>> From the Salesforce Tower in downtown San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Accenture Tech Vision 2019, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in downtown San Francisco with a brand newly open Salesforce Tower, the 33rd floor, the middle of the brand new Accenture Innovation Hub. We're excited to have our next guest, who's been part of the Innovation Labs and the Innovation Hubs and a lot of innovation in the center for years and years and years. You've seen him before, we're at the 30th anniversary, I think last year. All the way from Paris, is Marc Carrel-Billiard. He is the Senior Managing Director for Accenture Labs. Marc, great to see you again. >> Great to see you Jeff again as well, I'm so happy. >> So, what do you think of the new space here? >> I love it, I just love it. I saw it building and everything and now it's ready, and we open it today, I mean it's just amazing. The stairs, did you see the stairs? >> I saw the stairs, yes. >> Really amazing, everything's good there. I think it's not an office, like Paul already said, it's really something better and I think it's a tool for explaining what is innovation at Accenture at play, I mean, how we use it, how we connect the labs, we use the liquid studio, all the ventures and everything, that's great. >> Great. But now it's all brought together, right? You had a couple satellite locations in the Bay Area-- >> Yeah and I think that with the story of putting all this stuff in what we call the Innovation Center, the Innovation Hub, and so putting everything in the same building and have different floors where we can address different talking with our clients. Are we talking about research? Are we talking about more polythiophene? Are we talking about, I mean ideally, it's all about driving innovation at scale. >> Right, right. >> At scale. >> So, we're here for the technology vision-- >> We are. >> Which will be in, in a little bit and then, Paul and they team will present-- >> Yep, they will. >> Five new transfer for 2018. One of the ones they called is DARQ, D-A-R-Q, >> I know. >> Which is distributed ledger technologies, formerly known as blockchain, but we don't want to call it blockchain. AI, extended reality, which is every kind of form, extended, augmented-- >> Mix relating everything, that's right. >> And quantum computer. >> You bet. >> So, from the labs point of view, from an Accenture kind of innovation looking forward, inventing the future, as you like to say, which I think is a great tagline, what are some of your priorities going forward, now that you got this great new space? Which is one of what I think 11 in the United States, right? >> So, my priorities are all of them, I mean, all of the above! Because I was like, do you remember at the time we were talking about SMAC? Like Social Mobility, there was analytics and cloud. I would say that DARQ is the new SMAC. So, we saw that basically, that technology has evolved and, from analytics, we'd like more AI work and everything, but it's still being combined and everything. You can still think about social media, collaborative stuff, we going to go through immersive reality where we going to continue collaborating. Think about cloud. I mean, just like cloud will bring you height, throughput computing power through the cloud. Well, I mean, also quantum computing can give you like amazing capability in terms of computing power. So I would say probably, like, DARQ is a new SMAC and so the lab has been working on it since, I would say, not since day one, but at the very beginning. And so, well obviously distributed ledger, you know that we have a lab in Sophia Antipolis, they're really spending a lot of time in the blockchains. So there's a couple of things that we're doing. I give you a couple of ideas. One is, maybe people talk about blockchains, and there's bunch of blockchains all over, there's like blockchains for manufacturing, there's blockchains for trade finance, there's blockchains for this and that. Problem is there's no very good interoperability between those blockchains. One thing that the lab is going to be working is how we can interoperate between those different blockchains. So you are basically a supply chain, you want to connect to a financial organization, how their blockchain will connect to your blockchain. Number one. The second thing we're going to be working on is the SMAC contract. The lab believes the SMAC contract is not smart enough. So we going to add more artificial intelligence in the SMAC contract to see what we could do better. Think about this SMAC contract as a stock procedure in database. How we make those stock procedure a little bit better. I mean, it's just analogy type of thing. >> Obviously, the blockchain conversation, any kind of demo, talking about DHL-- >> Yeah, DHL, exactly. >> But is that logistics, that merchandise move through their system, as you said, there's a lot of different touch points with a lot of different systems. So it's not an aggregated system, it's a problem, and the other thing is you don't necessarily