Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Paul Daugherty, CTO and Chief Innovation Officer, Accenture (Part 3)

Paul Daugherty: We also have another component of Accenture Ventures, which we call Open Innovation. It’s our program for working with all the entrepreneurs, accelerators, and incubators that we can find. We have a team that focuses specifically on open innovation.

We currently have over 3,000 startups that we’ve met with. We’ve curated and understand what we do. That number is ever growing and is growing very rapidly. We curate them into a framework so that we understand, for a given startup, what stage they are at, how ready they are to go to large corporate clients, and what industry and geography they specialize in. We have a system that we track all that in. >>>

Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Paul Daugherty, CTO and Chief Innovation Officer, Accenture (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: There’re a lot of things you said there that are worth double-clicking down on. Let me start pulling some of it out and explore further. One thing you said is that we are in a continuously evolving industry and we have to practice continuous innovation.

One of the ways you do that is through grassroots innovation across your 440,000 employee base. What is the structure of that? How do you engage this very large base of talent in the innovation philosophy or innovation agenda? >>>

Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

By Guest Author Paul Daugherty and H James Wilson

Human+Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI is a new book by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson that discusses how AI gives businesses the power to reimagine and transform their processes. Here is an excerpt from the book, reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press.  >>>

Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Paul Daugherty, CTO and Chief Innovation Officer, Accenture (Part 1)

Accenture is deeply entrenched in innovation as technology moves at a breakneck pace, and their clients all need to stay apace. Read how Paul and his organization structures continuous innovation.

Sramana Mitra: Tell us a bit about how you are thinking about corporate innovation at Accenture from a broad framework point of view.

Paul Daugherty: The way my job and my role is shaped is to look ahead a couple of years and make sure that we’re always moving Accenture’s business in the direction technology is going so we are better positioned and even more relevant in the future than we are today. Accenture is a big company. We have about 440,000 people and about $35 billion in revenue. It’s a big >>>

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Dave Excell, Co-Founder and CTO of Featurespace (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Any other ideas that you’ve picked up while keeping your eyes and ears open?

Dave Excell: The reason why a business like us exists is that fraud is able to take place. If you look at a lot of fraud stories, it’s due to the lack of authentication on transactions. If you can authenticate who a customer is when they buy something online or when they go into a shop and use their card, that is where you can start to make the whole security of the transaction much more reliable.

Sramana Mitra: Any other broader trends that have particularly caught your attention vis-a-vis AI that is worth discussing in this conversation? >>>

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Dave Excell, Co-Founder and CTO of Featurespace (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: When you go into a customer, do you find a lot of historic data that is formatted in a way that your algorithm can use that data?

Dave Excell: Usually, we have to work with that customer to make sure that we find and understand all of that data and to make sure that it’s in a consistent and usable format. That is part of the initial engagement.

Sramana Mitra: How long does it take for your algorithm, in a particular customer instance, to gather enough history or enough mileage to be able to be effective? >>>

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Dave Excell, Co-Founder and CTO of Featurespace (Part 1)

This discussion explores Machine Learning apps in financial services.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself and Featurespace.

Dave Excell: I’m the Founder of Featurespace.

Sramana Mitra: What is Featurespace?

Dave Excell: Featurespace is a machine learning company on understanding and outsmarting risks. We use machine learning to >>>

Man and Superman: Future of Education

In the One Million by One Million online curriculum, almost eight years ago, I decided to put in a line as a joke: “We’re working on a chip that can be implanted in your brain and it will transfer ALL the entrepreneurial knowledge from my brain to yours. However, this chip is not quite ready yet. So, in the meantime, please study the curriculum and learn the methodology of entrepreneurship that we have designed.”

Well, little did I know that this would cease to be a joke by 2018.

In fact, in the next decade or two, perhaps, this sort of implant will become the future of education.

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