13 December 2017
On November 30th, our Digital, Drinks, & Inspiration evening took place with 25 guests from the Financial sector exploring the theme: ‘Make Disruption Work in Finance’. The event was hosted at the SparkOptimus office with drinks and dinner.
The theme led to exciting and insightful discussions on how digital developments are disrupting the Finance industry. The evening started with a welcome from SparkOptimus and its view on how the Financial sector can learn from other industries that are similarly undergoing disruptive changes due to digital developments. While enjoying dinner, Karl Guha (CEO Van Lanschot Kempen) took the conversation to a different level, by encouraging participants to discuss a series of interesting questions related to their industry and role as a leader. For example, how should company executives deal with a (sharply) declining need for human resources and changing skill requirements? And with the increasing role that algorithms play in financial decisions affecting finance clients, up to what level do executives have a legal responsibility if these algorithms produce adverse results? Who should be considered “guilty”? These and similar questions provided great food for thought discussion over desert.
Digital, Drinks, & Inspiration events are organized several times a year by SparkOptimus and are focused on C-level executives from a specific industry. Previous events this year focused for example on Online Pure Players (e.g. fonQ & Emesa) and Producers (e.g. Unilever Food Solutions & Accell Group). A new sequence of round tables for next year is being planned as we speak!