Select Page
Notifications
Clear all

What do you mean by Innovation?

(@Anonymous)
New Member

The term "financial innovation" is a bit of a weird one. Overdraft fees are a "financial innovation." So too is the noxious practice of universal default. But so are ATMs. And, for that matter, banks. It's all a bit broad.

"Innovation," in most other areas of life, means forward progress of a discrete sort. A new price for the Nintendo Wii, for instance, wouldn't be considered an innovation in video g***s. But the Nintendo Wii was considered an innovation. "Innovation," in that sector, tends to mean technical progress. Conversely, the financial sector takes a pretty relaxed view of the word "innovation": It seems to denote "new stuff we're doing." That stuff might be ways to eke out more profit or spread risk or hide risk or make it simpler to withdraw money. It would be a lot easier to say whether financial innovation is good or bad, however, if people were a bit more specific on what sort of innovation they were looking for. What I think we can say, with some certainty, is that simply trusting the financial sector's definition of worthwhile innovation hasn't worked out too well.

Quote
Topic starter Posted : 28/06/2010 3:29 am
(@Anonymous)
New Member

Re: What do you mean by Innovation?

EXAMPLE FOR FINANCIAL INNOVATION
Some types of financial instrument became prominent after macroeconomic conditions forced investors to be more aware of the need to hedge certain types of risk.

* The development of interest rate swaps in the early 1980s after interest rates skyrocketed.
* The development of credit default swaps in the early 2000s after the recession beginning in 2001 led to the highest corporate-bond default rate in 2002 since the Great Depression.

ReplyQuote
Posted : 28/06/2010 5:08 am
(@Anonymous)
New Member

Re: What do you mean by Innovation?

Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something or "new stuff that is made useful". It may refer to an incremental emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. Following Schumpeter (1934), contributors to the scholarly literature on innovation typically distinguish between invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas applied successfully in practice. In many fields, such as the arts, economics and government policy, something new must be substantially different to be innovative. In economics the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. The goal of innovation is positive change, to make someone or something better. Innovation leading to increased productivity is the fundamental source of increasing wealth in an economy.

ReplyQuote
Posted : 15/07/2010 8:45 am
Share: