Monthly Archives: September 2015

The Essence of Work – Part 8 – Your Projects

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This post is part-8 of a series of ten essays on the essence of work. For an introduction and overview of previous posts, check here.

broken-mirror

This time, I invite you to look into the mirror, and watch the scars in your face, the arrows in your back, and the experiences that can’t be unlearned.

I invite you to make contact with the emotional and physical footprint of your work.

To make contact with those projects where you went really deep, where you chose your own path, where you challenged all existing conventions.

The ones that completely exhausted you, but where you are left with the deep and satisfactory warm feeling of having done the right thing.

In many cases, these are the projects that you chose to be part of, which you initiated.

In the same way it is better to be in a position to choose the clients you want to work for, in the same way you’re better off when you create a interdependence in life that allows you to chose the projects you want to be part of.

When projects become your projects. Where you know that you shaped the project and the project would never have become what it is without you having been part of it.

Those projects, you know, where you do the skunk work whatever it takes.

Those projects where you feel home, where you are meant to be, and that feel like your own – sometimes messy – creative studio.

Sculptor studio

Sculptor Alexander Calder's studio, 1964, photographed by Pedro E. Guerrero

For many years now, I follow and get inspired by the work of Jan Chipchase: he used to be the executive creative director of global insights for Frog Design, took a sabbatical, came back, and created in April 2014 his own Studio-D, a research, design and strategy consultancy.

You really have to read everything on the Studio-D site: the annual report, the project reports, the way to think of a company as a pop-up crew that comes together to serve a customer and then disbands when the job is done, the ethical ways of choosing projects and clients.

His own webpage opens with:

“Everybody needs space to do truly interesting work.”

That resonates with me.

It reads like a dream to me, and it’s how I would like to be, a beacon: I just don’t have the courage (yet) to make the choices Jan made.

More dreams

Building more dreams – By Hugh McLeod @gapingvoid

Studio-D has a page about “those projects”. This page did something with me at a level beyond the cognitive. It resonates very strongly with me. I have been part of and initiated some of those projects…

There are projects.

The ones that shape, mould and refine what we do, allow us to iterate on what we know – the operational things that help us get stuff done better, faster, smoother.

And then there are those projects. 

Those projects shape us and our team, they expand our world view, open minds to new ways of thinking, bring our short existence into sharp focus – they remind us that our time on this planet is too fleeting to devote to things that are no sooner done, than forgotten.

Those projects make us question our beliefs, our career goals, who we work for, who we work with, who we want to work with, and where we want to devote our energies for the next few years.

It’s those projects that rapidly evaporate any tolerance for bullshit.

They remind us of what we’ve let drift, and provide a rough hand to steer us back on track.

They are the essence of a life worked well.

Everyone has their own criteria for what makes one of “those projects”. They can include heart-in-mouth, will-we-or-won’t-we-make-it moments where the cost of failure is absolute, where fear stalks and somewhere along the line hearts leap, and tears are shed. They generate experiences that can’t be unlearnt, are in no danger of being forgotten.

“Experiences that can’t be unlearnt, are in no danger of being forgotten”!

Isn’t that great?

Is that not what life is about? Or was I discussing work? It is the same if you look at the essence of work this way?

burning

Picture from Burning Man 2015 – I was not there ;-)

The danger to be forgotten is in the eye of the beholder.

At one level of consciousness, the fear is about being forgotten as a person in the organization, and what you think you meant and mean for the organization. Why you think you and your work matter. Why you think you made a dent in the organization you work for. When that gets forgotten, that hurts. It is the stage where you wonder if you still matter.

At another level of consciousness, you have internalized that fear. You acknowledge what has been, and you don’t care anymore about being forgotten.

Because you now think in terms of experiences that can’t be unlearned and made you that unique human being that you are, with your own history and timeline of experiences.

The previous post was about the next 10 years. And the fear of not having enough time left to do what you were meant to do. In that post I also invited you to look back and interrogate the progress you made in the last 10 years. You probably can see the milestones and progress of your previous last 10 years.

But the trap is when you start worrying whether others have seen it too. When you let others decide whether you matter or not. When you wait to get picked, because you live in the illusion that the organization has internalized your last 10 years in the same deep way as you did yourself, and that the organization cares.

The organization does not care.

And your history trace evaporates a little more every year with the apparent mandatory half-yearly or yearly re-organizations, killing existing connections (and creating new ones), cutting-off the historic trails, and the milestones you were part of.

What re-organization do you work for?

