The latest book co-authored by Accenture CTO and futurist Paul Daugherty, Radically Human, examines the intersection between humanity and machines in the era of digital transformation and the implications it has for business and society. I talked to him about some of his ideas and predictions for the future.

1. RADICALLY HUMAN: HOW AI-POWERED
AND NEW TECHNOLOGIES ARE
SHAPING OUR FUTURE

2. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
The latest book co-authored by Accenture CTO and futurist Paul Daugherty,
Radically Human, examines the intersection between humanity and machines in
the era of digital transformation and the implications it has for business and
society. I talked to him about some of his ideas and predictions for the future.
RADICALLY HUMAN: HOW AI-POWERED AND
NEW TECHNOLOGIES ARE SHAPING OUR
FUTURE

3. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
There are a lot of great books being published these days on the subject of artificial
intelligence, as human authors attempt to tackle the technical, philosophical, and societal
challenges posed by our growing reliance on smart machines.
One I have recently enjoyed and also found highly thought-provoking is Radically Human:
How New Technology is Transforming Business and Reshaping our Future, by Paul
Daugherty. Regular readers of my posts will know that Daugherty is CTO at Accenture, and
in fact I recently enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation with him on the topic of the
Metaverse Continuum – Accenture’s top four tech trend predictions for 2022.

4. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
While we were together (virtually), I also took the opportunity to talk to him about this latest
book. It aims to explain many of the cutting-edge technologies that are revolutionizing
business today – from AI to blockchain and the metaverse – but crucially to do it in a way that
highlights the roles that humans will have to play if organizations hope to use them to their full
potential.
In many ways, it is a follow-up to his previous book, 2018’s Human + Machine, Reimagining
Work in the Age of AI, and like that book was also co-authored by H James Wilson.
Daugherty tells me, "We were really pleased with the reaction to Human + Machine … which
we wrote because we wanted to correct the narrative we were hearing back then … that all the
jobs were going to be destroyed and AI was going to be bad.”

5. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Daugherty says that since then, he feels that the key messages of the book have played out fairly
well, with most people coming to understand the potential benefits of AI rather than being fearful
of the dangers.
Where Radically Human differs, however, is that it takes in a broader range of new and
transformative technologies, including cloud and other developments which have been adopted
with greater enthusiasm than even Daugherty expected.
“We saw how fast trends were advancing, and some things were moving even faster than we
thought," he said, when he joined me for a conversation.
“We wanted to write Radically Human to talk about where this is really going and broaden the
dialogue … think about the intersection of technology and human ingenuity [putting] together
with the best of humans and the best of tech."

6. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Establishing the Radically Human narrative involved researching a whole array of different
elements around technological adoption across business and society. It soon became apparent
that what they were actually digging into was new paradigms for building organizations capable
of leveraging the wealth of opportunity offered by digital transformation and overarching
concepts such as the “fourth industrial revolution” and the metaverse.
One of the key findings that convinced them they were on the right track to understanding how
the future will evolve was the realization that while pre covid, digital leader organizations
appeared to be outperforming digital laggard organizations by a factor of two in many metrics,
post-covid it increased dramatically to a factor of five.
Another key insight was the identification of a category that the authors considered as
“leapfroggers” – those that managed to increase the distance between themselves and their
competitors even more dramatically.

7. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
“Looking at how those companies operated, you really validated a lot of the ideas
we had,” Daugherty said.
This led to the creation of a framework the authors termed “The IDEAS
framework," – encompassing intelligence, data, expertise, architecture, and
strategy. By quantifying the progress that leaders and leapfroggers were making
in those areas, it becomes possible to understand the roadmaps they were
following towards the future.
“That’s what we’re laying out for people – how to reframe some of the
assumptions and think differently about how to get to the future.”

8. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
The book covers complicated and emerging topics such as artificial emotional intelligence
and is focused on a number of case studies, including companies that the authors have
worked with during their time with Accenture. It also touches on subjects like edge
computing and small data – situations where, though an organization may have access to
potentially unlimited amounts of information, the truly valuable insights might lie within a
much smaller and more concentrated pool of data.
“For many organizations and for many things companies need to do, the small data could
be what makes the biggest difference … and the trends in technology are leading in this
direction … more technology is being pushed to the edge, and more algorithms are
going to need to run on the edge, not back in your centralized data lake … how do you
filter the right data … rather than going back and forth to your data center environment?”

9. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
A core component of the book’s messaging is the huge importance of building sustainability into
everything that we do with business and technology. To this end, it goes into detail on the
environmental impact of many of today’s key trends, from cloud computing to electric vehicles.
Disturbingly, one statistic they uncovered suggests that while the tech industry probably
accounted for around 4 percent of global CO2 emissions ten years ago, today it's probably more
like 6 percent – with projections saying that by 2040 it could be as high as 14 percent. Doesn’t
this seem somewhat contrary to the promise of many of today’s technology leaders that they are
“making the world a better place?”
“It would be disastrous if that were to happen,” Daugherty says, “it would be counter to every
more we need to make as a society in reducing emissions.”
Again, he suggests the answer lies in turning established ideas on their heads in search of more
radically human innovation.

10. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
"The last one-tenth of one percent of the precision you drive in your deep learning model
could use three of four times the carbon capacity – do you need that precision? Is the
tradeoff worth it? Those are the types of questions we’re asking … we don’t have all the
answers – the answers aren’t obvious yet in terms of all the things we need to do, but
there are some things that are clear.”
Watch my webinar with Paul Daugherty, CTO of Accenture and co-author of Radically
Human: How New Technology is Transforming Business and Reshaping our Future. We
dive deeper into the IDEAS framework and the sustainability implications of digital
transformation, as well as cover issues such as the importance of trust in the digital age.

11. © 2021 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
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12. © 2021 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker,
futurist, and a strategic business & technology advisor to governments and
companies. He helps organisations improve their business performance, use data
more intelligently, and understand the implications of new technologies such as
artificial intelligence, big data, blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is
a frequent contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for
Forbes. Every day Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers
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