The Monday mindset: 24 July 2017
“There is a life beyond blockchain.”
Fintech zeitgeist! Every Monday, we might look back at last week; look ahead to this week; share a few thoughts (our own or others); or discuss anything that catches our eye.
This week, Claire Calmejane, director of innovation at Lloyds Banking Group, presents “Digital Zero to Hero: Myth Debunking”. (This is part of a series on digital leadership. The first one is at LinkedIn here. The series is inspired by her daily interactions with senior leaders across industries.)
Digital can only be led by millennials
You don’t have to be 20 to get digital. Most successful transformations of incumbents have been led by senior leaders of the industry. But you do have to become digital and start using it in your day to day routine to develop a technology culture and understand the business case derived from the digital age.
The bank start-up collaboration
Collaboration between banks and start-ups is possible, a recent survey from Nesta indicates that 75% of start-ups and scale-ups that have collaborated with corporates benefited from the experience. There are some pitfalls on the incumbent side:
- Don’t try to box the start-ups. Remember a start-up product evolves very fast. Three months is very long for them.
- Have being “good” as an objective. Maybe the collaboration will not go forward but in any case, the resources of your organisation can help the start-up to develop – by mentorship on business skills or access to one of your suppliers. This was the case for the start-up Worapay collaborating with Lloyds.
- Develop a sandbox environment where procurement, risk, sourcing and legal can be adapted to this type of collaboration
Blockchain my hero
Luis Saiz Gimeno, at BBVA, said: “Code isn’t law. If your problem isn’t Byzantine then don’t use the B word.” There is a life beyond blockchain. Blockchain is a disruptive technology enabling distributed infrastructure to work efficiently and cheaply rather than one centralised system. However, blockchain is still nascent. We know some use cases in investment banking, but it has yet to expand and mature.
Technology is moving faster than ever
Yes, it is as per (Gordon) Moore’s Law, the Intel co-founder – technology has grown exponentially over the past 50 years. Overall, since I graduated from IT engineering ten years ago, most of the concepts are the same. The fundamental changes, such as personalising your experience in real-time through data analysis (so called system experts) or coming from the open source community is yet to come!
Last week’s Monday mindset contained “Ten Simple Rules for Crypto-Investing”.
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