The older you get, the more you witness how the wheels are re-invented over and over again. Testosterone, rivalry, positioning and ambition drive projects and organizations, not purpose. It has become standard practice to ignore history, to forget “those projects”, their lessons learned and the warm bodies that were behind them.

picasso

One of my heroes: Pablo Picasso – by Yoo-Hyun – Hand cut paper

Our conversations become tweets, at best. There is no time for a quality in the essence of our work. We are getting fragmented, and become shrapnel of our own identity.

We become irrelevant.

The essence of work is about relevancy.

But relevancy for whom and in what context?

Being forgotten is only in the eyes of the beholder.

The essence of work is that you were part off, where you were instrumental to one of those projects. They are engrained in your physical and emotional DNA, and make who you are. Nobody can take that away.

So look back, and interrogate those projects that made you who you are. That gave you the scars on your soul, and the arrows in your back. Those projects are those projects because you cared. You cared for yourself and the organization that you were part of. This relationship is different from doing your job, different from the employer-employee relationship.

The madness is many of these relations are un-even, unequal. In many cases the performer cares for the organization, but the organization does not care for the performer.

As in so many of the essays in this series, the only one way to survive this madness and is to choose and adhere to your own norms and standards for an essence of work that is after superior qualities and experiences.

That is what our next essay in the series will be about: ethereal qualities.

Innotribe Sibos 2015 – Day four: What machine intelligence wants

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This is the last post in a series of four about the Innotribe Sibos 2015 programme.

In a play of words on Kevin Kelly’s book “What Technology Wants”, we have four major themes this year, one theme per day:

Sibos_visual_day4

Day-4 is all about Machine Intelligence. We will showcase highly immersive demonstrations of cognitive analytics for a real-time world. The day will include sufficient critical voices on the impact of machine intelligence on the future of jobs and human / machine interaction.

Our anchor-person for the day is our own Jay van Zyl, Founder & CEO, Innosect.

jay-head

Jay is all about Social Based Innovation: unlocking value in the social ecosystem requires a renewed look at how machine and human interact. He is involved with ground-breaking work in Silicon Valley, for example the Innovation for Jobs community lead by David Nordfors and Vint Cerf. His latest book “Built to Thrive, making your mark in a connected world” was published in 2011 focuses on the social aspects of innovation.

Usually, by day-4 of Sibos, folks get a bit tired, so we thought opening this day with something really cool. Starting at 09:15am – 10:00am on the Innotribe stand, our session “Accelerating and scaling expertise with cognitive computing from IBM Research and Watson” will showcase these new promising technologies in 360°! We will use the full real estate of our big LED wall to immerse you in mind-blowing demos of cognitive assistants, a financial sentiment aggregator, psycholinguistic features, and deep learning techniques. And yes, we will have the IBM Watson robot.

Video IBM Watson Engagement Advisor – check out robot at 1 min

After a short break, we’ll continue on the Innotribe stand at 10:15am – 11:15am with the “Voice of the customer 3.0”. In the old days, organisations tried to understand the voice of their customers through so-called customer focus groups. We have evolved a lot since then. In this session we’ll show you three examples of the 2.0 and 3.0 generations:

  • Fidor Bank operates a highly participatory platform for customer and developer engagement in almost real-time
  • Better Ventures will showcase how creating participatory experiences and at scale is now within reach of any financial institution.
  • Innosect looks at the intersection of innovation and human capacity as our work on the idea-graph seeks to create the ultimate human-idea network.

The Innosect piece is a nice segway in to the next session at 12:45pm – 13:45pm, Innotribe stand “Thinking machines and jobs: How banks can respond to the opportunity”.

robot pepper

You will be welcomed by Pepper, the Aldebaran robot

Will robots steal your job? Check out this site from BBC news, to assess the likelihood that your job could be automated within the next two decades. But it is probably the wrong question. It’s a question grounded in a faltering narrative of a task-centered economy. We can do better.

That’s why we have invited David Nordfors, CEO and Co-Chair, i4J Innovation for Jobs who together with his partner Vint Cerf at Google are already thinking about the next stage: “If computers are going to do what people do today, what can people do?

We will quickly change the dystopian “robots will kill our jobs” conversation into a “disrupting unemployment” perspective and weave in the views of Millennials from Wharton FinTech and the Singapore Management University.

At 14:00pm – 15:00pm, we’ll get a little more relaxed with a session labelled “Analytics for a real-time world” on the Innotribe stand.

nirvana

Nevermind, we wanted to create a real demo nirvana, and have invited four data analytics and machine intelligence firms who will give amazing demos of applications that are currently in the market related to real-time financial services. I have seen some of the demos and how we are planning to stage this with the full real estate of our circular big LED wall, and this is something you don’t want to miss.

The Innotribe Sibos week comes to an end on the Innotribe stand with our closing session “Machines are not the answer”, starting at 15:15pm. We are very proud to have with us Andrew Keen, Author of “The Internet Is Not The Answer”.

internet not the answer

There are many positive ways in which the Internet has contributed to the world, but as a society we are less aware of its deeply negative effects on our psychology, economy, and culture. Andrew Keen will debunk some of the enthusiasm surrounding what we take for granted in our on-line lives, and reflect on all that artificial and machine intelligence we have seen on this day-4 of Innotribe Sibos 2015.

Right after the Innotribe closing session, we all head for the big Sibos Closing plenary, with Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). And later in the evening you are all invited to join the annual big Sibos party.

Sibos_Linkedin

We hope you enjoyed this little series of posts familiarizing you with the Innotribe programme for this year.

We look forward welcoming you on-site and to see you part of our immersive learning experiences on platforms, society, innovation, and machine intelligence.

Other resources:

Innotribe Sibos 2015 – Day three: What innovation wants

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Each day the Innotribe programme will focus on a specific theme, throughout which both Millennials and Power Women in FinTech will play an important role participating in all sessions. Last week, we already gave an overview of day-1 and day-2 of this year’s programme. This week, we will cover what happens on Wednesday and Thursday 14-15 October 2015.

In a play of words on Kevin Kelly’s book “What Technology Wants”, we have four major themes this year, one theme per day:

Sibos_visual_day3

Day-3 is organized around the Innotribe Startup Challenge Finale. It will be preceded by a highly interactive session with seven FinTech Hubs.

Our anchor-person for the day is our own Kevin Johnson, Innotribe’s Startup Challenge Manager.

During our Innotribe day opening on the Innotribe stand (from 09:15am – 10:00am), we’ll share some of our current and future Innotribe plans in a conversational format: we are happy to announce that our CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt will be part of this session.

We’ll continue at 12:45pm on the Innotribe stand with the session “Why banks need FinTech hubs”. The plan is to understand the offerings and approaches of FinTech Hubs in different regions of the world, and how we can learn from each other and collaborate across cities, countries and regions. We’ll have some good infographics to compare, and a playful “show me your best card” gamification element as well.

We have an impressive line-up for this session that will be moderated by Bernard Lunn, Founding Partner, Daily Fintech Advisers:

The Innotribe Startup Challenge Finale will take place on 14 October from 14:00 till 17:00. Given its success in previous years, we move to a bigger room: Conference Room 2 has a capacity of about 350 people, and we hope we’ll be standing room again, also in this big room.

This year over 370 companies applied to the Startup Challenge, with 60 companies selected to enter the programme. During four regional showcases in London, Cape Town, Singapore and New York, these companies presented their business ideas to an audience of more than 800 industry experts, VCs, representatives from leading financial institutions, and bank decision-makers who selected the 20 finalists – 12 early-stage and 8 growth-stage companies – advancing to the Finale at Sibos.

PR_Innotribe_sep2015

Please click here to access all details about the 20 finalists who advance to the Finale at Sibos.

As in previous years, the 12 early-stage finalists will pitch and showcase their business ideas to Sibos delegates who will select this year’s winner. A cash prize of USD 50,000 will be awarded to the winning early-stage finalist. For the first time this year, the remaining eight growth-stage finalists will host individual exhibition booths on the Innotribe stand at Sibos and have the opportunity to give live product demos to Sibos delegates throughout the week. They will be joined by some Startup Challenge alumni: EssDOCS, AMP Credit Technologies and Matchmove.

The Innotribe Startup Finale is open to all Sibos participants and is sponsored by Deutsche Bank, HP, IBM, Invest NI, Level30, Luxembourg for Finance, and Wells Fargo.

Following right after the Innotribe Startup Challenge Finale, we will announce this year’s winner around 17:00 in the foyer area close to Conference Room 2. The winner will receive their cheque of USD 50,000 out of the hands of Christian Sarafidis, SWIFT’s Chief Marketing Officer. A reception will give you the opportunity to network with the various companies who were selected as finalists and congratulate this year winner.

And on Wednesday evening we’ll mix even further with the vibrant local FinTech scene of Singapore for a Networking Event in town.

BASH-inside

250 invitees will have the chance to network at BASH, the new startup hub in Singapore, for a joint event organised by Innotribe and the following Singapore’s FinTech communities.

LogoPanelEventbrite_small (1)

This FinTech Meet-up is kindly sponsored by Wells Fargo and Standard Chartered Bank.

