Radically Human: How New Technology Is Transforming Business and Shaping Our Future by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson.
Paul is Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at Accenture. He holds a BS in computer engineering from the University of Michigan. James is Accenture’s Global Managing Director and former Managing Director of Accenture Research.
So, the real compelling idea for this book is the authors upfront note: we wrote the book just as the pandemic began. As a result everything changed, including the pace of change. As such, they indicate “IT changes we planned to undertake over 12 to 18 months occurred in a matter of days.” This actually serves as a baseline for their view of how AI innovations are turning the world upside.
Their focus is explored via an IDEAS framework. This is a combination of innovation components: Intelligence, Data, Expertise, Architecture, and Strategy. Their position: each are building blocks that lead to a future-oriented business marketplace driven by ‘all things’ AI. In addition, their position is that leading organizations will leverage human-machine collaboration to transform their organizational processes.
How to use AI post pandemic
However, while written in 2022 it appears a bit off by their stance that post pandemic AI is becoming less artificial and more intelligent. This contradicts the need for ‘data-hungry approaches’ which actually are the foundation for machine learning. Furthermore, they indicate AI will allow humans to create a human-centered AI. Yet their position is that somehow this will be all set in a cloud-first, IT architecture powered by billions of connected devices. So how would AI not be collecting all this data? This reminds me of Superhuman Innovation.
Trust the Technology?
Leaders will certainly appreciate his lessons that organizations often deploy AI on top of a legacy organizational structure with very old ideas regarding employee roles and data workflows. Too many leaders have bought into the AI hype cycle while simply ignoring their existing data strategy. Perhaps many lack the data within their existing infrastructures to take advantage of AI simply due to the lack of structured and unstructured data resulting in collisions.
Radically Human also outlines three attributes that will set organizations who prospered during the pandemic apart from those who somehow survived. First, they suggest those flourishing organizations “democratized” technology by ensuring their employees had access to all digital platforms. Second, these organizations focused on re-training (known as upskilling) their staff from a somewhat technical awarenesses to a digital literacy. Third, these organizations empowered their staff to work remote with flexible hours and new management approaches as long as they delivered on goals.
In conclusion, it appears promising but their IDEAS framework appear to be acceptable to high tech organizations with large budgets and highly educated workforces. Other AI authors identify ‘upskilling’ is limited to engineering teams, not an entire organizational workforce. The goals are lofty, but as they acknowledge how the pandemic shifted society, it would appear this books has a somewhat limited audience.