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Innovative food and agribusiness start-ups and fledgling ventures will have the opportunity to showcase themselves to potential investors at an event to be held in Sydney in November. FoodBytes! Sydney [...]

The focus of this study is the relationship between financial innovation in banking to Spanish regional growth. The results show that there is a positive and significant correlation between bank financial depening and regional growth.

A study on the effect of financial innovations and technology on the costs and profits of banking sector is presented. The effects of scope economies and complementary pairing in banking transactions like lending, deposit-taking, mutual fund activities etc., are analyzed.

The financial sector has recognized the increasing importance of new products. The ways in which financial companies organize their innovative processes and what barriers to innovation can be identified in banks and insurance companies are presented.

The concept of laissez-faire banking is profiting from the latest technologies in credit cards and pre-paid cards. While the trend can replace currency notes, the electronic currency combined with the present financial innovations can result in a stable laissez-faire banking system. Trade transactions will be done through debiting and crediting of liquid wealth and fiat money will continue to be of value as asset money. Further, the accounting system of exchange will coordinate economic activity more efficiently compared to monetary exchanges.

In a two-stage game, we study under what conditions banks offer phonebanking (first stage). In the second stage, they are competitors in the market for deposits. Offering the phone option creates two opposing effects. The first is a demand effect as depositors strictly prefer to manage some of their financial transactions by phone. The second (strategic) effect is that competition is increased as transaction costs are lowered. Universal phonebanking prevails when the demand effect dominates the strategic effect. Specialization can occur in that one bank offers the phone option while the other does not. Keywords: Banking competition; Industrial organization; Applied microeconomics JEL classification: D21, D42, D43

Efforts in 1983 by Indonesia to liberalize its financial markets produced a competitive atmosphere that was a stimulus to computerization, particularly in banking. Within four years, commercial banks had applied information technology to a range of back office tasks, although they still lagged behind US banks in applying IT to product development and marketing. The impact on productivity was negligible, partly due to shortages of personnel skilled in IT and inadequate telecommunications infrastructure, but also because banks had not yet accumulated sufficient managerial capabilities necessary for a more competitive environment. Manual banking systems remain viable, but probably not for long, since IT-driven systems will eventually yield greater gains in productivity.

Technology management is becoming increasingly necessary in the banking industry due to the rise in information technology usage in front-line service delivery. Automation maximization involves cost-effectiveness, reliability, security and strategic relevance issues in the use of computers. In this regard, computer systems must be looked upon and evaluated as investments. Several tools exist for technology rationalization within an organization, one of which is the development of an information systems architecture, a plan that charts system functions, components and interfaces. Business and investment planning, which defines system requirements and execution in line with business objectives, and information systems planning, which includes a division's specific project needs, are other techniques used in technology cost-benefit analysis.

One hundred fifty-two of the largest banks in the US were studied to examine the factors determining a firm's propensity to implement technological innovation, specifically video-banking services. Results of the study show that the banks' decision to adopt innovations are influenced by accumulated information technology experiences and their inclination to network with information techonology firms. Banks with more exposure to information technology and with greater interfirm linkages are the ones most likely to adopt video banking.

An international summit focused on future innovation in the food and agricultural industries is to be held in Australia in November. The Farm2Fork Summit will bring together agribusiness industry leaders, [...]

Byline: Vanessa Ratten The banking industry has globalised as a result of the many technology innovations created by the internet. The electronic commerce (e-commerce) industry is a result of these technological innovations that have revolutionised the way both consumers and businesses conduct business. In the past decade, banks have encouraged the use of e-commerce and most people are now comfortable conducting their banking online. More recently, mobile commerce (m-commerce) has started to gain momentum and an increasing amount of people are conducting their banking on mobile phone devices instead of through the internet. Mobile banking is a technological innovation that people adopt in different ways depending on internal and external environmental influences. In this paper, a social cognitive theoretical framework is adopted to understand an individual's intention to adopt mobile banking. A conceptual model is proposed, which helps to explain how environmental influences affect an individual's intention to adopt mobile banking. Implications for mobile banking and m-commerce industry are stated along with suggestions for future research on technological innovations.

Byline: John Martin The rapid growth of Community Bank[R] concept across Australia, operating under franchise arrangements with the Bendigo Bank, provides an effective model for regional innovation and entrepreneurship. The way in which the Bendigo Bank works with local communities to enter into and maintain a partnership has important lessons for those in government, business and other industry sectors of interest who seek to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in local communities. Since the opening of the first Community Bank[R] branches in Rupanyup and Minyip in western Victoria in 1998 some 178 Community Bank[R] partnerships have been established with the Bendigo Bank. In this article we use a psycho-sociological framework to analyse the success of the Community Bank[R] partnership model in terms of the motivation for both the Bendigo Bank and communities to work together to provide sustainable local financial services. We conclude that the innovation and entrepreneurship opportunity in the Bendigo Bank Community Bank[R] partnership provides a valid framework for other community-based economic development initiatives.

Within the financial services industry, innovations are either new investment products (such as zero coupon bonds) or new delivery and service systems (such as electronic funds transfer systems). Since 1979, the number of innovations in this industry has increased dramatically, due to deregulation, tax reform and computer technology. An assessment of these innovative products and services indicates that some of them create dislocations of financial resources, which offsets any benefit to the consumer. The benefits of, and causes behind, more than twenty financial innovations are analyzed; among these are included: money market investment accounts, super NOW accounts, zero coupons, IRAs, automatic teller machines, electronic securities trading, electronic funds transfer, interest rate swaps, adjustable rate securities, currency option loans, and high-yield 'junk' bonds.

The role of the critical mass in the diffusion of interactive innovations is examined and certain aspects of the theory are investigated using data from German banks concerning their adoption of telecommunications innovations. It is argued that telecommunications innovations with strong network externalities should have a more pronounced critical mass in their rate of adoption.

Providing good quality, highly automated retail banking services for the mass market is still a major challenge for banks active in Central and Eastern Europe. However, in spite of the [...]