Networking-event-sponsors

Register for the FinTech Meet-Up via this link. Innotribe Sibos attendees will get an invitation card on-site. Busses will pick you up at the conference centre to drive you to BASH (and bring you back).

Don’t stay too late, as the morning after, we will be back on the Innotribe stand at 09:15am for an awesome session on machine intelligence with IBM Research and IBM Watson 😉

Sibos_Linkedin

In the coming days, we will familiarize you further with the program for the last day that will be all about Machine Intelligence and the participatory economy in financial services.

Hope you will find ample time to join us in these immersive learning experiences.

Other resources:

Petervan’s Delicacies – Week 14 Sep 2015

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Week-37 of Delicacies: Max 5 articles that i found interesting and worth re-reading. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Enjoy!

If you can’t get enough of these and want more than 5 articles, I have created an extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE. If you want more than 5 links, you can subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan

The Essence of Work – Part 7 – Ten years to go

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This post is part-7 of a series of ten essays on the essence of work. For an introduction and overview of previous posts, check here.

Soleil

Picture – Cirque du Soleil – Amaluna 2015 Show

This post is about the legacy of your work. It is not about your legacy. It is about the legacy of your work.

A couple of months I took some time off to reflect on my never-ending mid-life crisis that started when I was 35 😉

I suddenly got the shivers when I start thinking how little time I had left. I started wondering what I would do with the rest of my life.

In the better case scenario I would remain “professionally active” till I am 70. I suddenly realized I only have +/- 10 years left to get there. Luckily my coach helped me put things in perspective, sort of. She said: “Just look back at your last 10 years, and how you have progressed (or not) in that time frame. And now think how much more progress you could make in the next 10 years”.

hindu

Picture – Hindu Holy Men

When I say “professionally active”, I did not necessarily mean it as “having a job”, the whole purpose of this series on The Essence of Work.

So, what would be the essence of being “professionally active”?

Mike Kruzeniski @mkruz, Design Director at Twitter came help me with his post about Jonathan Ive’s patience.

jonathan

Picture: Jonathan Ive – Hypebeast.com

Don’t just think about that one product you need to design in the next 3, 6, or 12 months. Consider the skills, relationships, and tools that you and your company will need for the next 2, 5, 7, or 10 years and start working on them now.

Don’t just measure yourself by the output of your very next project; Measure yourself by how you’re improving quality over the course of your next 10 projects.

Your job is to be the shoulders that the next generation of designers — and perhaps your future self — at your company will stand on.

I found another hint to my question in “Your Work is Your Work” by John Wenger @JohnQShift

enlightningpeople

Picture: Sochi Enlightning People Pascal Le Segretain - Getty Images

Developing greater reflection on self is about asking those deeper questions about our beliefs, values and orientations.  For some, it is best done when in nature, in silence or in solitude.  These are questions that get to the heart of who we are. 

  • What is it about the work I do that is related to the capabilities I need to grow in myself?
  • How do I delude myself?
  • How does my internal picture of “me” differ from how I actually am with people?
  • How do I use my power?
  • What kind of leader am I?
  • Am I living a wonder-full life?

Developing these practices gets us a significant way towards knowing ourselves and shining a light on our real “work”.

Or more recently, Kevin Kelly in reply to a question about the kind of mindset with to approach life and work that enables you to create at high quality and velocity:

young kelly

Picture – The young Kevin Kelly – Almost casted to act in Star Trek

My “work” is usually the kind of thing that also gives me deep pleasure, so I could say I also play a lot. I am a big do-it-yourself believer and I still do a lot my self, but more and more I also hire the best expert or professional I can as well. That really ups one’s productivity.

Kelly again:

“Your job in life is to discover your job, and it usually takes your whole life to figure this out.”

This re-confirms my ever ongoing mid-life crisis and the realization that it take a whole life to search the truth and in the end probably not finding it.

emerson

It tells me not to wait for others to pick me, to praise me, to give me permission. It tells me that the whole enterprise appraisal system is completely screwed up because it measures the past and not the future potential. It only measures the output and not the input. Its measures are based on antiquated standards of maximizing efficiency, without realizing that the value creation and ethical norms of work – not jobs – have moved on to higher levels of quality and awareness.

Seth Godin was pitching recently “Don’t wait to be picked” in his keynote at Inbound 2015:

Go pick yourself. You decide. I will also talk about this in next post in this series, when we have the opportunity to be part of projects that change our lives. This way, your next 10 years will be more satisfying, as you adhere to your own norms and standards.