need all the data for each person, >> You don't. >> Or transaction all along the line, right? >> You're absolutely right. And I talk about interoperability between blockchains, but there's going to be also interoperability between the blockchain that you're implementing and the legacy environment that you have. And this needs to be addressed as well. So lot of thinking about blockchains, I've always said for me that blockchain is the digital right management of your future. That kind of protocol, and we're working with companies that are basically creating movies and stuff like that, and how we leverage blockchain to change those movies between different parties. I mean, there's going to be a lot of cool stuff that we're going to be able to do. So that's blockchain. The D for distributed ledger. A for artificial intelligence. So artificial intelligence obviously is something very beginner labs. We have three labs that are delegated to artificial intelligence. >> Three? >> Yup, out of seven. One here, San Francisco. The other one in Bangalore, and the third one in Dublin, Ireland. And each of them are covering a little part of the things that we want to do with artificial intelligence. It's all about accelerating the artificial intelligence, so how we're going to think about new infrastructure, a new way of doing machine learning, using weak labeling, it's all about explainable AI, how you're going to connect the knowledge graph with machine learning, so that's the probabilistic model will give you an explanation of why they've decided to select this picture, or this information and so forth. And basically the other things we're going to be working on, artificial intelligence, is that human-machine interaction, and one thing that we want to address is what we call the conversational aspect of virtual agents. If you look at virtual agents today, voice comment type of things. >> Right, right. >> You can't really engage in a conversation. I want to look at that. How they're going to understand context, and how you're going to be exchanging better, and how you're going to flow a better conversation with that. One thing that's going to be very important in everything that we're doing is going back to semantic network, knowledge management, knowledge graph. How we combine knowledge graph with all these machine learning capabilities. That's artificial intelligence in the lab. >> Then you get, we'll just work down the list, right, then you've got the extended reality. >> Extended reality. >> So whatever kind of reality it is. >> So we're going to continue doing a lot of stuff for extended reality, immersive learning, we're going to use that, I think what's going to be important for us is that not to look at extended reality just from a vision standpoint, but try to use the combinatorial effect of every immersive sense that you have. So like, basically, hearing, also, smelling, touching the aptic, and how you combine all those senses to change completely, not the vision, but the experience. What you really feel. In fact, if you go to this Innovation Hub, I don't know if you've seen that we have an igloo-- >> We did, I saw the 360. >> That's right the 360, to try to immerse you already in some quantum computing experience, I think it's a good segue way also for quantum. So quantum, is that we've been doing a lot of progress with quantum too, you know, two years ago we started already to work with D-wave and then we have work with this company called 1QBit, so we build a software, so we use their software development kit, to program the quantum computer, and then we work with Biogen to do drug discovery, and changing the way you do that, by accelerating that through quantum computing. But we've continued, we've announced basically some partnership with IBM to look at their platform, we're continuing working with other interesting platform like Fujitsu, their Digital Annealer, and so forth, and what we want to do is that Accenture is very, very agnostic related to all those vendors. What we want to do is that we want to understand more about how you program those different architecture, how you see what type of problems they can solve, and how based you can program them. And so if we use the Abstraction Layer on top of all the others, and we can program on top of that, this is really cool, this is exactly what we want to do. >> So how close is it? How close is it to getting the production ready? I mean, you got it in the new vision for 2019, I mean, what are people just playing with it or is it ready for prime-time. >> No, no, no. >> Where is it these days? >> So first of all, DARQ stuff, all the people, all of our clients-- >> I mean quantum specifically. >> Okay quantum-specific. I think we're talking about three to five years to start to have real solutions. Right now, we have prototype, but we're moving to more pilot, and I think the solution will come soon. Probably in five years time, we're starting to ascend soon. Let me give you another idea. >> So the order of magnitude difference in the way that you can compute, the