Over the past few weeks, I have published two pieces that were really one argument. In Running to Stand Still I made the case that our industry’s obstacles to innovation are not technological. The capital is returning, the tools are extraordinary, and still, we manage to get in our own way. The blockers are cultural and organisational, and because they are of our own making, they are ours to remove. In Learning to Love Uncertainty I went underneath that to ask why. My answer

In my last piece, Running to Stand Still, I argued that the real blockers to innovation in our industry are almost never technological. The capital is returning, the tools are extraordinary, and yet we keep getting in our own way. The obstacles, I said, are cultural and organisational. I want to pick up exactly where that left off, because there is a deeper truth sitting underneath it, and it is one I have spent fifty years learning the hard way. The truth is this. Uncertaint

A thousand years ago, well forty-nine to be precise, I entered the working world through the doors of Lloyd’s, notebook in hand and not the faintest idea that I’d spend the rest of my life in and around this endlessly fascinating industry. Back then, the word ‘innovation’ wasn’t one you heard much on the floor of the market. We had paper, we had people, and we had a way of doing things that had been handed down more or less intact for generations. At Lloyd’s, innovation was a