Innotribe Sibos 2015 – Day two: What society wants

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Each day the Innotribe programme will focus on a specific theme, throughout which both Millennials and Power Women in Fintech will play an important role participating in all sessions. In the next two weeks, we will produce a more detailed blog per theme of each day.

In a play of words on Kevin Kelly’s book “What Technology Wants”, we have four major themes this year, one theme per day:

Sibos_visual_day2

Day-2 is about what society wants from financial institutions, covering topics from Millennials who are born digital and mobile, to refugees who are forced to be on the move and have no access to financial services, and financial inclusion for the 2.5 billion unbanked people. These issues will be intersected with a ‘what if’ session on re-inventing regulation for the digital era.

akhtar

Our anchor-person for the day is Akhtar Badshah, PhD, Chief Catalyst, at the Catalytic Innovators Group. Akhtar will be with us the whole day, and will wrap up the findings of this society day. He is also an active speaker in some of the sessions. I met Akhtar at a Giving-conference in Minneapolis earlier this year, and besides the fact he has been Senior Director, Citizenship and Public Affairs, Head Corporate Philanthropy at Microsoft, Akhtar is also an artist and architect, and a wonderful and deep person to engage with.

Akhtar artwork

Artwork by Akhtar Badshah – Untitled - Acrylic on Canvas - 36"x48"

We have prepared and designed six sessions for you on Tuesday, including our Innotribe day opening at 09:15am in the Innotribe Space.

After our Innotribe day opening, we’ll kick off at 10:15am with a session about digital natives. During the session “Engaging with the millennial generation – A hands-on workshop for banks”, Claro Partners and Anthemis Group will share the key insights of research done with a consortium of financial institutions in six markets. The session will also feature key tenets of a whitepaper (PDF link) produced by Millennials from Wharton Fintech in collaboration with Innotribe. The circle will be powered by Millennials from Wharton FinTech and students from the Singapore Management University.

After the Big Issue Debate at 11:30am, we’ll continue at 12:45am in the Innotribe space on Financial Inclusion. Kosta Peric, Deputy Director, Financial Services for the Poor, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will continue the conversation that was started by Bill Gates during the closing plenary at Sibos Boston 2014.

video leveloneproject

Video 1 Level One Project overview

Kosta will describe his work with the Level One Project and articulate the opportunity for banks to engage in financial inclusion, not as a CSR or philanthropic project, but as a very scalable business. He will be followed by Udayal Goyal, who will illustrate his work with Apis Partners, a catalyst capital for Financial Services in Growth Markets aiming to have a net positive impact in the communities they invest in. The session is set up as fully interactive session with audience polling, audience exercises and a call for action.

Just stay on the Innotribe stand for the next session about Re-Inventing Regulation starting at 14:00pm sharp. Risk and innovation don’t always go well together. Imagine what regulation would look like if we could start from scratch? Most of our regulatory frameworks are based on industrial era models. What if we could re-design regulation based on digital era models, and how would that inform our conversations with the regulators today. The three igniters from Anthemis Group, Silicon Valley Bank and Transferwise will plant some provocative seeds that will grow like trees on the big LED wall, and lead you into a conversation about the key tenets of a re-invented regulation landscape. We have powered our “circle” with thought leaders on regulation from leading institutions and new entrants. Again, a fully designed and facilitated session with audience exercises.

At 15:15pm, we have made our circular workshop space available to the team lead by Jesse McWaters from the WEF (World Economic Forum) Project on Disruptive Innovation in Financial Services: in 2015 the team explored the drivers and potential implications of innovation across core function of financial services. This invitation-only session will also give feedback on regulatory models for innovation, applications of decentralized systems, blueprint for digital identity, and the impact on society at large.

WEF poster

Graphic from WEF report on Disruptive Innovation in Financial Services.

Where we started the day with Millennials who are born digital and mobile, we will close the day with a session about refugees: people who are forced to be on the move and have no access to financial services.

The session “Leveraging modern payment platforms for accelerating social impact” (starting at 16:30pm on the Innotribe Stand) will be lead by Christine Duhaime and Sam Maule, who started The Banking and Refugees Project to address financial exclusion for refugee populations by devising or applying financial technology for refugee situations. They will be joined by Akhtar Badshah, Kosta Peric, and Daniel Marovitz as instigators in this interactive session with audience exercise.

UN VR film poster

Image: The United Nations has collaborated with filmmaker Chris Milk to make its 
first virtual reality film

The session will include the United Nations virtual reality film Clouds Over Sidra bringing viewers closer to the Syrian conflict by transporting them into the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan – currently home to 84,000 refugees. The session is about refugee crisis in general, not zooming in on any particular region or population. We hope we can challenge you to become part of the solution of this pressing world problem.

refugees VR

Check-out this TED talk video with Chris Milk at minute 7 and imagine how this 
could work on our LED Wall.

