Accenture brings on Magic Leap chief design officer to help lead its metaverse business

Accenture has hired James Temple, the chief design officer of wearable tech company Magic Leap, to help scale its metaverse business globally.

Temple joins in a dual role as co-lead of Accenture’s Metaverse Continuum Business Group (MCBG) alongside David Treat, as well as global metaverse lead for Accenture Song, the consultancy’s marketing communications arm.

Accenture formed the MCBG in March 2022 to help clients develop metaverse experiences. It has since created a prototype metaverse experience for the World Economic Forum alongside Microsoft, and a virtual replica of the country of Tuvalu to preserve its culture and history.

Together, Temple and Treat have been tasked with integrating and scaling Accenture’s metaverse business globally. 

Accenture estimates the metaverse will fuel $1 trillion in revenue by the end of 2025. 

Temple, who is based in London, succeeds Mark Curtis, who helped to create Accenture’s metaverse practice. The long-time Accenture leader, who was a founding partner of design and innovation consultancy Fjord, is taking on a larger role leading Accenture Song’s global sustainability studio.

Temple brings practical experience working in immersive technology. He joins the consulting giant having overseen user experience and industrial, operating system, application and brand design at Magic Leap, which develops augmented reality devices. 

The technologist first joined Magic Leap in 2018 as chief experience officer responsible for its immersive design capability, which involved deploying immersive spatial applications for location-based experiences. 

Prior to Magic Leap, Temple spent more than 12 years at R/GA, most recently as global chief innovation officer and chief creative officer for the EMEA region.