The TechCrunch conference is an event that swoops in on the startup scenes of the US and Europe, gathering for appraisal the technology world's rising movers, shakers and innovators. It's widely regarded as the place to get a feel for what's happening at the industry's grassroots – which is exactly what PwC Innovation Manager Marina Paronetto headed to London to do. As it turns out, it was the brains behind the machine – artificial intelligence – that was the star of 2016's show. It was said in sarcasm, but MC Jordan Crook couldn't have been more accurate when she said that TechCrunch's theme for its latest Disrupt conference was artificial intelligence. From what I saw, every solution on show here featured an element of AI.

Mixed Reality and Humanizing Artificial Intelligence: New Accenture Report Highlights the Evolving Role of Design as More Innovative, Responsive and Emotive Than Ever Fjord Trends 2017 takes a provocative look at the digital developments to watch in the year ahead, according to Fjord, design and innovation from Accenture Interactive NEW YORK; Dec. 13, 2016 – If this year has taught us anything, it's that digital technologies and hyper-connectivity are bringing user-led innovation to market faster than ever. Successful organizations today are those that best adapt and respond to unceasing change. Against this backdrop, Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has released Fjord Trends 2017, its tenth and most provocative annual report examining the most significant emergent digital trends expected to disrupt organizations and society in the year ahead. Three meta themes emerged, challenging long-held norms and assumptions. The rise of the autonomous vehicle, smart homes and digital assistants is creating new ecosystems that threaten the smartphone's dominance as the main command center of our lives.

Episode Summary: Accenture is a leading global professional services company in the tech space, providing services to many of the Fortune 500 and their global equivalents. The company recently conducted a study, combined with expertise from economists and AI researchers, about the longer-term economic impact of artificial intelligence around the world. In this episode, I spoke with Chief Technology Officer Paul Daugherty, who has been with Accenture since 1986, and who was joined by Global Technology R&D Lead Marc Carrel-Billiard. We met up at a coffee shop after an AI Summit in San Francisco, and I asked Paul and Marc about what they had learned from this newly-published study and what they consider to be the significant impacts of *AI and automation on the future job market. Brief Recognition: Paul Daugherty is Accenture's CTO and leads the company's Technology Innovation & Ecosystem group.

Artificial Intelligence, as we see it, is a collection of multiple technologies that enable machines to sense, comprehend and act--and learn, either on their own or to augment human activities. Yet, the numbers tell only part of the story. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a new factor of production and has the potential to introduce new sources of growth, changing how work is done and reinforcing the role of people to drive growth in business. Accenture research on the impact of AI in 12 developed economies reveals that AI could double annual economic growth rates in 2035 by changing the nature of work and creating a new relationship between man and machine. The impact of AI technologies on business is projected to increase labor productivity by up to 40 percent and enable people to make more efficient use of their time.

M6 Publicité and M6 Web Select Accenture's New Advertising Offering, Powered by Artificial Intelligence, To Target Ads More Effectively NEW YORK; Dec. 13, 2016 – M6 Publicité and M6 Web, Group M6 subsidiaries, have chosen Accenture's (NYSE: ACN) new Advanced Video Analytics offering that uses artificial intelligence to more accurately predict customer advertising preferences and serve targeted ads more effectively. M6 Group is the second largest private TV Group in France with major traditional TV channels such as M6, W9, and 6ter, as well as 6play, a free digital TV platform. M6 Publicité and M6 Web chose Accenture to implement a powerful data-driven advertising optimization tool run by a team of data scientists, analysts and developers. This data tool integrates several Accenture offerings including artificial intelligence that increases the number of users reached with targeted ads. Processing large amounts of historical user data, artificial intelligence can predict with more precision users' interests, behaviors, and purchasing actions.

Signal Media, a London, UK-based AI-powered information intelligence company, raised a further £5.8m Backers included MMC Ventures and Hearst Ventures. The company, which has raised £8.3m ($10.5m) in total funding to date, intends to use the funds to take its business into new industry verticals such as to new verticals including Health, Pharma and Technology, and grow in the financial, legal and professional services markets, to further bolster the senior team and partnerships with universities, expand into the US during 2017 and strengthen the existing product. Co-founded in 2013 by David Benigson and Dr. Miguel Martinez, Signal Media provides an AI-powered information intelligence platform that allows businesses to access to information to track changes in real-time – from competitors, to regulation, to their own reputation – to make faster business decisions. Knowledge workers, communications teams and research executives use Signal's AI to monitor the world's news media.

Digital-related investment in industrial production is growing fast. Through 2020, enterprises expect to pump $907 billion annually into digital technologies on the industrial floor, according to PwC's Industry 4.0 research. That investment is expected to increase revenues by $493 billion annually and reduce costs by $421 billion each year. But where and how those dividends will be unearthed is only now coming into view. PwC sees enterprises following a path that spans prediction, prescription, optimization, and new business models.

Today's workforce and automation of key functions is moving us toward an unprecedented level of innovation. One recent study from KPMG found that about three out of every four U.S. tech industry CEOs believe automation and machine learning are likely to replace at least 5 percent of their manufacturing, technology, sales, and marketing workforce by 2019. Yet the same study found that over half of the executives expect their organization's headcount to grow by at least 6 percent. While some big businesses might assume A.I. is their ticket to paying less in labor costs, if we go this route we're selling our workforces short. The human brain possesses something computers still don't: mindfulness.

Last month, at the world's leading general management conference--the Drucker Forum in Vienna Austria--Julian Birkinshaw, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the London Business School and Director of the Deloitte Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, declared provocatively that we are living in "the Age of Agile." The full text of Julian's important talk is set out below. He also has a new book coming out next year entitled Fast/Forward: Make Your Company Fit For the Future. Earlier this week, I discussed these issues with Julian. Steve Denning: In your talk, you spoke about three possible forms of organization: bureaucracy, meritocracy and adhocracy. Could you tell us more? Julian Birkinshaw: Bureaucracy is about and occupying roles and following rules. Meritocracy is a knowledge-based view of the organization, including big data and analytics. Adhocracy is an action-based view of the organization focused on capturing opportunities, solving problems and getting results. Denning: Where does "the age of Agile" fit into this scheme?

Delegates at an event hosted by Accenture last month in the Conrad Hotel in lower Manhattan were welcomed and registered by a smiling Amelia. But Amelia does not work only in events. She is a hologram -- a cognitive agent who can take on a wide variety of service desk roles, emulating human intelligence and capable of natural interaction with people. The age of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) has been predicted for decades -- and it may finally be arriving, thanks to the explosion in data, the fuel that powers the AI machines. Consulting firms are not only implementing automation and AI for clients but also using it to transform their own back-office functions and operations.