In the coming days and weeks, we will familiarize you with the program for the remaining two days. We believe we have a fantastic line-up of speakers, igniters, instigators, contrarians, Millennials and Powerwomen in FinTech.

Hope you will find ample time to join us in these immersive learning experiences.

Other resources:

Petervan Delicacies – Week 7 Sep 2015

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Week-36 of Delicacies: Max 5 articles that i found interesting and worth re-reading. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Enjoy!

If you can’t get enough of these and want more than 5 articles, I have created an extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE. If you want more than 5 links, you can subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan

Innotribe Sibos 2015 – Day One: What platforms want

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Each day the Innotribe programme will focus on a specific theme, throughout which both Millennials and Power Women in Fintech will play an important role participating in all sessions. In the next two weeks, we will produce a more detailed blog per theme of each day.

In a play of words on Kevin Kelly’s book “What Technology Wants”, we have four major themes this year, one theme per day:

  • Day-1: What Platforms Want
  • Day-2: What Society Wants
  • Day-3: What Innovation Wants
  • Day-4: What Machine Intelligence Wants

Sibos_visual_day1

Platform economics and business models are foundational capabilities for innovation. All the Innotribe sessions on Monday have a specific focus on Platforms.

Our anchor-person for the day is Christopher Wasden, Executive Director at the Sorenson Center for Discovery & Innovation at the University of Utah. Chris will be with us the whole day, and will wrap up the findings of day-1 the following day. He is also an active speaker in some of the sessions.

We have prepared and designed six sessions for you on Monday, including our Innotribe week opening at 09:15am in the Innotribe Space.

After our Innotribe week opening, we’ll kick off at 10:15am with a fascinating “New kids on the block(chain) platform” session, moderated by Mark Buitenhek, Global Head of Transaction Services, ING, and also member of the SWIFT Board. We have invited four newcomers from the blockchain and distributed ledger space: Chain.com, Stellar.org, Standard Treasury (recently acquired by Silicon Valley Bank), and Hyperledger (recently acquired by Digital Asset Holdings). They will engage in a highly interactive debate with four financial institutions (UBS, Barclays, DBS Bank, and Bank of New York Mellon) on the relevancy of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies for the financial industry. This is the first session where we will use our magic LED wall on the Innotribe Stand, next to the main SWIFT Stand.

We’ll then move to Conference Room 2 at 11:30am for the “Future of Money” session, for several years now a standing room only session. This session will focus on disruption at large in the financial industry, looking at how the front end is influencing the back end. The underlying theme is to show the front end is fragmenting, whereas the back end is converging. We will use automated credit as the use case for this conversation. The session format promises to be exciting and entertaining: we will position some newcomers in the area of automated credit on the main (front) stage, and facilitate a lively conversation with some major financial institutions in the back-end of the room. With two moderators, camera interaction, audience voting and a mix of Millennials and Powerwomen in FinTech, this promises to be one of the highlights of Innotribe 2015.

Back then to the Innotribe Stand at 12:45pm for “Platform disruption: The business of APIs”. The key immersive learning experience we’d like to create is that the business of API’s is an ecosystem play: with financial institutions wishing to expose or consume functionality through APIs, API gateway providers, developers, applications, and customers using the functionality delivered through those applications. The igniters for this conversation come from Fidor Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, Bank of New York Mellon, and Level39. Moderated by Jurgen Ingels, Founder of Clear2Pay, and Co- Founder / managing partner of SmartFinCapital.

After the big Sibos opening plenary session, we’ll reconvene in the Innotribe Space at 15:15pm for “Killer platforms: The Chinese road to platform disruption”. This session really is about big Chinese tech companies, carving out their platform space in the financial industry (Alibaba, TenCent, Baudu, etc.) and how this will dramatically change the way we think about disruption in FinTech. Through disruptive analysis and primary market research, Kapronasia, The Disruption House and Daily Fintech will present a detailed look at the history of China’s financial industry, the models behind the extraordinary growth of technology companies as financial players and the impact of regulation and reform the most likely path for the industry going forward. Attendees will walk away with a qualitative and quantitative understanding of how China’s tech companies will affect both China and the rest of the world. We’ll use again in a big way our LED Wall to pencil on the world map the relevancy of all this on the different regions.