AI. >> Exactly, and I think that's going to change the game. It's going to change the game on everything. Let me give you maybe a last example that I'm sure you're going to love. And it's all about optimization matchmaking. Our tech vision this year is all about hyper-personalization, plus on-demand delivery, and so that's how at the moment, you know, you're going to change the game. The momentary moment. How you're going to change the reality of people. What you're going to be able to do. I'm going to tell you that, where we're going to use quantum computing. We're going to use quantum computing to do a better matchmaking between a person who is waiting for an organ and an organ that you can transplant to this person. And the moment is the accident that happens on the street. There's going to be someone basically dying on the street, so someone dead and then you need, basically, to get this organ, it could be a kidney, for example, every organs have a time-lapse that you can use basically to transport that to someone else. Now the question is that you have the organ, it's in basically an ice-cubed environment-like box, and then you transplant that to someone, you have like few hours to figure out who are the best receiver. And this is hyper-personalization, because you need to understand the variable of all the body that is going to receive that but all the variables of the organ, until now is all main front to do the matchmaking. We're rethinking that using quantum computing. >> It's just wild, you know, what the cloud really enabled to concept. If you had infinite compute, infinite store, and infinite networking, at basically free, asymptotically approaching free, what would you build? And that's a very different way to think about problems. >> Not only will we build some amazing things, but I think we would change the reality of every people. Every people will have their own reality that they could use product and service the way they want it, and this will be a completely different, not a world, but a game set, that would be completely different. >> Marc, we're almost out of time, but I just want to ask you about Pierre, former CEO of Accenture passed away recently, and I was really struck by the linked investors. So many people, you know, I follow you, I follow Paul, a lot of people posted, what a special man, and what an impact he had, sounds really personally with most of the leadership here in Accenture. I was wondering if you could share a few thoughts. >> Well obviously, I mean, everyone's been very sad that we lost Pierre. I mean, he was just an amazing person. He was really a role model, not only in business, but in life. And he was so fun about fun of innovations, he loved the labs, he loved what we could do in it, I think he was really thinking about better future for the people, better future for the world, and everything, and it was really amazing for that. Everyone was struck really to see that. But I think there was so many testimonials pouring from our people, but what I was even more amazed was our clients. He really moved clients. And his visions is an amazing legacy for Accenture, and we're going to, I mean, this is so precious what he left us and I think that I really want the lab, every day that we're inventing something, I'm always thinking about Pierre and what he would have thought about these things. He was always enthusiastic reading our research paper and everything, so definitely the lab's going to continue to innovate, and I hope that Pierre, wherever he is, will be watching. >> I'm sure he's smiling down. >> And will be happy with that. >> Alright, well Marc, thanks a lot for taking a few minutes and congratulations on this continual evolution of what you guys are doing with labs and Innovation Centers, and now the Innovation Hub here in downtown San Francisco. >> Thanks, Jeff. >> Alright. He's Marc, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at downtown San Francisco at the Accenture Innovation Hub as part of the Accenture Technology Vision 2019 presentation. Thanks for watching. See you next time. (light electro music)

>> Announcer: From the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, it's the Cube. On the ground with Accenture Labs 30th Anniversary Celebration. >> Hello and welcome back to our special on the ground coverage of Accenture Labs 30 year celebration. Here's to the next 30 years is their slogan and I'm John Ferry with the Cube and I'm here with Marc Carrel-Billiard who's the Senior Manger that runs R&D Global for Accenture Labs. Welcome to the Cube conversation. Thanks for joining me. >> Marc: Thanks, John. >> So, I got to ask you, Accenture 30 years, they weren't called Accenture back then, it was called Arthur Anderson or Anderson Consulting and then it became Accenture, now you got Accenture Lab. But you have had labs all throughout. >> You're right. I mean, it's pretty amazing. And I think this is absolutely right. So we had this organization for 30 years, believe it or not. And that organization is doing applied research. So what we do