[Find out more about Ross Dawson’s keynotes for the asset management industry]
Recently I was in Amsterdam for the International User Community Meeting of SimCorp, a leading provider of software for the investment management industry. I gave the keynote on the Future of Investment Management and ran a half-day Executive Master Class on Creating the Successful Organisation of the Future.
Prior to founding Advanced Human Technologies most of my working career had been in financial markets with Merrill Lynch and capital markets with Thomson Financial, with my final role as Global Director – Capital Markets.
My initial client base when I established my company was largely in financial services, and I began to focus on the investment management industry, for a number of reasons.
In the later 1990s my work and research was split between the fields of knowledge management and intellectual capital on the one hand, and futures methodologies such as scenario planning on the other.
I felt that one of the most important applications of our increasing understanding of intellectual capital was in asset management. Clearly information on non-financial indicators was often more important than historical financial data in making investment decisions, and I worked with a number of institutional investors on their efforts to value intangible assets of companies in which they were investing.
As I developed my expertise and experience in scenario planning, I saw there was an opportunity to apply scenario approaches to financial portfolio and risk management. I worked on applying qualitative scenario methodologies across several kinds of financial institutions, including asset managers and fund trustees.
In my book Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, one of the key themes was that of adding value to client decision-making. Many of the case studies in the book examined how to enhance the cognitive and process aspects of financial portfolio decision-making, and I worked in applying that with a number of organizations, including the research departments of investment banks.
Having spent most of the last decade on broader issues such as the theme of living networks and examining the future of work, organizations, media, and government, it was a bit of a homecoming for me to speak at the SimCorp event.
Because I had not been deeply exposed to the industry for some time, in my keynote I spoke about high-level themes such as how changing information flows and distribution mechanisms are creating a wide variety of new opportunities in investment management.
Especially after running a highly interactive Executive Master Class with the most senior attendees at the conference, I found myself rather surprised to find that in fact the industry has changed very little over the last decade. Virtually the same issues – including talent, pricing, fee transparency, active vs. passive management, and distribution structures – are being discussed today.
There is a reasonable case to make that the investment management industry will change less than many others in years to come. The weight of capital to invest will inevitably increase, and there will be strong demand for capable fund management.
However there are certainly disruptions in store in investment management, and the industry currently hardly shines in its structural innovation. One of the speakers at the event noted that two-thirds of investment management firms ban social media in the workplace, a staggering statistic for companies that live off information flows.
In coming back to the industry I certainly see opportunities to help firms consider the future of the investment management industry, including identifying forthcoming disruptions and emerging opportunities.
I also see that there can be great value in applying what I have learned over the last decade and more in futures studies to the investment management process. I will be developing and sharing more content and ideas around the future of investment management in coming months.
Leadership in enterprise technology must come from all organizational functions
By Ross DawsonRecently I gave the opening keynote at SAP Australia Users Group Summit on Leadership in Enterprise Technology.
One of my central themes was that leadership in enterprise technology no longer resides just with the CIO and IT function.
The Future of the CIO is absolutely a critical frame, not least because I believe the CIO has primary responsibility for guiding boards of directors and top executive teams to understand the importance of technology in their organization’s future.
There is a divergence between organizations in which technology is being marginalized and treated as a commodity, and those in which its role at the heart of strategy, new business models, and value creation is recognized. The CIO must drive this recognition and the resulting investment.
Yet every leader and every organizational function – including HR, Marketing, Finance, Procurement, Sales, Supply Chain and more – also has the responsibility to shape the future of technology in the enterprise.
Technology is no longer just a support function. It is embedded into the core of almost every aspect of how organizations create value, internally and externally.
Each business function needs to build richer relationships with other internal functions and external capabilities. Just as organizations are shifting to create and tap value across broad business ecosystems, business functions need to widen their ambit and the scope of their value network.
From this technology-based opportunities for value creation become evident, along with an increasing recognition that executives from across the organization must provide leadership in shaping enterprise technology.
Certainly the CIO must be at the heart of shaping the role of IT, but they must increasingly be a channel and conduit for energy and insight across the organization in tapping the potential of technology.
Exploring the future of investment management
By Ross Dawson[Find out more about Ross Dawson’s keynotes for the asset management industry]
Recently I was in Amsterdam for the International User Community Meeting of SimCorp, a leading provider of software for the investment management industry. I gave the keynote on the Future of Investment Management and ran a half-day Executive Master Class on Creating the Successful Organisation of the Future.
Prior to founding Advanced Human Technologies most of my working career had been in financial markets with Merrill Lynch and capital markets with Thomson Financial, with my final role as Global Director – Capital Markets.
My initial client base when I established my company was largely in financial services, and I began to focus on the investment management industry, for a number of reasons.
In the later 1990s my work and research was split between the fields of knowledge management and intellectual capital on the one hand, and futures methodologies such as scenario planning on the other.
I felt that one of the most important applications of our increasing understanding of intellectual capital was in asset management. Clearly information on non-financial indicators was often more important than historical financial data in making investment decisions, and I worked with a number of institutional investors on their efforts to value intangible assets of companies in which they were investing.
As I developed my expertise and experience in scenario planning, I saw there was an opportunity to apply scenario approaches to financial portfolio and risk management. I worked on applying qualitative scenario methodologies across several kinds of financial institutions, including asset managers and fund trustees.