We will close the day with “Exploring real world disruption scenarios” (starting at 16:30pm on the Innotribe Stand, on how platform strategies help you respond to new entrants in the ever-changing payment landscape. In this session, we will share some of the key findings of a specialised 2015 Innotribe Task Force on platform thinking. We will first familiarize the audience with some of the key drivers of disruption and the “why” of innovation strategies leading into strategic options. Our facilitators have created an engaging hands-on exercise for the audience to familiarize them selves with “disruption scenarios”. We will land with a contextualization of platform strategies on our LED Wall, leveraging the findings of the previous sessions of day one of Innotribe at Sibos 2015.

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In the coming days and weeks, we will familiarize you with the program for the remaining three days. We believe we have a fantastic line-up of speakers, igniters, instigators, contrarians, Millennials and Powerwomen in FinTech.

Hope you will find ample time to join us in these immersive learning experiences.

Other resources:

The Essence of Work – Part-6 – You are responsible

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This post is part-6 of a series of ten essays on the essence of work. For an introduction and overview of previous posts, check here.

Rojas

Illustration: Adrian Villar Rojas - The most beautiful of all mothers - Instanbul Water Biennale

Part-6 is about you being responsible. Responsibility is highly correlated with accountability. In the Essence of Work, you are the sole responsible.

You are responsible for:

  • Yourselves: your mental and physical well-being
  • The teams you belong to:
  • The organisations these teams belong to;
  • The ecosystems these organisations belong to;
  • The whole world these ecosystems belong to

It’s about daring to step forward. It’s about daring to observe authentically. About daring expressing the unsaid. It is about daring to be great. We have covered a lot of all that in our work at Corporate Rebels United. Check out that site and join if you feel that resonates with you.

Why do I write this in the 3rd person? Make it personal. Read this as if it were you. Start the sentence with “I”.

Rebels are responsible

What else am I responsible for?

I am responsible for:

  • Choosing my clients
  • And the projects that I refuse
  • My own failure
  • How I stand in life and in work
  • Not being dependent anymore on the judgment of others and their standards
  • My standards
  • My norms
  • My promises to them and myself

Cant take it anymore

Cartoon – “Can’t take this anymore” - by Steve Cutts

Stop blaming others. Stop blaming the system. The problem is never out there, it is always in here. Step forward, and decide what you are going to do about it. You can’t take this anymore? Bullshit. You can take a lot more.

What happens when you take personal leadership? When you take responsibility for your health. For your needs and those of your team. Even if you live in a different needs–system. Even if you live in a different belief-system.

Your actions will be different, depending on the belief system and the needs you try to satisfy.

Here are some suggestions on how you can start your day differently. Make a checklist of it and read it when you wake-up, or stick it on the mirror where you brush your teeth every day. Make a poster out of it. Whatever.

  • I let go any notion of complaint – about myself and others – and see any situation where I feel uncomfortable as an opportunity to learn and change.
  • I leave all my fears behind and set myself open to all possibilities that may lead to something good, positive and inspiring to create with and for others.
  • I let the past for what it is and focus on “being” what can be: if I want the essence of my work be more integer, then I am more integer myself. If I need more coddling in my relationship, and I start coddling myself.
  • I inexhaustibly focus on the positive – on what I love about my partner, my daughter, my boss, etc and each time I still say how much I like them and let all the negative washout.
  • I’m a Believer – I believe and follow my inner compass. If I feel that something is possible, that is probably true.

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Picture: Art students discussing the approach for their study books
Art Academy BKO 2015 - Overijse - Belgium

In the Essence of Work, I am responsible from A-Z. From the initial authentic observation, the first line of your drawing, the choice of paper, the choice of pen, brush or pencil, the execution, the finishing, the sharing, the giving of the gift, and the receiving of the feedback.

In the Essence of Work, I don’t have any excuses anymore to produce half-baked bread. In the Essence of Work, I am solely responsible to show the very best of me, every day.

Innotribe goes centre stage at Sibos 2015

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Exactly one month from the start of Innotribe@Sibos 2015, we issued a press release about our program. It is the kick-off of our campaign for our 7th edition of a four-day FinTech immersive learning experience.

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This year, Sibos is taking place at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, from 12-15 October.

“Innotribe is not about pitching anything in particular, but rather trying to take a helicopter view of what we see at the edge of our ecosystem – things we believe have the potential to enter the mainstream in three to five years time”

As I already mentioned in our July inaugural post, our tagline this year is “the right mix”.

