What Behavioural Finance, Fintech, Banking, Asset Management, Hedge Funds and other Financial Institutions Should Have in Common With Anna Wintour?

I am a supporter of COLAIE. COLAIE stands for "Circle of Local Ambitious Innovative Entrepreneurs". With many supporters, financial institutions, investors and sponsors like the new Swiss magazine "Project Luxury and Art", COLAIE's aim is to bring investors and innovative entrepreneurs together and help them to enable innovations to happen faster in the world of finance. COLAIE and "Project Luxury" both start in June. Have innovations turned into a "Luxury Project"?

Constructive critique and free thinking are aspects of a sound culture, which we need to cultivate in the traditional world of finance while looking for outside-of-the-box solutions, as it will help us to understand innovation as a necessity. When following some of Moira Forbes' interviews, one will discover that many of her interviewees have an innovative mind-set. One might tend to say that women's mind-sets are more innovative for an industry which was built by men, and maybe this is the reason why they can innovate more naturally. Anna Wintour encourages young students to avoid becoming specialists, which is also one of the five characteristics of being an innovator, according to the book "The Innovator's DNA".

Banking evolved based on values and principals over a long period of time, which makes the adoption of new thinking, unhindered creativity and new approaches particularly challenging. Tunnel views were useful in a different, past era, but are no longer in a rapidly changing world. We need to allow ourselves to become more curious, and not only when it is in harmony with our values and principals from the old days. The world of finance has to deal with many unnecessary limitations, with some of them being the following:

Behavioural finance demonstrates what human biases are, but although there is proof that mindfulness enables better decision making, it is avoided in day-to-day banking in order to be seen as professional.

In day-to-day banking, innovations are viewed with suspicion, as they point to an unusual and maybe unnecessary change and therefore it is preferred to use the term "project" instead. A project means a necessary change and is sometimes an extended solution of what we already have and know.

We avoid, for instance, the term creativity at work and instead use other words like outside-of-the-box thinking, which is basically the same. Terms like "intuition" are often associated with not proven assumptions and are considered not appropriate for business.

Let me know what you see as missing innovations when it comes to your finances. In case you are an innovator, send me a link to your company's innovative solution.