Over 2 content packed days on March 19-20, 2014, The Innovation Project 2014, powered by PYMNTS.com, will bring together the most thoughtful minds from established players, emerging disruptors, and entrepreneurial visionaries
Over 2 content packed days on March 19-20, 2014, The Innovation Project 2014, powered by PYMNTS.com, will bring together the most thoughtful minds from established players, emerging disruptors, and entrepreneurial visionaries in the world of payments and commerce to reinvent the future of an industry being transformed by mobile devices, the cloud, big data, and emerging technologies. Together we will rethink whether what’s taken us this far over the last 60 years is enough to move us forward for another 60 years!
The Innovation Project 2014 is by invitation only. The invitation process is as rigorous, as it is selective, as the event will convene 600+ industry leaders in one place, a who’s who in payments and commerce, from all sectors of this industry to come together at our event with one goal in mind…reinventing the industry. Register today!
How many times do you get this many payments CEOs and global authorities under one roof?The movers and shakers, for 16 hours of focused, non-interrupted, thought‑provoking, off the record conversation? Once a year, at The Innovation Project. Here’s a sneak peek at some of who you will hear from … what they’ll be talking about … and what you definitely cannot afford to miss.
All sessions will be held in Sanders Theatre in Annenberg Hall at Harvard University*
Karen Webster
CEO, Market Platform Dynamics & President, PYMNTS.com
Ten CEOs – five incumbents and five new challengers – from across the payments ecosystem will debate the future of payments and commerce in the face of new technologies, new regulations and changing consumer expectations. Will these five new and powerful forces crown a new king and queen of payments? You can be sure that the father of modern business strategy, Michael Porter, and Fox Business News Analyst’ Liz Claman, will stimulate a lively debate and draw out new insights from some of the most impactful innovators in the field.
What’s so wrong with a payment method that has been around for 3,000 years and still works very well? Well, it’s just not suitable for global commerce in the digital age, so says famed technologist, bitcoin believer and investor, Jeremy Allaire. Allaire along with economist and payments expert, David Evans, will engage a panel of CEOs and alternative currency believers in a debate about whether bitcoin and the many imitators it has spawned will make global commerce frictionless, or whether the physical currency we know, love and use today is good enough to sustain payments and commerce for the next 3,000 years.
What’s a payment’s industry to do to keep cardholder data safe when consumers willingly give up information in exchange for good deals, hate it when their checkout experience is bogged down with too many levels of authentication, and the bad guys have new and better tools to exploit the vulnerabilities in the current payments system? White House cybersecurity guru, Richard Clarke, will ignite a thought provoking conversation about the impact of cybercrime on the safety and soundness of our payments ecosystem and what should be done to beat the bad guys to the punch in a whole new payments security battleground – cyberspace.
There was only one small problem when the banks turned off the lending tap to consumers and businesses over the last six years and started charging for services that were once free – consumers and businesses began to follow the money away from their once beloved banking institutions. FTC Commissioner Julie Brill and Small Business Lending Innovator Noah Breslow will kick off a conversation with innovators and incumbents about whether the “three C’s” of financial services – checking, credit, cards – are slowly becoming the domain of the innovators who were there waiting with open arms when banks just said no.
Mobile, the cloud and new technologies have reinvented the ways in which consumers and merchants interact and created lots of new efficiencies in the process. Not so on the B2B side of the payments house where infusing innovation into the ways that businesses pay and are paid has never been able to really overcome the inherent “chicken and egg” issues that plague payments overall. Ed Glassman, Head Honcho over MasterCard’s Commercial Payments Platform and Debby McWhinney, formerly head of Citigroup’s Enterprise Payments will challenge our panel to define how the anytime/anywhere/with anyone mantra that defines retail payments can become the mission statement for turning commercial payments deficiencies into a commercial payments innovation agenda.
While everyone is debating whether it’s a bubble and when it will burst, those in the know in the bitcoin world are focused on how the technological breakthroughs behind it could reshape the world. Several of the deepest crypto currency thinkers and doers will engage with some of the skeptics to debate just how revolutionary bitcoin and its many imitators are. Karen Webster, MPD CEO will start the bitcoin brawl by teeing up the critical questions that will help even bitcoin blockheads contemplate how bitcoin can transform payments and contract provisions and even control autonomous agents. At the end of this session, you’ll be able to see just how much of this could ever be reality and how much of it is for Sci-Fi addicts.