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Each day the Innotribe programme will focus on a specific theme, throughout which both Millennials and Power Women in Fintech will play an important role participating in all sessions. In the next two weeks, we will produce a more detailed blog per theme of each day. The daily themes are as follows:

  • Monday – what platforms want: Platform economics and business models are foundational capabilities for innovation. Throughout the day, we will cover a wide range of topics from distributed ledger technologies, automated credit, API community strategies, the rapidly changing financial industry in China and its global impact, and real world disruption scenarios.
  • Tuesday – what society wants: The platform theme continues, covering topics from Millennials who are born digital and mobile, to refugees who are forced to be on the move and have no access to financial services, and financial inclusion for the 2.5 billion unbanked people. These issues will be intersected with a ‘what if’ session on re-inventing regulation for the digital era.
  • Wednesday – what innovation wants: The highlight of the day is the Innotribe Startup Challenge Finale. It will be preceded by a session on novel ways of progressing innovation throughput, and a highly interactive session with seven FinTech Hubs.
  • Thursday – what machine intelligence wants: Thursday will showcase highly immersive demonstrations of cognitive analytics (e.g. analytical strategies to help derive insights from big data and improve decision making) for a real-time world. The day will include sufficient critical voices on the impact of machine intelligence on the future of jobs and human / machine interaction.

We ensured diversity across the different thought-leaders joining us throughout the week. The notable list of 70+ experts, men, women, Millennials, investors, accelerators and contrarians who will join us throughout the week includes:

  • Akhtar Badshah, PhD, Chief Catalyst, Catalytic Innovators Group
  • Mark Buitenhek, Global Head of Transaction Services, ING
  • Claire Calmejane, Director of Innovation, Lloyds Banking Group
  • Neal Cross, Chief Innovation Officer, DBS Bank
  • Christine Duhaime, Founder, Digital Finance Institute
  • Leda Glyptis, Head of EMEA Innovation Centre, Bank of New York Mellon
  • Matthias Kroener, Co-Founder, Shareholder and CEO, Fidor Bank
  • Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)
  • Dr. David Nordfors, CEO and Co-Chair, i4j (Innovation for Jobs)
  • Anju Patwardhan, Group Chief Innovation Officer, Standard Chartered Bank
  • Scarlett Sieber, Senior Vice President, Open Innovation and Ecosystem Builder, BBVA

Activities will be centred on the Innotribe Stand (A20), directly adjacent to the SWIFT stand (A50) on the Exhibition floor. This innovation hub will host a circular workshop room, where the majority of sessions will take place. Given the success of previous years, the session “The Future of Money” and the Innotribe Startup Challenge Finale will move to the biggest main conference room, Conference Room 2. We will see 12 early-stage finalists pitch and showcase their business ideas to Sibos delegates who will select this year’s winner.

All together, it’s becoming quite a big production that starts feeling more and more like a non-stop four-day late night television show. We use professional facilitators to engage the “circle” and the audience, and inject sound and light landscapes with our fantastic new 2,5 meter high LED Wall running all around the workshop space. With a big thanks to our partners Georges P. Johnson and Collective Next.

“We are not in the events business, that we are in the business of creating high quality feedback loops to enable immersive learning experiences”

The Innotribe Stand is also designed to welcome delegates in a networking area and offer them the opportunity to visit the exhibition booths of the growth-stage finalists from this year Startup Challenge and some of Innotribe’s Alumni who will be giving live product demos.

As in 2014, the event will also include a number of book signings.

And on Wednesday evening we’ll mix even further with the vibrant local FinTech scene of Singapore for a Networking Event in town. 250 invitees will have the chance to network at BASH, the new startup hub in Singapore, for a joint event organised by Innotribe and the following Singapore’s FinTech communities.

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This FinTech Meet-up is kindly sponsored by Wells Fargo and Standard Chartered Bank. Register for the FinTech Meet-Up via this link. Innotribe Sibos attendees will get an invitation card on-site.

The Innotribe closing keynote this year will come from Andrew Keen, one of the world’s best-known and controversial commentators on the digital revolution.

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He is the author of three books: Cult of the Amateur, Digital Vertigo and his current international hit The Internet Is Not The Answer which the London Sunday Times acclaimed as a “powerful, frightening read” and the Washington Post called “an enormously useful primer for those of us concerned that online life isn’t as shiny as our digital avatars would like us to believe”.

After Andrew Keen, you are all invited to join the Sibos Closing Keynote in the plenary room.

Innotribe is open to all Sibos delegates willing to drive change and embrace innovation for the benefit of the financial industry, by understanding its trends, opportunities, and challenges: business analysts, product managers, strategists, marketing/branding/innovation managers, transaction bankers, securities managers, corporates, standards experts, payment professionals, investment managers, regulators, policy makers.

Other resources:

Looking forward to meeting you in person in Singapore!