can u buy Clomiphene in the uk Last week I attended the Innotribe sessions at Sibos in Osaka. The event was full of excellent, mind-bending sessions, and ended with the Startup Challenge finale.
At the beginning of the conference, Innotribe used the judo metaphor to support their thoughts about the principles of innovation. In a nutshell, we were told, judo was based upon four principles : maximize efficiency with minimum effort; train safe; sudden death; and learn from competing. These four principles can be applied to all forms of innovation as well. See here for a more detailed review from Chris Skinner.
At the end of the week, I have opened the Startup Challenge with some personal thoughts inspired, of course, by the Japanese surroundings. What follows is (more or less…) what I said in Osaka.
On the plane to Japan, I read some books and watched a couple of documentaries about Japan and the samurai culture. I remember the story of Miyamoto Musashi, a 17th century samurai who became a legend, died old in his bed, and, after retiring from fighting, wrote books and painted. One secret to his longevity was, of course, mastery of various fighting techniques, but every other elite samurai had this skill… What differentiated Musashi though was his constant invention of new weapons and fighting techniques that allowed him to win, year after year, in all the battles and fights that he encountered throughout his life. The lesson I drew is that innovation was, and is, key to survival, for samurais 400 years ago, and for businesses today.
Of course everybody in banking today knows that banks “need to change”, and “innovation” is high on everyone’s list of priorities. The question is how to do it? Internal/organic development is hampered by internal processes that try to “kill” new ideas (see Kosta Peric new book for a detailed analysis). The innovation mindset is also almost never there, since it takes many years to learn the discipline of a good banker, or a good banking IT professional, where risk taking is many times a career-killing move. And while mature IT technology vendors (think the “big six”) are constantly knocking on bank’s doors with their latest innovations, we know from their own acquisitions that their path to innovation goes through working, partnering, and acquiring startups.
In summary, with innovation key to meaningful change and ultimate survival, the path to success is, necessarily, one of collaboration with startups – a “win-win” partnership between financial institutions and financial technology startups (“fintech”). In such a partnership, the bank, after successfully piloting an emerging solution from a startup, will deploy it in production, instantly giving the smaller company a reference account and both immediate (license fees), and long-term (support fees) revenue.
The risk to banks can be eliminated through careful piloting (no more decisions through careful inspecting of presentation slides…) and, if possible, an equity investment that will provide more stability to an innovative fledgling company.
To that extent, Sberbank is following this strategic recipe, through the creation of the Technology Research Center (see here and here) and its venture capital investment vehicle. A strategy that both Sberbank and any of the 15 Innotribe Startup Challenge finalists are ready to pursue.