Accenture Launches Project Spotlight, a New Approach to Venture Capital
November 09 2020 - 07:59AM
Business Wire
Accenture Ventures’ new immersive engagement
and investment program seeks to address key business challenges of
the Global 2000 by closing strategic innovation gaps
Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has launched a new immersive engagement
and investment program targeting emerging technology software
startups to help fill strategic innovation gaps for the Global
2000. Called Project Spotlight, the exclusive Accenture Ventures
program represents a new approach to engaging with the global
software startup community.
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Accenture launches Project Spotlight to
close strategic innovation gaps (Graphic: Business Wire)
Beyond making capital investments, Project Spotlight will offer
unprecedented access to Accenture’s technology domain expertise and
its enterprise clients. Startups will co-innovate with Accenture at
its Innovation Hubs, Labs and Liquid Studios, working with subject
matter experts to adapt their solutions to the enterprise market
and scale faster and more effectively. Created by six-time Silicon
Valley entrepreneur and CEO, Tom Lounibos, Project Spotlight seeks
to transform the transactional nature of venture capital into an
immersive engagement model.
“For many startups, the most challenging part of bringing a
solution to market isn’t having a powerful idea or securing funding
– it’s the nuanced understanding of the enterprise business
problem,” said Lounibos, managing director, Accenture Ventures and
Project Spotlight lead. “This initiative is a completely new way of
approaching venture capital. We’re helping to put the spotlight on
promising startups by bringing them into our innovation network,
giving them exposure to the real business problems that we’re
solving for our clients and helping them tailor, refine and scale
their solutions for maximum impact.”
Accenture recently invested in and formed a strategic alliance
with SkyHive, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based startup that uses
artificial intelligence technology and its proprietary quantum
labor analysis methodology to facilitate labor market
transformation, reskilling and learning. SkyHive has been part of
Project Spotlight since March, working with Accenture technologists
at The Dock, Accenture’s flagship R&D and global innovation
center in Dublin, and at Accenture’s FinTech Innovation Lab New
York. In addition to collaborative R&D activities, the
Accenture Talent & Organization/Human Potential practice and
SkyHive have supported dozens of client use cases related to
pandemic response and are helping Global 2000 clients define and
navigate rapid workforce changes.
Most recently, Accenture brought SkyHive into a collaboration
with Walmart and Unilever as part of an effort catalyzed by the
World Economic Forum’s Consumer Industries Taskforce on Future of
Work. Through the collaborative industry effort, the organizations
are working on a ten-week pilot that will serve as a
proof-of-concept of reskilling and redeployment efforts that, when
scaled, can help people remain productive and employable in a
transforming labor market.
“Project Spotlight has had a profoundly positive impact in
enabling SkyHive to achieve its mission of advancing economic
prosperity and inclusion through the use of exponential
technology,” said Sean Hinton, founder and CEO of SkyHive. “It’s
not only the startup knowledge and deep domain expertise that the
Accenture team has provided us on this journey – it’s the
incredible support and the alignment of our vision and mission that
makes this collaboration so powerful and unique. This relationship
has opened up new opportunities and dramatically accelerated both
the speed and quality in which we go-to-market. We are honored to
be a part of Project Spotlight.”
Project Spotlight will focus on startups that address areas of
largescale strategic importance for Accenture’s enterprise clients
including closing the skills gap, data sovereignty, the future of
work, edge systems at scale and predictive systems. In addition to
SkyHive, other startups currently in the program include Synadia, a
provider of secure communications technology for digital systems
that Accenture Ventures invested in in July, and InCountry, a data
residency-as-a-service platform provider Accenture Ventures
invested in last month.
For more information on Accenture Ventures, visit
https://www.accenture.com/ventures.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global professional services company with leading
capabilities in digital, cloud and security. Combining unmatched
experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries,
we offer Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and
Operations services—all powered by the world’s largest network of
Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. Our 506,000
people deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity
every day, serving clients in more than 120 countries. We embrace
the power of change to create value and shared success for our
clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us
at www.accenture.com.
Copyright © 2020 Accenture. All rights reserved. Accenture and
its logo are trademarks of Accenture.
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Hannah Unkefer Accenture 206-839-2172
hannah.m.unkefer@accenture.com
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