is we leverage new technology innovations and everything to really solve business challenges or societal pacts and social changes and everything. >> State of the art back then, if I remember correctly my history was converting an S&A gateway to a technet to a TCP/IP network. >> Yeah we just improved a little bit. We went to quantum computing, to Blockchain, to different type of things like that. >> What a magical time it is right now >> It is magic. >> Share some color on today's culture, the convergence of all this awesomeness happening. Open source, booming. Cloud, unlimited compute. You have now more developers than ever, Enterprise is looking more and more like consumers. So a lot of action. What's the excitement? Share the cutting edge lab's activity. I think you said something absolutely right. I mean, I think there's a combinatorial effect of two different technology working very well together, and is a compression on time, all those technology waves that are maturing very fast. So one thing that we been doing is a great example for that, is quantum computing. You heard about quantum computing, you know? >> Of course. >> That's the new Paradigm of computing power. Leveraging like, quantum mechanics, you know? I mean it's really amazing stuff. And believe it or not, we've been working with D-Wave, they have a quantum computer in Vancouver, and a companies called 1QBit, it's a software company, and we've built, on top of that, an algorithm that has molecule comparison. And we worked with Biogen, a pharmaceutical company, to work on this. Now, the really staggering thing about it, is that we talked about it like six months ago, we build the pilot in two months time. Done. And then now, I mean, it's already made. >> Well, this is amazing. This is what highlights to me what's exciting. What you just described is a time frame that's really short. >> That's right! >> Back in the old days, it was these projects were months and months, and potentially years. >> Absolutely. >> What is the catalyst for that? Is it the technology leverage? Is it the people? Is it the process? All three? What's the take? >> I think it's all three. I would say that definitely the technology, as I said, get combined faster. You said very right, there's a lot of capability in term of high performance computing we can get through the Cloud, the storage as well. The data that we're going to be accessing, and then I think the beauty is that, putting all the people together for the quantum work. We had mathematicians, we have from Biogen, we have our own labs, and all people together, they make the magic happen. >> 30 years ago, just a little history 'cause I'm old enough to actually talk about 30 years ago, the Big Six Accounting Firms, accounting firms, ran all the big software projects. How ironic is that, that today Blockchain disrupts the even need for an accounting firm, because with Smart Contracts, Blockchain is turning out to be a very, very disruptive operation in technology, because you don't need an accounting firm to clear out contracts. Blockchain is very disruptive. What are you guys doing on Blockchain? >> You're absolutely right, John. And you know, the first thing. So, we have seven labs in Accenture Labs. And we have one lab didn't get it on Blockchain, and it's Sophia Antipolis inside of France, where I'm from, by the way. We're doing a lot of things with Blockchain. A lot of people are thinking about Blockchain as a system that's going to regulate, basically, transfer a transaction, financial transaction. We want to take Blockchain to the next level. And one thing we're doing, for example, We're using Blockchain for Angels. How we're track, basically, donation you're going to do. We going to use Blockchain for-- >> Well that's because people want to know their money's actually going to good. >> That's right! That's right! >> Not to scams that have been out there. >> You got it. >> We going to use Blockchain as a DRM system, Digital Rights Management system. We're going to use that in manufacturing industry, in many industry, and it goes on and on and on. >> What is the big buzz right now with Cryptocurrency? You're seeing a lot of these ICOs out there. Are those legit? In your mind, is it just a bubble? Is it just a normalization's going to come, what's your take on Initial Coin Offerings? >> I think, to be honest with you, I think this is a progress with thing. I mean, we discuss about Blockchain and everything. We see some trains going there. I think it's accelerating as well, because it's got a lot of take up and everything. We see, also, the world changing, and I think we need to look at the geo-political context of the world and what could happen. So I think those kind of new regulation, the way it's going to work. I mean, it's coming on time, people's going to leverage it, so I think it's not some fad stuff. This is something that's going to stay. >> It's just a Wild West. >> But it was, exactly. Right now, we need to work on the right standard, we need to figure out how it's going to work and everything. >> What