Wall Street’s view of collaboration

The BDI Collaboration in Financial Services conference in New York went extremely well, so much so that we intend to run it in London in late spring next year as well as in New York again exactly one year later on September 29, 2005. The conference review describes what happened on the day. Taking a few quick top-of-mind reflections from the event…

The success of the event shows that collaboration and collaboration technologies are recognized as critical issues across financial services. In an industry driven by information flows and deep expertise, allowing professionals in financial institutions and their clients to integrate their work and thinking is clearly the way things are heading. We began to touch on some of the implications for bank strategy and value-creation in the industry in the event; this theme will play a bigger role in our future conferences. However a dominant issue on the day was the regulatory compliance framework as blocking collaboration efforts. For many reasons this is the context within which financial institutions are currently working. In addition to regulators ensuring they are not blocking innovation in financial markets, banks must not allow the regime to put them off implementing approaches that will differentiate them in the eyes of their clients.

I was delighted that we had Steve Wallman as our lunch keynote speaker. I have long admired Steve’s work since when he was SEC Commissioner in 1994-97. This article in Forbes magazine from 1997 shows some of his deeply insightful thinking on intellectual capital, which is still integral to my perspectives on the future of intellectual capital reporting. At lunch the day before the conference someone told me Steve was the best speaker he’d ever seen. I used that anecdote when I introduced him, setting high expectations from the audience, but ones that he definitely met. See the conference review for a few more details on what he covered.