A mind-opening debate: that’s what Anne-Laure Mention, Head of research unit and Innofinance program manager at the Public Research Centre Henri Tudor, aims at achieving with the Centre’s first Innovation for Financial Services Summit taking place September 21-23.

Why did the Public Research Centre Tudor decide to launch such an event? Are there specific needs in the financial industry? 

Innovation in finance largely remains under-investigated and poorly understood. Paradoxically, the financial sector and surrounding services play a dominant role in economies. Meeting the innovation needs of the financial sector is thus essential and challenging, and is contingent on a multi-actor approach. Therefore, the collaboration between the financial industry, support services and research is the desired approach. Organising a dedicated event is fully in line with the PRC Henri Tudor’s strategy to concentrate on key economic sectors.

What is different in this conference compared to other events?

This event is the first of its kind and will provide both international academic coverage and pragmatic insights from leading practitioners. Next to the plenary sessions and keynote speeches, participants will also be able to benefit from feedback experience through luminary sessions. Furthermore, three interactive sessions will allow participants to immediately apply the concepts and recommendations presented in the plenary sessions.

Is it wide-ranging or on the contrary very specific? 

Typically, innovations relate to new products and services. This event will also concentrate on other facets of innovation, such as the role played by regulation to foster innovation at both firm and sector level. The influence of new technologies on organisational practices, customer interactions (e.g. use of social network to communicate with customers) and product or service co-creation will also be exemplified. Financing innovation, usually of intangible nature, will also be debated.  We thus opted for a balanced approach between specificity and indefiniteness, in line with our conference objective.

Who should attend and why?

The event targets academics, practitioners and consultants interested in innovation from various perspectives (such as quality and organisation, marketing and relationship management, information technologies and operations).

Anything planned beyond the summit?

A second edition in 2012, together with other initiatives for the financial sector.

Find out more:
The conference programme is available at: http://luxsummit.ispim.org/index.php/home/programme
Further information about other initiatives will be shortly released on:
www.innofinance.net