is the exciting things that you see out there right now? I mean, Blockchain just kind of gets us excited 'cause you can imagine different new things happening. But the clients that I talk to, customers, your clients, or CIOs, they have to reimagine the future. >> That's right. >> With preexisting conditions called legacy infrastructure. >> Exactly >> Legacy software. How do they get the best of the magic and manage the preexisting conditions? >> So, there's a lot of innovation in term of software development. You take energy in everything that we have, basically, to connect to your legacy, and leverage it as much as you can. You know, there's a big progress in artificial intelligence today. I mean, I've live a lot of winters of artificial intelligence. I think finally, maybe there's going to be some spring. Why? Because of what we talk about. The iPad from one's computing the data available, and then also, some new type of algorithm like deep learning and everything. That data that is somewhere into this company called the Dark Data, people is going to be able to leverage it, and then make those artificial intelligence systems even more intelligence, smarter, and everything. So, legacy's here, but we're going to leverage it, and we're going to give a second life to those legacy environment. So those technology like artificial intelligence, new analytics and all those different things. >> So I got to ask you a kind of politically hot question, which is the digital transformation. >> Yes. >> So there's doubt we're in a digital transformation. No brainer. Yet, I go to conferences over and over again, and I see Gartner Magic Quadrant. I'm number one on the Magic Quadrant, and everybody's number one in the Magic Quadrant. So, the question is, what's the scoreboard of the new environment? Because, if you use the old scoreboard, and the world's horizontally scalable, you're going to have a blending of Magic Quadrants. So there's going to be a disruption, and that's causing confusion to the CIOs and CXOs because you got Chief Data Officer, Chief Security Officer, you got no perimeter for security, you have quantum computing, you have Cloud. So, people are trying to squint through all the nonsense and saying, how do you measure success? >> Yeah. >> Certainly customers is a good one. >> I think this is the typical question. I mean, this whole digital transformation, I understand that is important, and we need to understand. I mean, Accenture, and especially the lab, it's all about result. And you know what? The mission of the lab is new, it's applied, is now. New technology applied for real challenges, and I want to deliver it now, and I want to work for six months. So my word is that our research is outcome driven, and that's exactly what we're seeing. So, I told you about the quantum computing, and I have other example where we are really laser-focused on making an outcome. I think that's where-- >> So, to your point, people shouldn't buy promises. >> No. >> They should buy results. >> That's right. >> So, Peter Barris, who runs our research, said to me, and I asked him the question, he goes, ah, that's just a bunch of BS. The ultimate metric is how many customers you have. So, someone should be touting their customers. >> Sorry? >> They should be touting their customers, not some survey. >> No, absolutely. And I'm really for that. >> I want to tell you something, that I'm a very pragmatic person. I'm coming from the field, where I was serving 400 clients doing, every day, project delivery, you know? >> John: God bless you. >> And I've always been doing innovation at the same time, but my view was that innovation needs to be scalable, it needs to be tangible, it needs to be outcome driven. So again, this is really the matter of the lab, and if you look at how the lab works with the rest of the organization of Accenture, this is exactly what we're doing. We connect with our studio, where we can do prototyping front of the eyes of our client. We connect with Open Innovation, where we connect with the best start ups in the world. I think, you remember when I told you combinatorial effect. There's a combinatorial effect with technology that is a combinatorial effect with people. If you put the people from start up, the best guys from the lab, the best guys from the studios and everything, that's where the magic happens. >> So this is a new configuration? >> We collect the innovation architecture. >> So this is a scalable model for being agile, and the results are what? Faster performance? >> Faster performance, innovative performance, and tangible outcome. >> Okay Marc, you're an excitable guy, I like talkin' with you, what are you most excited about right now in this world that you're living in? So, I told you about the technology, and there's one thing that the lab is doing, and we'll be launching that this year, and we'll continue expanding. It's what we call Tech For Good. Tech For Good is how we're going to apply technology to change society. What we're going to do for fighting hunger in India. How we're going to give