The first in a special series exploring the meaning of craft in today’s world. Craft is not just about what you do but also how you go about doing it: the ability to gaze both backwards and forwards; to recognise heritage and skill, and combine it with a compelling vision. In this series, Monocle and UBS are interrogating how these tenets come to life across different industries. Part one features Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, and Monocle’s editor, Josh Fehnert, discussing how craft can shape everything from banking to storytelling. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hello and welcome to the Bulletin with UBS on Monocle Radio.
Each week, the sharpest minds and freshest thinkers in finance take you beyond the numbers and hype right to the heart of the big issues of the day.
In this episode of the program and over the following two editions, we're going to be considering the meaning of craft in today's world.
It's not just about what you do, but also how you go about doing it.
It's a universal set of values, perhaps including attention to detail, a hands on approach and a determination to deliver the highest quality product possible.
These core principles are the same no matter your metier.
From the world of banking via bespoke furniture to the robotics innovations of tomorrow, crafts the ability to gaze both backwards and forwards, to recognize heritage and skill and combine it with a compelling vision.
In this series, Monocle and UBS are interrogating how these tenets come to life across different industries and explaining why craft matters or why it should, whatever your discipline.
In the next couple of programs we'll hear from various crafts people working across disciplines from design to automotive to tailoring, to learn more about their approach.
But we start our series and today's program with why UBS as a bank considers its work craft.
What are the values and the principles that underscore this approach?
And, well, why does it matter?
Here to talk to us about that is Paul Donovan, the ever erudite chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management.
Paul, great to chat with you about this.
And I wanted to kind of pick your brain a little bit about this idea of banking as craft and listeners to Monocle readers of the magazine.
Indeed.
And people just walking in the world will have seen these communications from the bank.
Give me a little bit of a sense from, as you see it, why the bank, why it's important for the bank to consider what it does as craft.
And I guess then you and your colleagues as craftsmen and women.
Well, I think when we think in a very, very theoretical way in the world of economics, a job is simply a collection of tasks.