The 5Ws of my blogs

Why, What, Where, When, Who?

I’m facing a little bit of a challenge at the moment as I’m contributing to an increasing number of blogs.

There is this blog, and the innotribe blog, my usual hang out places.

I used to blog occasionally on swiftcommunity.net, but that is changing for dialogueonline.info. Still transitioning.

I’ve been given the opportunity to contribute to BankThink, the blog platform of American Banker.

And most recently, I’ve been given the opportunity to be a contributor to Forbes.com.

There are some other writing projects that I’m pursuing. Some very good friends (? ) have convinced me I should write longer pieces about Innotribe and innovation in general.

So I’ve been spending all my recent plane time writing – not sleeping or reading or watching movies. It turns out planes are good places to write things. And I’m just back from a 2 day long week-end from our retreat on the Belgian sea shore, where I spend a lot of time …. writing.

I did discover this – I like writing. I thought I would be too impatient to *really* write, but it turns out I can do it. I like it – so far I don’t love it. But let’s see where it takes me. On to new adventures.

Anyway,  I need to put some order into all these blogs and writing, figure out the 5Ws of each. So just wanted to let you know this is happening, and I hope you can track me down in the meantime.

Kosta

 

Interesting year … From Moscow to New York… From “Banks for a Better World” to “Operational Forum”

Here we are mid April 2012, and I’m reflecting back on the already very rich year.

I don’t know about you – until recently when I wanted to go back in time and remember everything that happened, I would go to the Outlook calendar at work and browse through. This could be for remembering the secretaries day (hint, hint it is soon!) or for preparing my end year appraisal.

If you read this blog, you know I have picked up since some 8 months to jotting, painting and otherwise scribing – event summaries, abstract impressions of some significant moments, paintings of places I visited that I particularly like.

So as I was sitting reflecting on 2012, I figured that rather than going to the boring Outlook I would rather go to my (now very familiar and fond) sketchbook pro app on the iPad and review what I had drawn and painted recently.

So here we go.

First a a very beautiful mountain landscape in my little retreat in Sainte-Foy-Tarentaise in the french Alps – I was there in January.

Here is a painting of the Kremlin. @matteorizzi and I were there in February (cold!) for a very succesful business visit.

Here is my colleague Javier Perez-Tasso announcing a new SWIFT product on the same day Tim Cook was announcing the latest iPad

In that same week in NYC, @martinedeweird, @mela_atanassova and I were holding the first Banks for a Better World workshop. Here is what we used to kick-start the meeting.

And finally, here is an impression from another of my retreats, Zeebrugge in Belgium on the North Sea coast, pictured here in a typical April belgium weather .

Nice year so far. And it is definitely a more fun to remember significant events than going through Outlook…

Kosta

 

Innovation shows results – the 3 babies from the Innotribe incubator

As you are reading this blog, you probably know about Innotribe.

Just in case, here a link for a quick overview. In a nutshell, Innotribe is SWIFT’s initiative to enable collaborative innovation in the financial community, and within SWIFT itself.

Since the three and a half years of its inception, the visible part of Innotribe has been on the front-end of the innovation process: the community and the network, the ideation events such as Innotribe@Sibos and Innotribe@Mumbai, the experimental approach.

With our fresh, open, friendly and neutral approach, we have moved the needle in the financial industry and Innotribe has become a brand enabling the financial industry and SWIFT to “have a seat at the innovators table” (an expression I like to use occasionally). There are nice success stories of how we have gathered innovators and generated lots of ideas.

Yet, people sometimes say: after all the dust has settled, where are the new initiatives, products and services that are coming from Innotribe?

It is a very significant and valid question – what is the value of innovation? What is the value of the brand? What is the value of my 10 strong Innotribe team at SWIFT? What’s in it for the financial industry?

I’d like to share three success stories to answer these questions and illustrate the value of Innotribe.

Before I share the stories, let me quickly explain (or remind you, dear frequent reader ) how Innotribe works.

I call it “the castle and the sandbox”.

If you want innovation, it is necessary to make “space” for it. Compared to your core business – the “castle” – you need to create a space for experimentation (and yes, failure) – the “sandbox”. More on this in my previous post here.

With Innotribe, we have established the Innotribe incubator as the “sandbox”. The incubator is a physical place, a fund, a process, a governance framework, and a legal framework.   And – last but not least – the people engaging in innovation.

The Innotribe incubator is the financial industry sandbox.

Right now there are 6 projects in the Innotribe incubator. But what is most interesting is that, since it creation in January 2011, the incubator has produced 3 successful concepts which have been adopted and, for some, put in production and right now generating new revenue!

Now we’re talking business. New products, New clients, New revenues.

The 3 concepts are: MyStandards, the Startup Challenges and the EBAM Central Utility.

