53 weeks later	Related links: Watch video highlights of the session Session description
Fifty-three weeks has elapsed since ‘Lehman Brothers Monday’. As banks and regulators still try to make sense of the turmoil that has engulfed the global economy over the past year, the clear message from Sibos 2009 is that competitors, policymakers and customers need to engage to find common solutions to common problems

The warning of a tropical storm breaking over Hong Kong on the first day of Sibos 2009 was followed, at Thursday’s closing plenary, by a reminder that the storm that broke over the finance industry just over a year ago has not yet passed. The call to action? Engage with each other, engage with customers and, perhaps most pressing of all, engage with regulators.

“The regulatory process will take time. That’s why there must be an effort by the community itself to advance that dialogue,” said Stephan Zimmermann, Deputy Chairman, SWIFT and Chief Operating Officer, UBS.

Lázaro Campos, CEO of SWIFT, encouraged banks to overcome their apparent fear of regulators. “It looks like the industry is standing by and not really engaging,” he said. “But this week we heard a loud cry: engage with regulators!” Campos acknowledged that smaller, domestic institutions might not feel comfortable talking to regulatory bodies, but said their input was necessary to ensure that any changes were ones that banks could operate within subsequently. “The regulators need you as much you need them. As the rules are being rewritten, they should reflect reality. They must be operationally implementable,” he said. “That dialogue is happening. There is an intention by public officials to engage with the private sector.”

Banks perhaps required less prompting to engage with each other.“Collaboration has been talked about far more at this Sibos than ever before,” said Campos, noting that feedback from the exhibition halls indicated that many “meaningful” business discussions were being held. “The word ‘co-opetition’ was used more regularly than before,” observed Zimmermann. “Despite global transaction banks, for instance, competing in the same space, they are also at the same time clients of one another. Sharing infrastructure is a very effective way of keeping the synergies high.”

The meaning of innovation

If collaboration and regulation were two of the main global themes at Sibos 2009, the third was innovation. Just in case a week of activities designed to stimulate new ideas had not sown the seeds of innovation for some Sibos delegates, guest speaker Guy Kawasaki, Founding Partner and Entrepreneur-in-residence, Garage Technology Ventures and co-Founder, Alltop. com, sent them home with a 10-point plan.

Though wearing a shirt that suggested a continued affinity for the state of his birth (Hawaii), Kawasaki’s presentation reflected his experiences as a technologist and venture capitalist in California’s Silicon Valley, including his time building the first Macintosh personal computers for Apple. Kawasaki’s advice was littered with examples of mistakes, lucky breaks and heroic failures – both his own and those of others. He implored delegates not to misunderstand the nature or the process of innovation. True innovation, he said, is not a change that makes things 10 to 15% better but 10 to 15 times better. “In the 19th century, none of the ice factories became refrigeration manufacturers, because too many firms define themselves in terms of what they do now,” he said. Furthermore, the secret of successful innovation is not perfection first time round: deliver the step change and then improve on it. “A revolution in innovation is not an event but a process,” he asserted.

Kawasaki also suggested that a belief in divine intervention can save the determined innovator. He admits that Apple would almost certainly not exist today if it had not been for the fortuitous release of a software application at the same time Apple launched the Macintosh. “Aldus Pagemaker was a gift from God. It saved Apple. No one foresaw the potential of the Mac for a new market called desktop publishing,” he said. Kawasaki’s message to innovators that stumble across unexpected markets: “Take the money; find out what they want and give them more reasons to buy your services.”

On the subject of where to innovate, Kawasaki’s advice could be taken home by bankers and technologists alike. “Where your institution has a unique product that is of great value to your customer: that is where value is made, that is where margin is made, that is where history is made,” he said.

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