The Ritual of Innovation--What The FT's Gillian Tett Knows

I am going out to Stanford in a couple of weeks to talk about the future of Design Thinking/Innovation and I’m prepping by seeing a Ph.d in social anthropology who also happens to be the best financial journalist around at the moment—Gillian Tett. Tett writes a column for the FT and was just appointed head of the US Financial Times. Her book, Fool’s Gold, is a must-read.

I learned three things from Tett’s columns and book: 1- many, if not most of the important innovations over the past decade took place in the financial services space: 2- the innovations were made possible by technology—faster computers and newer algorithms, but the actual creation of the innovations took place within a new and very specific culture of finance composed of ritual, rites of passage and beliefs. Think Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shift here: from accepting more or less public market regulation to rejecting all regulation and believing that any financial market regulation is bad.