situational awareness to blind people using augmented reality immersion learning. That keeps me awake at night, because this is technology for best usage, it allows for our people to sleep well at night. My kids are proud of me, and I think we can-- >> Change the world! >> That's right! We can attract great people. >> Alright, final question. Here at the celebration, at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, what's the big scene here? Share with the folks who are watching, who aren't here, what's happening. >> I think, first of all, the venue is amazing. Computer Historic Museum is probably one of my favorite museum here in Silicon Valley. I mean, you need to understand that, 15 years old I started to work on a IBM 360 of my uncle, so the machine over there, I know it. I worked on it. And when I see the completed progress where we are today, when we see the Cray, when we see the quantum and everything, I feel so lucky that we're celebrating 30 years. Now I'd to go for the next 30 years of the lab. That's what I want to do. >> Let's get that on our next interview. Marc, thanks for sharing, here's to the next 30 years. This is the Cube coverage of Accenture Lab's 30 year celebration. The Computer History Museum, I'm John Ferry. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: From the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, it's The Cube, on the ground with Accenture Labs' 30th anniversary celebration. >> Hello, everyone, welcome to the special coverage of The Cube, on the ground here at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. It's The Cube's coverage of Accenture Labs' 30th year celebration. I'm here with Paul Dougherty, the chief technology and innovation officer at Accenture Labs. Welcome to The Cube conversation. Thanks for joining me. >> It's great to be here. >> So first I want to toast you guys to 30 years from turning to an accounting firm, Arthur Anderson, to Accenture Labs Consulting. Guys are really changed. Congratulations to all your success. Thanks for having us. >> Yeah, thanks, it's been an incredible journey. If you think back in the 30 years, it's the 30th anniversary of Accenture Labs, and the transformation of our company to now be an innovation-led company, leading in IT services and IT innovation, and with the amazing innovations that are happening in technology, it's a great time to be doing what we're doing. >> So the theme here at the party is magic. There's a magic show going on. We can't get coverage. It's a little private event, probably some G-rated, probably ... >> Lots of magic. >> A lot of magic. But there's magic right now. We were commenting earlier, before you came on, about, you know at my age, I love this innovation cycle, but if I was 20 years old, I'd really be excited. There's so much going on. It's really magical. You've got the convergence of infrastructure, cloud, software. You guys have been on all sides of innovation, from the mini-computer boom, all the way now through now, where AI and software and now data science is coming together. What's the exciting thing for you right now? Because it's beyond software eating the world, it's beyond data eating software. This is real applications. >> Yeah, this is ... We're at an era where technology is the driving force behind every business. There was a survey recently of CEOs, and they asked CEOs how do they view their business, and 81% of CEOs, 81%, said their company's a technology company. And that was a cross-industry survey. And that's why it's an exciting time, because the option we have as Accenture is to work with any company, and every company, and help them transform, change their business, and lead them through the transformation to deliver technology-enabled digital products and services. And that's why it's an exciting time. >> What I find exciting about these global system integrators, as they're now called, is that you guys have always been a consultative organization to customers, helping them through their journey of that generational shift. Now it's interesting, with cloud computing, you guys are not only just advising, you're delivering services. A mindset transformation as well as talent, technology, process, and people. How are you doing it? What's the secret formula? >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what we found, the reason we've driven our business model in that direction, is our clients need help throughout the cycle. So we help with Accenture strategy, with advising our clients. We help with Accenture consulting, on helping our clients transform. Accenture digital, bring the digital capabilities in. Accenture technology, building the solutions in. Accenture operations, providing business process, infrastructure, and cloud operations. So, we've found that our clients, they need help with it all. They want to understand where to take their business, they want to understand how to get there, and they want somebody to help them manage their business as they do. And that's why we've taken the business in that direction. >> Not to give you