Some upcoming events of note for those interested in better understanding the process of innovation:
- The Cards and Payments Australasia Conference being held in Sydney, Australia this week includes a full day (Thursday) devoted to Innovation in Payments. Topics to be covered focus on both the issues of payments innovation in Australia along with the technologies of contactless payments and the evolution to mobile payments at POS using NFC.
- Scott Berkun, author of Myths of Innovation, is teaching a class titled Leading and Managing Breakthrough Projects, next Monday March 30th, in San Francisco. I’m planning to attend this session – let’s be sure to meet up if you go!
- The World Innovation Forum is holding its two day conference this year on May 5-6 in New York City. The speakers include a “dream team” of those who study innovation including two of my personal favorites: Paul Saffo and Clayton Christensen. It’s interesting to note that Paul will be speaking on cultivating intuition in forecasting. I’ve come to appreciate how the combination of informed intuition and scenario thinking can help one consider how the future might unfold and be better prepared with appropriate strategies to both influence and respond.
Over on his Bankervision blog, James Gardner writes about his intuition – based on increasing inquiries from other bankers looking for help starting an innovation program.
It is a sign, I think, that bankers generally are recognising there might be a light at the end of this particular tunnel, and they’d better have something compelling in the pipeline if they want to take advantage.
Is there a new window of innovation opportunity about to open? What do you think?
Scott is a founder of Glenbrook with more than 30 years of experience in information technology. He is a co-author of the book “Payments Systems in the U.S.” and a co-inventor of US Patent 6,332,126 and US Patent 7,840,459. At Glenbrook, Scott focused his work on payments innovation, mobile payments, and social media / Web 2.0 in banking and financial services.
Previously, Scott was group executive vice president at First Data Merchant Services and at Visa International, where he led the development of Visa’s global payment systems strategies. Scott began his career as a systems engineer with IBM, where he held a series of technical management and product planning positions over seventeen years. Scott formally retired from Glenbrook in October 2016, but remains important to the firm as both a friend and advisor.