The disruption in finance

Real disruption happens when a new technology combines with a change in the business model to reshape a sector from the bottom up, Hermann Hauser tells the Times of Malta.

To take and adapt a line from the classics, ‘innovation’ is the one word that launches a thousand interpretations. And while every interpretation has the seed of subjective truth in it, none carries the full weight of a rounded definition.

And that is testament to the complex nature of innovation. So complex, in fact, that it manages to score seemingly discordant notes in one harmony. Innovation is both singular – the fruit of one mind, one of Malcolm Gladwell’s outliers, so to speak, bent towards a stubborn end – but also plural, requiring the input of collaborative minds.

Innovation happens in a flash, the proverbial eureka moment – but it also requires time, for ideas to simmer, insights to take full flavour, and models to be tested over and over again.

Innovation is based on precious ideas – and yet ideas are not enough, as they need to be developed into viable solutions. Innovation feeds on past experience, but is also insatiable and hungers for the future.

Serial entrepreneur Hermann Hauser knows a thing...