Rethinking financial innovation: Reducing negative outcomes whilst retaining the benefits

The project’s findings converge on a core theme, namely that the most important aspect of innovation, in the context of risk, is that there are no historical metrics to determine its impact on the world. Therefore, the industry needs to pay special attention to the ways in which its mechanisms for assessing and managing risk should be adapted to take better account of innovations. Another important finding is that the post-launch management of an innovation, including “downstream variants” and new applications, is more relevant, in many cases, than the original innovation itself. In this respect, this project is very much in line with and relevant to the theme of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2012 – The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models. As well as capturing the current economic and geopolitical situation, that theme also looks to ensure that our future is one of inspired collaboration and bold solutions to the global, regional and industry challenges and not are turn to the status quo.