월스트리트가 뽑은 10명의 혁신가들

1.
Wall Sreet & Technology가 특집으로 10명의 혁신가를 뽑았습니다.

이 중 이름을 들어본 사람이 있나요?? 아마 이름은 몰라도 이 분들이 한 일을 보면 “아!” 하면서 동의하실 듯 합니다.? Wallstreet & Technology가 개인의 업적을 짧게 소개한 글입니다. 좌측 위에서 부터 시작합니다. 영어 원문은 위의 사진을 선택하시면 됩니다.

Clifford Asness: A Vocal Leader
After the financial crisis, Clifford Asness, co-founder and managing principal of AQR Investment Management, reinvented his quant strategies, diversified his holdings and led the the way for hedge funds everywhere.

Catching the Algo Wave(CEP기술을 상용화하여 알고리즘트레이딩을 이끌다)
Dr. John Bates spent the 1990s developing event-driven technology. He spent the past decade applying that knowledge to help stoke the growth of trading algorithms.

Mike Lazaridis: Wireless Visionary(블랙베리로 스마트혁명을 이끈 주역중 한명)
As President and co-CEO of RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, Mike Lazaridis turned his vision for wireless two-way email into an addiction on the Street and launched the smartphone industry.

Blythe Masters: Disruptive Force(CDS상품을 최초로 설계한 사람)
Credit default swaps have been alternately praised as an innovative way to insure loans and vilified as the cause of the 2008 global financial crisis. Blythe Masters, the woman who developed them, says it’s poor workmen who blame their tools.

William O’Brien: Built on Innovation(Direct Edge의 설립자0
William O’Brien’s resume reads like a who’s-who of the ECN world. Today, he’s leading Direct Edge, which already has risen to become the third-largest exchange by volume despite launching only last year.

Jerry Putnam: Seizing Market Opportunity(ECN시대를 연 주역)
When regulations opened the door for a new breed of ECN in the late 1990s, Jerry Putnam started Archipelago, the ECN that stole volume from the NYSE and Nasdaq and accelerated the shift to electronic equity markets.

James Simons: The Quiet Quant(르네상스테크놀로지의 설립자)
James Simons, founder of Renaissance Technologies, let’s the science of trading do the talking for him.

Steve Swanson: Renaissance Man
Automated Trading Desk, an upstart from South Carolina, started the revolution in electronic market making on Wall Street, and founding member Steve Swanson led the charge.

Chuck Thacker: Real Genius(태블릿혁명의 산파)
Chuck Thacker, who has driven innovations such as the world’s first personal computer, often has been ahead of his time. In fact, his vision for the tablet PC preceded Apple’s iPad by nearly 20 years.

Linus Torvalds: An Accidental Inventor(리눅스 개발자)
Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system, admits that his idea started as curious tinkering. But it ultimately spawned the open source movement and changed the heart of computing.

2.
위의 기사중 Linux Torvalds가 WS&T와 인터뷰한 내용이 있습니다. 그중 증권산업과 관련된 인터뷰만 옮겨보았습니다.

WS&T: Why do you think Wall Street firms, who have millions of dollars they can invest in IT, are so interested in open source?

Torvalds: I think a lot of them are also very interested in control of their infrastructure, and that’s one of the primary things open source gives you. Yes, it may be available for free if you want to download it yourself and install it, but as you note, for Wall Street that doesn’t necessarily tend to be a big selling issue. No, the big thing about open source is how it makes everybody be in control of their own destiny.
By the way, that’s absolutely not just about Wall Street – I think it’s why so many technical people are happy about Linux too. Even when they don’t necessarily personally? get involved with the development, they know that they could, and they see the process, and they can see how the code gets generated. And Wall Street really does tend to have some special requirements. Trading needs very low-latency networking, analytics needs tons of CPU, yadda yadda. And with Linux, you really can tailor things (or pay others to tailor it for you) to whatever specifications you need.

월스트리트의 변화하고 있는 환경때문에 오픈소스 이용은 늘어난다는 생각입니다. 물론 멀터코어와 Low Latency에 관심을 갖고 있다면 혹은 HPC가 필요하다면 이미 Linux가 훌륭한 대안입니다.

WS&T: What innovation do you think will change the consumer market and potentially Wall Street firms going forward?

Torvalds: Heh. I really don’t know. I think the most interesting aspect of new technology is how it changes what people do with it. In computers, the shrinking and lower power have just made computers so available (and now so mobile), that they changed how people work. You take it for granted that we now carry around what used to be a serious supercomputer in our pockets just to talk with people and play angry birds. THAT kind of unconscious change in how people work and think is I think the most interesting effect of technology. And almost none of it is really about some “innovation” or other. I in fact think that the word “innovation” is bandied around way too much, and given much too much weight. Innovation is not nearly as important as the endless daily grind of just incremental improvements. To quote Edison: “Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”

It really isn’t the inspiration that is the most important ingredient, it’s the perspiration. It’s the constant work to make things work better. That may not sound very interesting or visionary, but I think it’s a lot more intelligent than talking about individual big innovations.

Being “visionary” is another thing that I think is overrated. The devil is in the details, and I think most success is about looking down at the ground and putting your feet one step ahead of each other, rather than looking too far forward. It’s the plodding day-to-day work that gets the job done, after all. Of course, you do need to be lucky too, and happen to be in the right place and plodding in the right direction. And then that luck is often later – after the fact – attributed to being visionary. It just makes for a better story if you talk about visionary planning.
The Man Behind Linux: The Accidental Invention That Is Taking Hold of Wall Street 중

“Perspiration Beats Inspiration”을 생각나게 하는 인터뷰입니다. 영감 혹은 창의성도 밑바탕으로 내려가보면 아주 오랜동안의 끈기와 노력이 있다는 이야기입니다.

3.
앞의 Intro를 보면 재미있지만 의미있는 문장이 있습니다. 지난 10년의 변화와 이를 이끈 혁신가를 소개하면 “약간의 행운(a little bit of luck)이라는 표현을 사용합니다.

For every innovative idea that succeeds in the market, 100 (or maybe 1,000?) never get off the drawing board. Being at the right place at the
right time — securing a single investor to stand behind a new business plan, or even a fortuitous meeting at an airport with a potential client — can bring success to an innovator.

또한 감독당국 정책이 변화와 혁신을 가져왔고 어떤 경우엔 탈규제가 새로운 방식의 금융상품을 만드는 촉진제역할을 했다고 이야기합니다.

Just as regulation spurred change and innovation in financial services, deregulation over the past two decades allowed banks to create new types of financial products and experiment with previously forbidden risky investments. Of course, the new appetite for risk across the industry partially led to the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession that continues to loom over the world’s economy.

한국자본시장을 놓고 지난 10여년을 평가할 때 최고의 혁신적인 상품은 HTS(Home Trading System)이라고 생각합니다. HTS를 어떤 누가 만들었다고 하기 힘듭니다. PC통신시절부터 이어져온 GUI방식의 시장정보기술, 데이트레이딩을 금지하던 규정을 없앴던 감독당국 그리고 인터넷혁명을 직접투자로 연결하였던 증권사의 사상가들이 함께 만들어낸 합작품이라는 생각입니다. 행운, 탈규제 및 사상이 결합한 혁신이었죠. 물론 지금은 약발이 다했지만……

여러분이 생각하는 지난 10여년 한국증권산업이 낳은 혁신가 혹은 혁신적인 상품은 무엇일까요?