bay Area are going to be able to appreciate that in the coming years. Well, when the NDAs are expired or maybe even sooner, we'll have to come up to your office and get a deeper dive on the Warriors situation. So it's worth a bigger feature. But here at the labs at the Computer History Museum, better place to kind of talk about where the industries come from, where Accenture Labs has come from, and where it's going. So I got to ask you, you know, Arthur Anderson back at Big Six Accounting from 30 plus years ago to Anderson Consulting to Accenture really kind of was the ways of innovation that everyone talks about. Now, the next 30 years, we're looking down the throat of AI, blockchain, internet of things, using data at scale, cloud computing, quantum computing, really changing how companies are executing their business architecture, not just IT. I mean, it's a complete transformation, disruption. For sure. Well, Accenture, I mean, you went through the history. I actually joined Arthur Anderson 30 some years ago. And I think we've always prided ourselves on being on that leading edge. And sort of our objective was to actually incorporate those new technologies, apply them to our enterprise client base and sort of be able to do that, you know, kind of be there and then be gone before our competitors get there. I think you'll see some of that tonight as we sort of walk you around the showcase here. But there's, you know, and you've heard this 100 times, John, there's never been a better time to be in the tech world to be able to actually look at kind of the breadth of technology opportunity that's here, how to apply that to our global enterprise base to create advantage, differentiation and change and change is what drives our business model. Yeah, and we were just talking with Mark, one of the senior directors of the labs, you know, talk about accounting firms and those kinds of data, way back in the day, they would instrument business. Now, as you guys are now in more 30 years, plus years later, the instrumentation's all in the data. So literally for the first time in the history of the world of business, you might not need accounting with blockchain and everything's instrumented. So there's no more questions that can't be answered, some level. So this is going to be like a complete new generation, next 30 years, pretty significant. Everything's instrumented and all kinds of disruptions around how a company organizes themselves. What is a sensuous vision? How do you guys talk to customers? Because not only is it mind blowing, it also is fear. Yeah, I don't adapt and move on, I can't get there. Yeah, well, I mean, and again, that is, I mean, that's kind of the nature of competition, that's always been the nature of technology. And right now, I think it's a combination of, the digital natives have been the ones that have kind of been pushing the envelope and putting pressure on every industry, every business model. And I think they've been out in front, we're seeing sort of our whole global client base adapt and respond and start to incorporate all of these and re-engineer their processes with the benefit of digital at every one of those layers. You mentioned analytics sort of and data is at the core of I think what will define success in the future for every enterprise in every industry. And that's really where we're spending our time with our customers. It's like, how do you take advantage of the data and the insight and the knowledge that you have to run your business more efficiently and to better serve customers, empower your employees to serve customers and to allow customers to better serve themselves with all these tools. We're here at the Computers Museum in your backyard, your territory, so you're obviously going to crash the party but I find it really compelling and rightfully so to be in Silicon Valley, but the world's changing. And they're going to help with the next 30 years. It's got a magic show here. So I got to ask you, as someone who leads the business who've been through the organization, how do you hire the next generation talent? You got to build out, you got to innovate. What's the profile? Is there an algorithm? Is there a formula that you have as you build out and continue to scale out your people? You got the innovation DNA in the culture. We do. We see that. We get the labs pumping on all cylinders. We see that. What's the people strategy? Diversity is key. We're seeing more women coming in the workforce certainly in Silicon Valley art territory. Has been great news lately for women. Right. What are you guys doing? So let me start last first with the diversity comment. I think we've been pretty public in terms of communicating sort of what the profile of our employee base looks like. All the statistics top to bottom from diversity, ethnic diversity, and gender diversity. Our CEO has recently made a commitment to be at 50-50 gender diversity by 2025. I don't think there's any other company that's sort of on our size and scale that's made that level of commitment. That's a moonshot. That's a moonshot level. Mars shot, what do you want to call it? It's a moonshot for sure. But the way we're looking at it is 50% of the IQ actually is there and we need to be able to be tapping into all of that. And for those folks, they're in the marketplace, they're just not at Accenture and we want to create an environment that actually brings all those folks in. Other than that, it's just, you know, it's basic. More data scientists. More data science. More engineers. More engineers. More computer science. And more people that are good at problem solving and naturally curious. And we have a pretty rigorous recruiting process and we also have a brand that I think attracts talent. We build deep relationships with universities, which helps kind of give us early access. I was talking to a couple of our interns who are here tonight like, wow, this is awesome. You know, and that's always been the recipe for Accenture. What do you say to the young college grads that are graduating undergraduate or a master's degree? Man, I'm going to land the job at Accenture. Good, it's a dream job at some level. What do you say to them? What do you look for? I'm looking for fill in the blank. What do you, when you say answer that question? I mean, for me, I'm looking for people that, you know, that love problem solving, right? That are naturally curious that like, you know, working Accenture's hard, right? So having that work ethic, that ability to be persistent on hard. You got to be skilled. You got to be skilled. You got to be skilled that you don't even get the interview if you don't have at least that much on your resume. But beyond that, you know, it's how they interact. We're a client, we're a client focused business as well. So, you know, having people that are actually able to, you know, to work as part of the team and work with clients is pretty critical. John, congratulations and the event's starting. Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. John Walsh who runs the California, Northern California Managing Director as well as the P&L responsibility for telecom, high tech and meat entertainment. Here at the CUBE coverage of Accenture Labs, 30 year celebration at Computers Museum. I'm John Furrier for theCUBE. Thanks for watching.