>> 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. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. We're joined by Annette Rippert. She is the Senior Managing Director Accenture Technology, North America. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Well, I'm happy to be here today. >> So, let's talk a little bit about Accenture's innovation for society initiative. Give our viewers a little background on it. >> Sure. Well, you know, for quite a while we've been known as a company around innovation. But I think one thing that doesn't always come forward is the fact that you know, since our very early days we've had this very tight coupling with corporate citizenship, with philanthropy. In fact we invest 1% of our pre-taxed dollars in philanthropic related initiatives. And you know, for a number of years we've had initiatives like Tech4Good that are part of the DNA of our organization. So, when you think about the innovation side of the organization, and then you think about our philanthropic desires and couple that now with all of the digital technologies, really the possibilities are almost endless when you think about ways that, really, we strive to be able to conquer, not only business problems but societal problems with technology. >> So how do you decide where you're going to focus your energy, your time, your resources. How do you choose the biggest most pressing problems? >> Yes. Well I think one of the things that's really important is we always start with the business process or the societal issue itself as opposed to thinking about how can we use a particular technology to instantiate something we start with really, what's the social problem. And one of the ways that we do this, we have a global innovation contest. Our people get so excited to be apart of this as you could imagine. And one of the tracks is really around Tech4Good and so, teams from around the world think of ways that they can use technology to solve a particular societal issue. And it's really exciting to see the kind of innovations that come out of that. In the end the winners globally are funded to be able to take that idea and actually develop it and put it out in to use. >> So talk about some of the winners and the most exciting entrants from your perspective. >> Well, there's one that I think is maybe a good place to start and that's really around the area of home care, elder care, you know striving to keep a connection together with somebody who's in that circumstance. And being able to provide sort of a real world interaction. So, one of the teams took, with that in mind, concepts around natural language processing, around AI, and really IoT as well. Connecting in sensors in the home, whether that be to doors or to beds or to stoves which can represent safety concerns. And this innovation was built around an Amazon Echo show and around the Amazon platform. And really enables a lot of freedom and a opportunity for the person who's home bound like that to be able to interface with family, with caregivers and really better enable an independent living situation that extends that home care environment. >> So particularly, as the world's population is aging, that's something that we're experiencing here in the US, you can see how that really would help to solve a social challenge. >> Yes, pretty exciting. >> Yeah, so. Talk to me a little bit more about how this contest works in terms of teams within Accenture working together, collaborating and do the self-form the teams? Does Accenture tell them how to ... >> We announce the competition and people self-form it can be an individual, it can be a team. They do this on their own time. They spend time really thinking about how they can apply new concepts. So for us, it's a opportunity for people to learn but then they also think about wanting to address something that's another part of them, you know doing social good. So, it's also an opportunity to contribute and give back through the process of this competition. >> I know that one of the parts of the innovation for social good is the skills to succeed initiative. Can you tell our viewers a little bit more about that? >> Sure, well this is a program really that has taken off like wildfire and we've been doing it for many, many years and it's targeted with extending technology skills to individuals who come from lesser than means. It's a way of extending skills and capability and coaching to provide them the ability to really re-enter the work force. Re-enter the work force with skills and get on their feet. It's been something, it is pervasive across our business. Most of our people have participated in some way whether through coaching or other initiatives and it's been very successful. >> So you go in to these communities and coach marginalized communities? >> Yes, and then it provides an opportunity for them to be able to re-enter, whether re-enter the work force whether with us or any other organization. We look most to provide them with skills. We also provide them with other things that you don't think about when somebody is trying to re-enter the work force, whether that happens to be clothing or other capability to be able to get back on your feet. >> So let's talk about this moment in time in the technology industry. So we have this explosion of digital technologies, as you were saying, AI and machine learning and big data, data analytics and we have companies sort of coming together saying hey, there are a lot of pressing global challenge, societal challenges. We need to harness these technologies to solve them. I mean, do you think that, can you describe, since you are really on the ground, your boots on the ground in the middle of this, what it's like to be in this environment. Do you think that other companies are sort of following Accenture's lead? How would you describe what's going on? >> Well, I think that for a very long time, as I was mentioning, part of our mission statement as a company is to help the way the world works and lives. And so it's been kind of core to the way that we operate the business in our core values. But I think what's happening now is there's a lot more awareness of social good. And instead of supporting a charity or being a partner together with a charity, now we find ways we can really amplify our ability to make a difference. And that is by leveraging our capability around technology to help take that devotion of time, that interest, and really step it up in a pretty significant way. To bring that technology in a way that really's disruptive to changing the societal issue. >> But at the same time you don't want to necessarily start with the technology itself. You want to make sure you're starting with the problem. >> Well that really comes back to the way that we address business problems and the way we address the societal problems, is all of our people are taught concepts around designed thinking. Around human centered design. And so that concept of starting with what is the human problem, is a very natural course because that's the way that we solve all of our business problems. And so, I think that that's a, in thinking about how we solve those issues or collaborate in order to do that I think really drives a lot more complete answers in fact, to the kind of problems that we look to solve. And that's why starting with the societal issue and really what's at risk. What are we trying to address? And then thinking of creative ways to be disruptive around that. Some cases it's not even around the technology. It's about, you know, thinking in a new way about how to address those issues. >> And a cultural shift and getting people to, yeah exactly, collaborate differently. So I know you've just came from a hackathon and you were helping charities think different, think about a problem they wanted to solve and then think about how we could use technology to solve it. Tell our viewers a little bit more about the hackathon here. >> Sure, well you know, our interest in this area is, you can tell I'm very passionate about it. We invest a lot of time from a corporate standpoint and we're helping to sponsor this hackathon here at AWS re:Invent and we're doing that together with several organizations. For example, Girls Who Code, let me see, GameChanger, Compassion, and Goodwill are all other organizations that are participating in the hackathon. And had really interesting problems that they brought to the table. In fact, one of the problems that we talked about today, that the teams are over hacking away thinking about, is there are many organizations that sponsor very under privileged children and create, in this organization situation, they create a one to one relationship between a sponsor and a child and they were looking for ways to be able to connect those two parties by using natural language processing, they wanted to facilitate a near real time kind of dialogue across the boundaries of language in a way that ensures protection of the child and that there's nothing malicious that could happen through that direct connection. Of course we expect everyone to be well-meaning in that but part of the innovation is also protecting the children too. So the teams are over hacking away looking at this and several other kind of problems, social problems, Tech4Good type of initiatives throughout the day today. >> So at next year's, let's look in to our crystal balls here and think about what we're going to be talking about at next year's AWS Executive Summit. What is on the table for this year and what kinds of things are most exciting you that you're ... >> Well I think all the innovation, just further enables it, the way that we think about how we're using today, artificial intelligence, and you couple that together with so many other things around, whether, the example I just gave, around natural language processing and you couple that together with the societal and business problems that are here. I mean, it's really quite explosive. So you think about all of the new innovation that's being announced this week. I think the opportunity to be able to drive that even deeper into, whether it happens to business or societal problem, will be even more interesting next year. >> We'll end that, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. It was great talking to you. >> Thank you. >> A really fun conversation. >> Enjoyed it. >> I'm Rebecca Knight. We will have more from the AWS Executive Summit coming up in just a little bit. (electronic music)