From Looking Digital to Being Digital: The Impact of Technology on the Future of Work Executive Summary Over the next five years, new digital • Rich digital representations: Software making will increase employee autonomy technologies promise to dramatically that translates physical objects into data and engagement and allow companies change work outcomes and work files that can drive programmable tools, to more precisely respond to changing experiences for employees of all sorts— robots and 3D printers. market conditions, thus resulting in higher manual workers, knowledge workers and • Cognitive augmentation: Technologies customer satisfaction and sales. managers alike—across a wide array of that learn by observation and offload industries. The digital difference—or what routine knowledge work to automated Real-time adaptation we refer to as the difference between assistants. Digital technologies will help companies “looking digital and being digital”—derives • Physical augmentation: Advanced robotic respond to changing business conditions from the ability of a new generation of devices that sense and adapt to their in real time. Pervasive digital connections technologies to augment, rather than to environment and that are small, safe, between systems, people, places and replace, the cognitive, collaborative and and flexible enough to be inserted into things—sometimes referred to as the the physical capabilities of human beings. human workflows. “internet of everything”—will produce However, research undertaken jointly by • Collaborative augmentation: Software a dynamic flow of digital information the Accenture Institute for High that directly improves the ways about where machines and people are, Performance and the Accenture Technology employees coordinate work and co-create what they are doing, and how they are Labs suggests that to reap the benefits new products. doing. Intelligent assistants will use this of digital technologies managers must be information to help employees make prepared to undertake shifts—deep shifts— These technologies are coalescing into smart decisions even when they cannot that are as much cultural as they are “intelligent digital processes” that change calculate the implications of all that data technical in nature. the key aspects of work design, including themselves. The potential for dynamic the who, when, where, and what of how and speedier decision-making will bring work gets done (see Figure 1). greater levels of operational flexibility and Digital is transforming productivity to industries. the future of work Emerging work practices Human and digital recombination Digital refers to an ensemble of new Advances in digital technology—including technologies that enhance the collection With the diffusion of intelligent digital robotics, software and machine learning, and analysis of information in ways that processes, four new work practices will sensors and analytical tools—will lead dramatically augment the capacity of become much more prevalent in the next to newer and more creative ways for human beings. Six underlying components five years. humans to work in concert with intelligent of digital will have the greatest impact machines. Humans will be able to “project” on the design of work: Edge-centric decision-making themselves into a wide variety of situations Information and decision-making authority through remotely-controlled avatars • Ubiquitous data streams: Physical and formerly the exclusive domain of a and vehicles. Moreover, flexible robots virtual sensors combined with high centralized authority will increasingly be will participate directly in human work capacity networks that make it possible pushed out toward the boundaries of the processes by sensing and adapting to their to process and store many large streams firm where intimate knowledge of context shared environment. of data. resides. Empowered by intelligent tools, • Advanced analytics and modeling: Tools employees will combine rich data streams Experiment-driven design that transform information into scalable with their contextual knowledge to make As digital modeling and simulation make process improvements. significant decisions—about inventory, design iteration less expensive, work pricing, and even product design—at a local level. Decentralized decision- 6 | Accenture | Copyright 2014 Accenture. All rights reserved. ©