 From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Accenture TechVision 2020. Brought to you by Accenture. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We are high at Top San Francisco at the Accenture Innovation Hub, 33rd floor of the Salesforce Tower. It's the Accenture Technology Vision 2020 party. The party's getting started. Paul and Mike and the team are going to present the findings that we're excited to have. Actually, the hostess of this great facility, she's Ashley Miller, Managing Director of the San Francisco Innovation Hub. Ashley, great to see you. Great to see you again. So congratulations. Once again, we were here last year with the grand opening of this facility. You've had it open for a year now. We sure have. It's been a year. We also had a soft launch in September. So a little more than a year under our belt. And as you can see, place is busy. Right, so you had the hard job, right? So Mike and Paul and all the big brains they put together pretty pictures and great statements. You're the one that actually has to help customers implement this stuff. So tell us a little bit about, you know, kind of how you use the tech vision because it's pretty insightful. It's a lot deeper than cloud's going to be big or mobile's going to be big. But to take some of these things to help you with your customers drive this innovation. Yeah, well, I don't know about having the hard job against theirs. They certainly have the hard job understanding what these technology trends are that are going to have an impact on business three to five years out. But I certainly do have the fun job and the exciting job. I get to work with our clients every day here in the hub and work with our 250 dedicated innovation teammates here in the hub to think about the impact of these trends to their business. So clients come in for a day, two days a week and we'll sit with technologists. We'll get our hands on some of these emerging technologies on quantum computing on artificial intelligence, machine vision, machine learning, natural language processing. You name it, we have it here. We have a smart materials showcase going on upstairs that a lot of these clients have checked out. So they can come here, they can get their hands on these technologies that are driving these trends. And then they can set and work with strategists and others who can think about what are the application of these technologies to their business. And then what's really exciting is we have engineers here who can then help build prototypes to actually test these technologies to see what their impacts are for the business. And then finally support the rollout of pilots that prove successful. So again, it's the fun job, love it. And how does it actually work in terms of kind of best practices? Is it kind of starting out of some strategy conversation with the top level people about trying to integrate say more AI into their products or is it maybe more of within a product group where they're trying to be a little bit more innovative and it's really challenges on a product development path. You talked about material science that they want to go down. What are some of the ways that people actually work with you and work with your teams and leverage this asset that's here at the hub? Yeah, so ultimately it's both and it's at all ends of the spectrum. We are here in the Silicon Valley where clients are coming from all over the globe to understand what the trends are that are going to shape their business operations in the future. So we have clients who are coming through some people call them digital safaris or innovation safaris. Some people may say that's not valuable. I think it is valuable to come and get first-hand experience, knowledge, touch and feel these things and really dedicate time but think about the application to your business. On the other end of the spectrum, we'll have clients who are here for days, weeks and months and we have ongoing partnerships with clients. We've been open for about a year and a half for that and longer to actually embed these innovation capabilities into their business. So I think maybe an answer is what is the most successful model I see? I really get to dig into these clients who are using our services as an innovation engine to help them drive their business and to help augment their innovation capabilities. And it's those clients I see who are continuously testing, continuously learning understanding the impacts of these technologies, driving proof of some concepts to test them who are able to make progress. Can it happen without top-down support? I mean, we talked unfortunately, Clayton Christensen just passed away Innovator's Dilemma, my favorite, my favorite business book of all time because he said smart people making sound business decisions based on customers' profitability and business logical business priorities will always miss discontinuous change. Jeff Bezos talks about AWS had a seven-year head start on their public cloud because no one down in Redwood Shores or Waldorf was paying attention to the bookseller in Seattle. So it's hard for big companies to innovate. So is it really necessary for that top-down that hey, we are going to invest and we are going to saddle up and get our hands dirty with some of these technologies for them to be successful and drive innovation because it's not easy for big enterprises. Yeah, you're exactly right. Innovation is hard. Change is difficult. I was a student of Clayton Christensen and like you and many others, our morning is passing. He made a significant impact this area of research. Change is hard, it's difficult. So we see a lot of clients who are coming in and are doing interesting things to overcome that inertia to stay put. And I think top-down leadership is a significant piece of that. You need to have leaders who are supporting movement who are enabling decision-making quickly. So they are supporting small decisions. They're making frequently so that there's not a massive decision that happens at the end of a pilot, but rather micro-decisions that help ensure things are being moved along. Building pilots and proof of concepts, of course help in that movement to get buy-in, to get leaders to see the value and to also pivot if something isn't working. So innovation is hard. Accenture's Innovation Hub helps to fill some of those gaps because really we are a sandbox where you can come in, build the proof of concepts, test these ideas, and then in an ongoing, continuous way, help understand their impacts to your business. Right. I'm just curious how often, as you know, order of magnitude, it's kind of innovation around a particular existing business. Maybe it's a new material, it's a new way of thinking about it, versus maybe is this a way for them to really explore kind of wild ideas, or kind of go out a little bit beyond the edge of what they're executing in their normal day-to-day, say product development. Which of those do you find is best use of your resources? Yeah, so again, it runs the spectrum. I mean, I think the companies who are innovating around the edges, they're spending a lot of money to run pilots and test proof of concepts that may not have significant value to the core of their business. So of course it's the companies who are really thinking about how they're going to innovate new business models, how they're going to build on these trends to figure out where their company is going in the future and be ready and be ahead of the curve. But in order to get there, maybe you do need to get your hands dirty and run some tests, run some proof of concepts to understand the technology. The key is in order to ensure that the investment in those activities is actually helping you move the needle. Right. So how should people, if somebody's watching this and they want to get involved, they're like, you know, I'm busted in my head, we're not moving as fast as we need to, I'm nervous, I have an imperative, I need to accelerate this stuff. How do they get involved? How do they end up here getting their hands dirty with some of your team? Yeah, thanks for that, I appreciate that. Accenture works with the largest organizations around the globe and there's typically a client account lead or partner from Accenture embedded into the biggest organizations. And so for those who are existing clients, they can reach out to their client account lead and we would be delighted to welcome them in and do some either exploratory research into these technologies or actually do some longer term innovation engine work where we're helping to augment their capabilities. For those who maybe aren't an Accenture client, we do have open houses, we do quarterly open events, not only for potential new clients but also for people in the community, for partners, for schools. We're really committed to helping to be an asset for San Francisco, for this community. So keep your eyes peeled for opportunities to come in. Yeah, that's great, because last time when we were here when we opened, there was a lot of conversation about being a very active participant in the community. You guys are sponsors with the Warriors at the Chase Center but I think we had a number of people from the city and county of San Francisco and talking about the opportunities and being an active engaged member of the community beyond just a for profit company. Absolutely, and the undercurrent of this year's tech vision which is about to launch is all about thinking beyond the edges of your organization and understanding the choices that you make, how they impact the communities you serve. So it's really important to us to be a good steward of that here at Accenture and we have teammates accessible within the hub, for example, data ethicists who can help you understand the decisions you're making around artificial intelligence. Are you using data securely? Are you using it in a way that makes people feel comfortable? So we have teammates here who can help clients consider the impact of these decisions that goes beyond the four walls to really be a good steward for the next generation. Okay, well next time I come, I'm wearing a white coat so we can go get our hands dirty. I like it. All right Ashley, we'll get congratulations to you and the team and have a great evening. Thank you so much. All right, she's Ashley, I'm Jeff. You're watching theCUBE at the Accenture Innovation Hub for the Technology Vision 2020. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.