In my book Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, one of the key themes was that of adding value to client decision-making. Many of the case studies in the book examined how to enhance the cognitive and process aspects of financial portfolio decision-making, and I worked in applying that with a number of organizations, including the research departments of investment banks.
Having spent most of the last decade on broader issues such as the theme of living networks and examining the future of work, organizations, media, and government, it was a bit of a homecoming for me to speak at the SimCorp event.
Because I had not been deeply exposed to the industry for some time, in my keynote I spoke about high-level themes such as how changing information flows and distribution mechanisms are creating a wide variety of new opportunities in investment management.
Especially after running a highly interactive Executive Master Class with the most senior attendees at the conference, I found myself rather surprised to find that in fact the industry has changed very little over the last decade. Virtually the same issues – including talent, pricing, fee transparency, active vs. passive management, and distribution structures – are being discussed today.
There is a reasonable case to make that the investment management industry will change less than many others in years to come. The weight of capital to invest will inevitably increase, and there will be strong demand for capable fund management.
However there are certainly disruptions in store in investment management, and the industry currently hardly shines in its structural innovation. One of the speakers at the event noted that two-thirds of investment management firms ban social media in the workplace, a staggering statistic for companies that live off information flows.
In coming back to the industry I certainly see opportunities to help firms consider the future of the investment management industry, including identifying forthcoming disruptions and emerging opportunities.
I also see that there can be great value in applying what I have learned over the last decade and more in futures studies to the investment management process. I will be developing and sharing more content and ideas around the future of investment management in coming months.
Innovation and future-proofing in mid-tier firms: The central role of CFOs
By Ross DawsonLast week I gave the keynote on Future-Proofing Your Organization at a function organized by American Express to launch their very interesting American Express CFO Future-proofing Survey.
There were many interesting insights in the report, with many media outlets picking up that 45% of CFOs of Australian mid-tier firms believe their company is at risk of failure in the next 3-5 years if innovation is not prioritized.
Some of the main themes coming from the qualitative research are shown in this graphic from the report:
Source: American Express CFO Future-proofing Survey
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Slides: Future of Business: Crowds and Sharing Economy
By Ross DawsonI am at Innovation Partnership Program, a three-day executive education program in Silicon Valley for senior executives from Fortune 100 companies, done as a joint venture between Singularity University and XPrize.
It is an exceptional program providing a deep dive into the exponential technologies driving change, including AI, robotics, crowds, 3D manufacturing, medicine, genetics, computing, digital finance and the strategic implications for enterprise.
I presented the session on crowds on the first day, providing a big picture overview of crowds, crowdsourcing and the sharing economy.
My slides are below. As always, they are not intended to be meaningful for those who did not attend the presentation, but may still be useful to others.
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The new layer of the economy enabled by M2M payments in the Internet of Things
By Ross DawsonLast week I gave a keynote on The Future of Banking to a group of the most senior risk leaders in a major bank, sharing some provocative ideas on how the banking landscape may change in the years to come.
One of the ideas I shared briefly was on how micro-payments between connected devices could enable an entirely new layer of the economy.
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Launch of Social Media Strategy Framework in Arabic
By Ross DawsonWhen we first released our Social Media Strategy Framework, the response was so strong that it ended up being translated into 12 languages.
At the time we did want to translate it into Arabic, however this proved difficult as it requires the Middle East version of Illustrator; most versions of Adobe CS do not support Arabic text. Fortunately we were recently approached with an offer to do a translation into Arabic, supported by the NGO Internews.
When I recently did the keynote at Arab Media World in Dubai on Creating the Future of Arab Media I noted that one of the defining aspects of Arab media is the exceptional uptake of social media in a number of Arab countries, by some measures the highest in the world.
As such the social media familiarity gap between users on the one hand and companies and governments on the other is extremely high. Hopefully this framework will prove useful. As always feel free to pass on the framework to those who might find it useful.
Click on the framework image to see the full pdf.
Report: The Future of Back-to-School
By Ross DawsonI am currently in Toronto to launch a report commissioned by Visa Canada on The Future of Back-to-School.
As noted in the announcement of the report:
You can download the full report by clicking on the image of the report cover below.
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Future meetups next week in NYC and Toronto
By Ross DawsonI will be in New York City next Monday 25th and then in Toronto for a couple of days for a client media campaign on the future.
Since I’m in town so briefly I’m organizing ‘Future meetups’ in each city. These bring together some interesting people I know and anyone else who is interested in joining us for conversations about the future, connected world, media, technology, the usual things… All very casual.
I would love it if you made it along, feel free to pass on word to others, all are welcome.
If you’re coming you can register on the Facebook event, comment on this post, tweet me, or just turn up!
Hope to see you there.
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The politics of crowdsourcing in government
By Ross DawsonLast week the New South Wales government announced that it will use crowdsourcing to seek solutions, first to traffic problems and then more broadly to government policy challenges.
Channel 7 News did a piece on the story, including an excerpt with an interview with me about the initiative. You can watch the clip by clicking on the image below.
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Will rapid advances in robots and AI displace work and jobs or create them?
By Ross DawsonOne of the most important – and uncertain – questions we face is whether rapid technological developments in domains such as robotics, artificial intelligence and telepresence will lead to substantial unemployment.
Pew Internet has just launched a very interesting report AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs which delves into this topic by drawing on almost 2,000 experts who responded to the question:
They distilled the responses into positive and negative perspectives as well as points of agreement:
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