Got new product? Have we got a forum for you! Only 10 new ideas will be given the chance to introduce their innovation to the most prestigious audience in payments and to be given feedback from one of the most accomplished and outspoken global payments authorities there is, investor and CEO, Doug Bergeron.
50 of the coolest, newest, freshest and most awesome innovators in payments will strut their stuff, many for the first time ever, for Innovation Project 2014 delegates. It’s a great opportunity to see, all in one place, the innovators and innovations that could give your ideas the legs it needs to leapfrog the competition.
Cocktails and massive quantities of “heavy” Hors d’oeuvres will be served to keep energy levels humming!
Yes, we know its work BUT, at least the weather will likely be crummy so there’ll be no distractions. Teams will assemble to work thru what they’ll say in front of, gulp, the most senior, knowledgeable and even cynical audience in payments the following day as they compete for Master Payments Guru title.
Five new product launches and all of the innovators will be back at it, this time with coffee and breakfast fare.
Quick, what’s a five letter word for Retail Innovation? You guessed it, Tesco. And, who better to start a conversation about how to save physical retail from extinction than none other than Tesco’s Former CEO and Retail Visionary, Sir Terry Leahy. Leahy and Vantiv’s Chief Strategist Daniela Mielke will kick off a discussion with a diverse group of retail innovators on the right way to “creatively destruct” retail and leverage the power of technology and connected devices to create new value for merchants and consumers.
Anyone who’s ever made a new year’s resolution knows one thing for sure: consumer habits are really, really hard to break. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg and PayPal’s Global Retail genius, Don Kingsborough, will share their secrets on how to get consumers to move away from the “whip out plastic card and swipe” that’s stored in their “muscle memory” to something new, mobile, and much more valuable, while drawing insights from a panel of innovators who are all working in slightly different ways to help consumers over that hump.
The idea of turning your spare bedroom into a hotel room seemed totally ridiculous much less feasible until AirBNB turned that idea into a multi-billion dollar business. And, once upon a time, the only way that brands could get consumers interested was to bombard them with ads in the most inconvenient places, including mobile devices. Brad Brodigan and Stanford Business School Professor and author of Absolute Value, Itamar Simonson, will bash the unconventional wisdom of what drives commerce today and will in the future, and the invisible role of payments in making that future viable.
Ta-dah! After weeks of hard work, late nights in Cambridge burning the midnight oil and consuming large quantities of liquid nourishment to keep those brain cells whirring, it’s time for the teams to present their thoughtful approaches to the industry problems that keep the payments and commerce ecosystem from reaching its full potential. There’s a lot at stake as the most critical judges ever listen, ponder, score and challenge the teams who will present their solutions. ThinkaThon Chair, economist, author and payments big thinker, David Evans, has set some pretty simple ground rules. No PowerPoint, 2 minutes of presentation that better be compelling and a 140 character tweet to kick things off. Let the games begin!
CEOs and innovators from around the world will share their experiences in igniting mobile commerce in some of the most dynamic and exciting markets there are in the world: Russia, China, India, Turkey, Poland, and Brazil.
It’s your last chance to kick the tires and meet the Innovators Class of 2014. Food and drink provided!
Overture, tune the lights, this is it, the night of nights! The most prestigious awards program in payments will being! And, we have a fun evening in store. Last year’s winners will be involved to make it lively and entertaining – and we’ll have a few surprises in store to make the evening even more fun. 16 best-in-class awards will be given, the Lifetime Achievement Award winner will be inducted into the Hall of Fame, as well 3 new members. And, the industry will honor one of its greats through by the Michael P. Duffy Award Leadership to someone in the industry whose lives the value that made him such a beloved industry figure.
We celebrate the winners, new friendships and new ideas that have been stimulated over the last two days. And, bid everyone a fond “farewell” until the next time!
Karen Webster
Senior Vice President, Strategy & Business Development
Revlon
Karen Webster
Senior Vice President, Strategy & Business Development
Revlon
Karen Webster
CEO, Market Platform Dynamics
PYMNTS
Karen Webster
CEO, Market Platform Dynamics
PYMNTS
Karen Webster
CEO, Market Platform Dynamics
PYMNTS
Karen Webster
CEO, Market Platform Dynamics
PYMNTS
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