Businesses must apply AI in innovative ways to fuel growth, says Accenture report

Companies must quickly find methods of integrating intelligent technologies if they are to realise major growth opportunities, according to a new paper from Accenture.

The Accenture Strategy report, Reworking the Revolution, predicts that an investment in AI and human-machine collaboration could increase revenues by up to 38% by 2022, boosting global profits by $4.8trn.

Particular sectors could enjoy even bigger benefits, with revenues in the consumer goods, healthcare and telecommunications industries projected to increase by around 50% with the successful implementation of intelligent tech.

Accenture spoke to 1,200 C and V-level executives who are currently working with AI along with a representative sample of 14,000 workers across 12 industries and 11 economies. Of those 14,000, 69% recognised the important of human-machine collaboration.

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But while three quarters of the executives surveyed revealed their plans to use AI to automate tasks over the next three years, only a quarter said their workers were ready for AI adoption.

The report recommends three ways in which companies can make the necessary jump to human-machine collaboration, and therefore rapid growth: recognising the change in job content rather than the number of jobs, successfully ‘pivoting’ their workforces and implementing new approaches to training.

"Business leaders must take immediate steps to pivot their workforce to enter an entirely new world where human ingenuity meets intelligent technology to unlock new forms of growth," said Ellyn Shook, Chief Leadership and Human Resources Officer, Accenture. 

"Workers are impatient to collaborate with AI, giving leaders the opportunity to demonstrate true Applied Intelligence within their organization."