Innotribe MyStandards

MyStandards is collaborative web-based platform that allows for efficient management of standards and market practices across the industry.

The innovation lies in the radical change in how SWIFTs standards releases are designed and distributed. The basic idea is to apply social media tools and techniques, resulting in faster and more collaborative processes.

Another innovation is the business model of this product – a “freemium” model where the basic functions are free, and value-added components are priced when used.

Yet another innovation was also the way the project team was formed – through a SWIFT internal recruitment fair, where the opportunity was given to all developers at SWIFT to participate.

MyStandards is now a new SWIFT product, to be launched officially early May in New York and London. It has already generated several sales even before the formal launch.

Here is a link to a more detailed project profile.

Innotribe Start-Up Challenges

This is a program that aims to bridge the gap between large financial institutions and early stage (or first round) financial industry related start-ups.

Related to this, the goal is also to build an eco-system where venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, banks and start-up can explore new opportunities.

As you can see, this is not about a new SWIFT or banking product, but about an innovation to save costs by providing to financial institutions a quality selection of startups. Some institutions don’t do such searches at all – this program does it for them.  Some institutions do search the startup eco-system, at great cost  – this program reduces that cost.

Outside of these benefits, we have enabled the forming of this eco-system with the gracious help of our sponsors, so the challenges  pay for themselves.

After a successful pilot in Sibos Toronto,  we feature in 2012 three regional events (NYC – already behind us and highly successful, Singapore in April and Belfast in June) and a global final event at Innotribe@Sibos Osaka. See innotribe.com for more info.

Here is a link to a more detailed project profile.

Innotribe EBAM Hub

The Electronic Bank Account Management Central Utility (EBAM-CU) aims to provide an automated, multi-bank and multi-region solution to corporates managing multiple accounts in multiple banks.

The first innovation features a central utility operated by SWIFT, in a space where SWIFT does not traditionally operate.  The second innovation is in the way the product was built, in a tight co-operation with an existing player. And the third innovation, at least in this space, is the co-creation development model with tight integration with the potential users. It is expected that the operating model will be some form of co-investment with these users.

The product is in the final stages of approval by the SWIFT board.

Here is a link to a more detailed project profile.

—-

There you go, our 3 babies! We in the team love them. But certainly not as much as the people that made them happen, at SWIFT and in the community.

Many thanks to these innovators.

And there’s a lot more in the incubator now, stay tuned. As soon as I gather some breath, i’ll blog about these as well!

Kosta

(cross posted on the Innotribe blog at innotribe.wordpress.com)

 

TEDx NewWallStreet – impressions and conclusions

Peter Vander Auwera (@petervan) and me were at the TEDx NewWallStreet event in Mountain View, CA, on March 9th. The event was the first one to feature a SWIFT speaker  - Peter!

The event was curated by Bruce Cahan (@brucecahan), an old timer – to put it this way as he is with us since almost the beginning – of Innotribe, and “mceed” (mc = master of ceremonies) by Camilla Webster (@camillawebester).

Bruce has many facets – he is a social entrepreneur and an Ashoka fellow, passionate about a project he calls Goodbank. He is also co-founder of Urban Logic, a nonprofit. He is an architect of systems with for example NYMAP- a geo-tagged map of NYC. As such  he was part of the command center responding to 9/11 attacks.  I love his friendliness and passion about everything he does. He took us for dinner the day before the event in old Palo Alto, and he was an excellent guide.

I got to know Camilla for the first time in person. She is a very well know journalist for Forbes and Huffington Post and she is coming up with a new book – I love the title! –  ”The Seven Pearls of Financial Wisdom: A Woman’s Guide to Enjoying Wealth and Power.” She gave us one of the pearls in her opening of the event, which I’ll preciously keep for me until the book is out!

We started the day with an interview of Bruce, Camilla, Peter and Ken (another speaker) on a local radio station. Bruce explained in a nutshell what the “New Wall Street” is all about – if banking is all about information processing, and silicon valley is all about tools for information processing, shouldn’t the silicon valley be the new Wall Street? Interesting, no? This was echoed by several of the speakers through the day.

Here’s how I saw it -

We then went into the heart of the subject – the talks!

Before I get there, let me say a few words about the location – the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View. About 5 minutes from the Googleplex, the building hosts hardware and stories of the – young – history of information science. Where can you see computer code written in 30 cm font on printouts hanging from walls? At CHM of course Seriously, if you’re even remotely interested by computers, it’s an excellent 2 – 3 hours visit. This was not my first time there, as the location is very popular for seminars and conferences. Last year, I was there for the Internet Identity Workshop (IIW).

We started the day with a very soft touch. Ken Kruzska – a very calm and humane guy – set the stage with a simple message – money is all about humanity. Many millions of foreign workers in the USA and California send money back to their families. For these families, money is an incredible enabler. And we should make sure there is as little or no obstacles to this flow of money.

