Future First

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1    The power to change everything

When I was working at JPMorgan Chase in 2004, the CIO made a telling slip of the tongue while presenting the bank’s annual technology budget. Instead of referring to the “company’s annual expenses,” he called it the “country’s annual expenses.” It hit me then how apropos his comment actually was. After all, we were spending more than the GDP of most small countries on technology alone. The leaders of that bank had the power of corporate kings.

With total assets of $2.42 trillion, JPMorgan Chase and Company is the largest bank in the US and the world’s most valuable bank according to its market capitalization.¹ The bank’s global conglomerate structure, which encompasses five subsidiaries, evolved from numerous ...