guys a lot of props, but I do want to give you guys kudos, Accenture, Accenture Labs, is that all of folks might not know, or some, you guys probably do know, you've accumulated a lot of data scientists over the years. You've got thousands of data scientists, a lot of talent coming in. Accenture Labs is a booming operation, it's not just a throwaway lip-service kind of operation for customers, to say "Hey, we got some smart people." You guys have actually have a real organization. What are some of the cool things that you guys are doing? Can you give some examples? >> Yeah, let's just step back and talk about Labs a bit, and then I'll give some examples. We've been at Labs now for 30 years, hence the celebration we're talking about, and it's thousands of patents, it's billions of dollars of impact on the revenue of our business. And really, you're driving innovation that sets us ahead in the marketplace. And it's a fabric of a global organizations. We have labs here in Silicon Valley. We have labs in Washington, DC, that focus on security and other things. We have labs in Dublin, Ireland, in Tel Aviv, in Bangalore, India, in Beijing, in Sophia Antipolis in France. And it's that global infrastructure that allows us to tap into the innovation, I think in the key hot spots where it's happening. The kinds of innovation that we've driven are, think back to the early days of the cloud, we were doing R&D in patents and research in the cloud before the term "cloud" existed. And once the cloud phenomena took off, we had assets and architectures that we turned into the Accenture cloud platform, which has made us a leader in the multi-billion dollar ... Built a multi-billion dollar business in the cloud market. So that's an example of research and idea in early patents going to scale business for Accenture. That's the research to results that we talk about and what makes a difference in our business. >> So, talk about AI. AI's a hot trend, it's a great buzzword. I love AI because it gets young people excited about software. IOT is a little bit more boring than AI. But AI is augmented intelligence, also a little bit of artificial intelligence. Look no further than a test load, look no further than some of these cool things. How's AI impacting your world? >> AI's massive. I would say AI is the biggest single innovation and the most disruptive innovation of the information age to date. And probably, the biggest impact on how we work and live since the industrial revolution a couple hundred years ago. That started a couple hundred years ago. So AI is a big impact, and we're just at the start of it. That's kind of a paradox, though, because AI has been around for 60 years. The term was coined 60 years ago in 1956 at Dartmouth. And it just did it kind of slowly, but now we're at the inflection point where we have the computing hardware and the data and the processing power to make it really happen. So for the next five to 10 and 20 years, it's all about applying intelligence to augment the way we as people work and live and really create new opportunities to improve the productivity and creativity of humans. That's why we're excited. >> It's a perfect innovation storm. You've got great compute capability, almost unlimited capacity, software, new developer, open source is booming, and now you have STEM. >> Well, before you get to STEM, let me just make one comment on that. I think the other exciting thing about AI is we've been working with dumb technology up until this point. Think about the way we interact with our thumbs on a mobile phone. Think about the way you use traditional software in an enterprise on your PC or your screen. We're slaves to dumb technology, and the power and potential of AI is to make technology smarter, more human-like, and really enhance our ability as humans to use it. And that's why it's an exciting era. >> That's a great perspective from someone who has been in the process business. The classic example is, does the process work for you? Do you work for the process? >> Dougherty: Yeah. That's what technology ... >> And technology, we don't work for technology. They should work for us. >> And that's what's changing. That's the inflection point. >> So now, 30 years now, a lot's changed, certainly in Silicon Valley lately. Women and the role of women in the industry is certainly important. We're going to be at Grace Hopper for the fourth year this year as part of our women in tech celebration, in California this year covering women in tech. STEM is huge, but also, the gender gap is still there. You guys have a pledge to be 50% by 2025, Accenture as an organization. Labs, in particular, getting STEM in the technical roles is also a challenge. What are you guys doing to address that, and what's your personal philosophy? What's your comment about STEM and women in tech? >> Well, look, the technology industry in general has a gender diversity problem, and we believe at Accenture, we can really set the standard for how to really get to gender equality in the workforce. And that's the commitment we've got