After this very emotional kick-off, we dug into the first hard subject – big data and how the enormous computing capacity that is available can be harnessed by banks to increase welfare.  Doug Merrill, founder and CEO of ZestCash, explain how a better computed credit score (based on aggregating huge amounts of data, low cost storage and computing power) can lead to a better life for people because they have a correct score.

A second subject was somewhat unexpected (at least for me) – the fact that basic accounting, planning and budgeting skills were an absolute must for small and medium business owners. First, we had Shivani Siroya of InVenture, explain how her company provides some very basic but immensely effective financial tracking tools to developing countries businesses. Imagine this – an SMS based accounting! Then we had Jake Soll, an historian, explain how the double book accounting practice, invented in the Renaissance period, is still a critical enabler to do business today.  He explained this in a very fun way telling how Necker tried to introduce proper accounting in the pre-revolution France.  These were excellent talks, basically saying that there is some essential education effort needed to make sure basic accounting and budgeting skills were there for the masses.

          

A third subject, truly fascinating, was about where the New Wall Street should focus to invest. The theory developed by Howard Gould, co-founder of Tundra Capital LLC, is that we should focus on essentially  (brick&mortar) infrastructure, rather than the current focus on pure ventures. The needs of the exploding population and in particular the middle class are enormous!

Then we had the Innotribe’s Petevan! For his first TEDx speech, he painted a very broad picture about how established companies should innovate – in a sandbox and with passion – and he gave the example of the Digital Asset Grid project Innotribe is currently incubating as a major disruptive scenario for the digital economy.

There were several other speakers I didn’t get to hear because of some calls I had to take and then I had to leave early to catch my plane from SFO. Sorry I couldn’t hear you all, in particular Simon! Next time…

 Conclusion?

If the silicon valley wants to be the New Wall Street, it needs to establish itself as the sandbox (where it can experiment) vis-a-vis the NYC castle (the core of finance).

And my conclusion is: Innotribe can and should help!

 

A ..scary.. brick and mortar experience

A week ago the internet connection at home started acting up. Goes down, then available for a couple hours, then down again.

A big problem!

We’re all so used to have internet that all at once we started being a bit … anxious is not the right word. A bit stressed.

My wife works from home 2 days a week, and she’s heavily dependent for her job on being connected. So she started using her iPhone as a hotspot. Works but not ideal.

I started being uncomfortable as all the bills, home banking, investments (all these things I’m responsible for… ) are all electronic, so I started feeling a little late for everything. I also began using my own iPhone as a hotspot. Not ideal – slow, some things somehow don’t work. Granted, I could do some of the stuff from the internet connection at work, but it’s kind of in between meetings and things, no time to concentrate.

The boys (and girlfriends) –  when they are around – started clamoring about all their contacts waiting for them on Facebook, that couldn’t wait, so they all went to friends and cafés where they could connect.

A big problem, I tell you!

So I asked one of my sons, who is in between jobs and thus has some free time, to call our internet provider – Scarlet in Belgium. He tried over two days many times, at all periods of a working day, without success. Call the hotline, wait with music for 20 minutes, then the line disconnects.

Impossible to get in touch with these guys. #Scarlet #Fail

So I was sitting and thinking what to do. One of these solitude moments

And I figured: maybe it is some hardware, wiring, problem… I’ve never paid attention to where the phone wires were – as a matter of fact I don’t even recall ever seeing phone wires in the 25 years we live in this house.

So I took a flashlight and went down in the cellar. Indeed very quickly I found a whole mess of wires on a wall, to which I had never paid any real attention at all before. There is one wire coming from the street into the cellar. It connects to a hub where clearly many people had a go: the phone guys, the alarm system guys, the digital TV box guys and god knows who else. It looks like a wild cat!

But I figured the key thing is this phone wire coming from outside. A big, thick, many times painted over, nailed to the brick wall, wire.

I poked it a bit, took it in my hand, pulled a little …. and there it goes: breaks free! The solution is near!

The house we live is from 19th century, so god knows how old is this wire. For sure more than the 25 years we live in the house. Very brittle, kind of falling apart from age. I took my swiss knife, cut out a 10cm piece of it. Still very brittle. I cut 10cm more. Looked better. Connected the wires to the right spots in the big mess of wires.

Ran up the stairs to the office where the Time Capsule router is.

And miracle: the green eye of the Time Capsule is on! And has been now on for 2 days. Clearly, problem solved.

I ran an internet speed test: I have 20Mbps download speed. We connect the 5-6 computers in the house on this wire. We download all sorts of music and movies all the time from iTunes. And Skype. And digital TV. And Internet radio. On and on and on.

Think about it. All of this on this piece of brittle copper wire coming off the street into my cellar. From another age and generation.

And this wire choose a particular day to start acting up. Isn’t it amazing?