 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering the AWS Accenture Executive Summit. Brought to you by Accenture. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit here at the Venetian in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We have two guests for this segment. We have Mike Moore, Senior Principal at Accenture Research and Andrew Wilson, Chief Information Officer at Accenture. Thank you both so much for coming, for returning to theCUBE. Good to see you as ever, Rebecca, and to be back in Las Vegas as well. Exactly, back in Sin City, right? Here we are. So, our topic is innovation. A buzzword that is so buzzy, it's almost boring. Let's start the conversation with just defining innovation. What does innovation mean? An objective, a behavior, a way of working. To me, innovation is what we need to do with modern technology to enable the enterprise and the business world. And be creative humans and to use disciplines which we didn't typically bring to work before. And is it, is it creativity? I mean, or is there sort of logic and rationale too? I think there's logic and rationale. I think, but there's also entertainment, fun, modern consumer like experimentation, risk taking, things of that nature. I think the key is actually striking the balance between creativity and logic and rationale. And that's the really tricky bit because you need to give your employees the license to be creative, but within a certain set of boundaries as well. The rules of work have definitely changed and behaviors that we encourage, even the clothes we wear, how we work, when we work, those are all characteristic of, I think, of a more innovative, accepting, diverse world. And a world that can keep up with the modern technology and the advancements and the announcements like we're hearing about here at Reinvent. It's the ultimate right brain, left brain, a behavior and activity. So, Mike, you have done some research recently about the hallmarks of innovative companies, what they do differently from the ones that are not innovative, that are failing here. So tell our viewers a little bit about what you found in your research. Well, we surveyed 840 executives from a variety of different companies, different industries, different geographies, to understand their approach to innovation and those who are doing it particularly well and those maybe not so well. And around about 14% of our respondents were turning their investments in innovation into accelerated growth. And there were lots of different reasons for their success, but three things really stood out. So first of all, their outcome led in terms of the way they approach innovation. So they put a clear set of processes around the renovation activities and then linked those to operation on financial performance metrics. They're also disruption-minded. So they're not just pursuing incremental tweaks to their products and services, but they're investing in disruptive technologies that could actually create entirely new markets. And then finally, they're change-orientated. They're not just using innovation to change their products and services, but also to fundamentally change the nature of their own organizations as a whole. So 14% are doing things or knocking it out of the park. Does that mean the rest of them are all laggards or are sort of some in the middle? What is the state of innovation in industry today, would you say, Andrew? I would say it's hugely variable by industry, geography, type of company, and individual instance of leader and culture. But I'm sure that the most successful companies, those that are pivoting to the new, those that are imaginative, those that have recently arrived, all have that DNA that we're describing, all have that way of working, all have that ability to operate cleverly, intelligently, humorously, and at speed. I think innovation is very much characterized by something that can be fast-failed, do step, move sideways, do again. The way of working has changed in modern enterprises. We as CIOs have to accept that, we have to speed up, we have to create the environment and where that productivity, where that creation can occur. And I think all of that's key. You keep mentioning this, this the way of working has changed. And I think we all sort of know what you mean, but explain a little bit, what you're seeing. Experimentation, the ability to get more done with the resources that you have. So here we are at AWS re-invent, cloud-based operations. Cloud gives you, gives me as a CIO, the means to do more, more quickly, more rapidly, at greater scale, in more places than I ever could have imagined in my old-fashioned data centers. So the services we can consume, the data we can connect together, the artificial intelligence we can bring to it, the consumer-like experience, all of those things, which by the way, are drawing on innovative behaviors in their own right, are absolutely what the game is about now. How does AWS figure into your cloud transformation? Well, for our cloud transformation at Accenture, AWS is one of the core cloud platform providers who power Accenture. We are nearly 95% in cloud. So as an organization, that's very pronounced and typically ahead of most organizations. But we sort of have to be, don't we? I mean, we have to be our own North Star. I can't sit here and explain the virtues of what Accenture can bring to a client's cloud transformation if we haven't already done it to ourselves. And by the way, that drew on innovative