Wavelength Podcast Ep. 215: Bill Murphy on Innovation & Technical Debt

- By Anthony Malakian and Wei-Shen Wong
- 09 Oct 2020

Wei-Shen Wong, Asia Editor, and Anthony Malakian, Editor-in-Chief of WatersTechnology, record a weekly podcast touching on the biggest stories in financial technology.

Waters Wavelength Podcast · Episode 215: Bill Murphy on Innovation & Technical Debt

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On February 3, 2020, it was publically announced that Bill Murphy—Blackstone’s CTO for almost a decade—would be leaving the firm at the end of March. Bill rejoins the Wavelength podcast—for a record fifth time—to discuss some of the lessons he learned while working at the private equity giant, and the next phase of his career at Cresting Wave (2:00-47:00). At the backend of the podcast, Wei-Shen and Tony discuss Refinitiv’s plans going forward after the launch of Workspace (47:30-end).

3:30 Bill discusses his decision to join Cresting Wave.

7:15 For those who have fared well during the pandemic, what went right?

10:30 What are the dangers of making knee-jerk tech decisions to answer Covid-related needs?

13:30 When it comes to the buy v. build debate, are banks more wary of taking the lead on moonshot projects?

19:00 Do banks and asset managers risk falling behind if they hand too much off in the innovation space?

21:00 What interests Bill the most in the genre of “innovation” and why is technical debt hindering the capital markets?

28:30 What does technical debt look like when it comes to machine learning and data analysis?

35:30 Working remotely v. working in the office—how will that dynamic change in a post-Covid world?

40:00 Blockchain?

41:30 ESG?

43:30 Quantum computing?

45:00 Deep learning?