with our 50/50 gender diversity pledge by 2025. We're well along the path to getting there, right about 36% or so. Now, with the actions we're taking, the formula we've got, I'm confident that we'll get to the 50/50 pledge that we set out there. And it's an imperative for the technology industry, not just for Accenture, because we won't innovate to the potential of the industry, and we won't create the right opportunity if we don't have the right gender balance in the workforce. That's what will lead to the right innovations. In this new era where the humanity of how we apply technology, as you were saying earlier, flipping the lens on a people-centric view, we need all the perspectives and an equal representation of the population going into the way we develop solutions. That's why it's a priority for us. And we think we can really set a standard for how to apply to the technology industry. >> It's certainly a topic near and dear to my heart and our company's heart. I want to ask one more question on that as a follow-up. Computer science was always kind of narrow, I'm not saying super narrow, but now it's broadened, with analytics, the tech science side is opening up, for all the reasons you were just talking about, the AI stuff. It's a broad landscape now for many diverse roles. Can you share your thoughts on where the entry points could be for women, where it's not a man-led culture or new opportunities or new areas, new opportunities to engage, learn? Certainly digital will help that, in terms of acquiring knowledge. But in terms of getting into the business, what is the surface area of opportunities? >> The surface, it's the whole surface area. I think the wrong approach is to think that there are certain roles that are better for women or better for any group to do. There's equal opportunity in all the roles. One stat that's striking to me is the fact that, when I graduated from college in 1986, 35% of the graduates were women. 35% in 1986. Today that number is about 18%. We've gone backwards in the percentage of women graduates from computer science programs. That's a problem that we need to address. We need to get more women into technology careers. It's about sponsorship, it's about mentorship, it's about having the right role models, and it's about painting the right picture of the opportunity in technology. One of the organizations I'm involved with is Girls Who Code, where I'm on the board of directors because of our Accenture involvement because I believe that we need that kind of early involvement with girls to get them on the right paths and make them aware of the right opportunities that we can get them into the pipeline earlier. >> Congratulations. Thanks for doing that; it's great stuff. Personal question. 30 years, you've been in Accenture for a long time, 30 years of labs now, celebrating. What's the coolest thing you've done? >> You know, the coolest thing, the coolest thing is building the fabric of innovation of the company, so what we've done with the labs, creating Accenture Ventures, which is our tool for investing in companies, formalizing our Accenture research capabilities, that we now have an innovation fabric that goes from research to our ventures into our labs and the rest of Accenture's business. So we can take innovations like quantum computing and scale it and ramp it right into our business like we're doing today. So that's what's exciting to me, is to have created a funnel that we can use to take the early-stage innovations and pump them into real impact on our business. >> Awesome, and quick, what's happening here tonight? We're here at the 30th, labs here in Silicon Valley, Computer History Museum, historic event, magic. What's the show about today? >> Yeah, it's all about the past, the present, and the future. The past is how we got here with tremendous leaders of Accenture Labs, who built the organization to where it is today. The present is what I was just talking about, all the opportunity we have. And the future is more exciting that it's ever been. The next 30 years ... My only regret is that I'm not 20 years old right now. So the next 30 years are going to be even more exciting than the 30 years that I've lived through. And we're in a great place. Computer History Museum isn't just about the past. It's about the future. I'm on the board of trustees here at the Computer History Museum, and I love the mission of the museum in the way it brings the stories of innovation to light and sets us on the course for the future as well. >> Well, since you have so much influence, we're going to have to get our genes edited for sequencing so we can actually live longer because that's coming around the corner, too. >> I think that's the right idea. >> Cheers. Congratulations. >> Paul: Cheers. >> We'll be back with more coverage here live in The Cube. Accenture Labs' 30-year anniversary. I'm John Furrier with Paul Daugherty, chief technology and information officer, great work, innovation officer, great work. Congratulations. More coverage after this short break. Thanks for watching.