In her new book The Inversion Factor, author and leading technologist Linda Bernardi argues that traditional product-centric business strategies are no longer sufficient to ensure business success. Bernardi advocates inverting your strategy away from designing products or services you hope customers will like, to an innovation strategy predicated on anticipating customer needs and fulfilling them in ways never before possible, from delivering groceries in a two-hour window, to selecting the perfect pair of jeans for your body type.

The role of finance is being disrupted as well, with finance operating models and skill sets evolving to support customer-first strategies and dynamic new business models. Emerging technologies like IoT, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and autonomous technologies are behind the shift toward customer centricity, helping humans sift through reams of data to understand their customers more intimately than ever before. But human acumen is needed as well, especially from the finance team, whose job has moved beyond interpreting data trends to proactively monetizing these insights with management to create new sources of revenue and growth.

The role of disruptive finance is one of the key trends being explored at Oracle OpenWorld this October 22-25, 2018 in San Francisco, with Inversion Factor author Bernardi among those speaking at the annual Finance Executive Networking Luncheon and CFO Workshop hosted by Oracle CEO Safra Catz and her finance executive team. These are just two of the many sessions at OpenWorld designed to help professionals network and learn about finance and technology trends, change management and implementation best practices, and share other strategies and methods to support finance modernization.