approaches, risk-taking approaches, because over the last three years, we've moved Accenture to the cloud. So I mean, I love how you said it. We are our own North Star, and other people would say we eat our own dog food. I mean, they're just kind of more gross. But in terms of having experienced this transformation yourselves, how do you use what you've learned to help your companies transform as well and make these moves, take these risks? What would you say to that? Well, I think we keep an eye on the research with our colleagues there. They're our own North Star. I think we look at the ecosystem, we assess readiness for enterprise, security, compliance, scale, availability. And then we also look and say, and what's ready for prime time in terms of Accenture's scale, half a million people nearly. You bring all of those things together and it's a recipe and that's why we consult our business. That's why we guide and educate and experiment and innovate together. And that's very much how we adopted cloud. It's very much how we do a number of other things and the creative services we have. In terms of, let's get back to the research. So how do you, I mean, as you said, the research is, as Andrew said, it's something that executive leaders are looking at to figure out what's actually happening in the market as well as what's happening within the organization itself. So how do you set your research agenda in terms of figuring out where you want to focus your time and energy and resources? Well, I think we do it in a very similar way to in which we consult with clients. We speak to them. We talk to them about some of the key issues that they're facing and we always interview a series of executives and also academics to get their perspective at the start of the project. And that's something that we did in this particular instance. And what we heard from many executives was that to the point that Andrew was making before, the speed and scale of innovation today is happening at a completely different pace than in the past. So product cycle times are just diminishing in every single industry. And as a consequence, executives now need to build new innovation units to make sure that they can respond to that changing market. So that's what we wanted to explore through the research. So in this research, with the 14% doing it well, the 86% sort of either somewhere on the spectrum of doing terribly or figuring things out, getting better, what are their pain points and sort of what's your advice to those companies? Well, I think we take the positive spin on it in terms of what the companies are doing well. One of the points that Andrew was making before was how Accenture works with other partners to become more innovative itself. And that's something that we saw many of the high-performing companies doing. So many of them were what we call network-powered, not just innovating using their own resources, their own people, but they're drawing on a broader ecosystem of partners to bring the very best products and services to their customers. And they're spending not just on R&D internally, but also on accelerators, incubators, technology-based M&A. And actually they're spending as much on inorganic innovation as they are on organic innovation. At Accenture, we actually help our clients look for trapped value. And what we mean by that is if an organization with a history, with a set of business processes, a set of technologies and a set of disciplines and employees that have been successful and worked possibly for decades in that model, then they're going to be in some pretty tight guide rails. How do you innovate out of that to deal with all of the disruption that's now available, good, healthy disruption, that actually reveals the next level of efficiency, customer satisfaction, product creativity, and innovation in its own right. So that's innovation in action, if you like. I want to ask is, you know, here we are at AWS re-invent, Andy Jassy on the main stage this morning announcing a dizzying number of new product services. And AWS, this is Amazon, this is a huge company that really seems to know how to innovate and do it constantly. But is that, I mean, can every company be Amazon? You know what I'm saying? I mean, is this really possible and attainable? Is there such a thing as innovation fatigue, perhaps? Well, exactly, right? My view is that you have to find a way to make innovation a constant and a norm. It doesn't mean that you always have to operate with the same ridiculous pace, but creativity and pace do go hand in hand to a point. But to be ahead, to stay ahead, and to lead an organization of technologists who can comprehend all of these announcements. So you have to innovate in both how you lead and operate as well. It's not just your product, it's your behaviors, because there's just so much coming all the time. Right, and we've seen a number of large companies, not necessarily technology companies, but I'm thinking of Sears and Toys R Us that have really, you see what can happen. The cautionary kids. Look at the attrition in the Fortune 500, and you can see how companies have a half-life now, which perhaps is very different to 20 or 30 years ago. Right, right, exactly. Well, Mike and Andrew, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. This was a really, really fascinating discussion. Thanks. Thank you, good to see you again. I'm Rebecca Knight. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of the AWS Executive Summit.