The Story of Craft: Shaping A New World

Shared values, common goals

If there is one thing that we’ve learnt about modern-day craft, it is that diverse people in different disciplines are united by a set of common goals. In the past, when we’ve taken a deep dive into the world of design, we’ve met makers from the US to Switzerland who have found common ground in their desire to constantly raise their game by focusing on purpose and precision.

In our latest series, we are widening that scope to industries as varied as healthcare analysis and neuroscience. These are designers of a different sort: innovative leaders in their respective disciplines who are mapping out the world and equally invested in shaping its future.

Indeed, when you distil craft to its essence, that’s what it is all about: forging a unique path, no matter the challenges along the way. Whether it’s seeing patterns in complex data or navigating the perilous corners of the Macau Grand Prix circuit, our interviewees are united by their ability to take technical rigour and turn it into an art form. They are the very embodiment of craft.

Monocle and UBS, a bank tracing its history back more than 160 years, have been jointly exploring the notion of craft and what it means in today’s world.

Discover the previous series here: monocle.com/content/ubs-x-monocle

VIVIAN SIU

THE CRAFT OF BLAZING A TRAIL

Racing driver

Hong Kong-based Vivian Siu is a director of hedge fund origination sales at UBS. But that’s not the only place where she’s been testing her quick wits. Last year, Siu decided to fulfil her childhood dream of becoming a Formula 4 driver, despite having no prior racing experience. Training in her spare time, she set her sights on competing in the Macau Grand Prix. Her story has been turned into a forthcoming documentary, Zero to Macao.

What suddenly made you decide that becoming a racing car driver was something that you needed to do?
I’ve always been into cars but I never had the chance to explore racing. When I was younger, I couldn’t afford to try out motorsports so I didn’t think about exploring this hobby until now, with the finance career that I have. During the pandemic, we didn’t get to travel outside Hong Kong for three years. So, when the borders reopened last year, I just wanted to do everything at once. That’s when I decided that I really wanted to give it a try and test the waters with the help of my team, T-1 Racing. When I first started testing the car, I didn’t expect the trajectory to end up the way that it has. Everything happened by chance and whenever there was a new opportunity, I just seized it.

Are there crossovers between the worlds of Formula 4 racing and finance?
Finance is a male-dominated industry, just like racing. I was the first female Formula 4 racing driver in China so I definitely saw some similarities with the world of finance. There are a lot of other perspectives as well. For example, in finance there are a million bits of information being thrown at you at the same time. When you are communicating on the radio in the car, there are a million bits of information being thrown at you too. It takes a lot of skills to listen properly and adapt on a very quick level. That’s what my job in finance also requires me to do.

Are you hoping to inspire other women to follow in your footsteps?
When I first started the journey, I did not expect someone like me to be a person who could open pathways for others. That comes with pressure, yes, but at the same time I wanted to give my all out there and not really care about the outcome too much. Representing is what I am trying to do.

Motorsport – the power of a machine with the precision of the human touch – is a craft in its own right, isn’t it?
Formula driving is another level, compared to other types of racing. It is the one that’s the most technical and requires the widest skillset. When we talk about racing, and the craft of Formula racing, it’s definitely the pinnacle of motorsports. Because one tiny mistake – let’s say you step on the brake a little harder than you’re supposed to – and you could lose the car. It’s a no-margin-of-error type of driving and it requires a lot of focus.

Is there more that you want to achieve in motorsport?
From the first time that I sat inside a Formula 4 racing car until the Macau Grand Prix last year was a span of just six months. And I haven’t done any racing since that time because I think that was the climax. It has been an incredible journey.

DR AMY KRUSE

THE CRAFT OF ENHANCING HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Neuroscience investor

With a PhD in neuroscience, Dr Amy Kruse is the chief investment officer of Satori Neuro, a division of the Texas-based hedge fund Satori Capital, which invests in innovative neurotechnology companies transforming how we approach mental health solutions. As our understanding of the brain advances every year, Kruse leads the way in identifying new opportunities while investing both capital and expertise to help them flourish.

What brought you to neuroscience?
It was a personal interest. My parents were English teachers but I was a real scientist. They got me a microscope and the rest is history. I think biology is romantic. It’s all about discovery and the natural world, right? And we’re developing all these tools to understand it.

Why did you decide to move into the investment side of things?
I’m a very curious, expansive person. There are people for whom working on one research problem is quite satisfying but I always found myself drawn towards those broader perspectives where you can connect the dots. And then, as an investor, I do believe that neurotechnology is such an incredibly explosive and growing area. This is the right time to be deploying capital in this space.

What is your investment priority: transformational potential or financial gain?
I try to hold all those things together. When you’re looking at venture investing, you are looking for outsized returns and so there’s a kind of calculus between market potential and a transformative or unmet need in that space. And then it’s really an engineering question: can we take this concept or this thing that we’ve proved in the lab and turn it into something that would be scalable?

How have some of your investments helped to enhance the human experience?
There are a couple of different types of investments that I’ve made that do that. Some are in the mental health space but relate to what’s happening in psychedelic medicine. When I was a graduate student, it was thought that the adult brain was quite fixed and it really couldn’t be changed very much. And now we know that there are myriad ways of inducing neuroplasticity and helping the brain to change. So, we’ve been looking at techniques and tools that that help us heal, learn new skills or work on cognition.

How have you honed your instincts for a good investment?
It helps to be a subject matter expert in this. I’m seeing what’s coming along, I have other CEOs in my network who are introducing me to folks, and I’m very fortunate that there is a flow of opportunities and ideas.

You’re an avid gardener. What lessons learned from nurturing plants have you applied to your day job?
The reason I garden is because I like putting my hands in the dirt, it is really one of the only things that calms me down. We all need things that keep us grounded. Certainly, that’s the case in investing, where things can get pretty out of control. I also love the fact that there are cycles and seasons – there are absolutely ebbs and flows to investing in companies. And if your plant dies, you simply start over with another seedling. It is truly one of the things I love about gardening: “It didn’t work? OK, tomato, we’ll give it another shot.”

NIALL MACLEOD

THE CRAFT OF MAKING BETTER DECISIONS

Research leader

Global financial markets never sleep so investing in them successfully requires an agile, proactive approach based on international research and insight. Niall MacLeod has been honing his craft in this respect for more than three decades. Having joined UBS in 2008, he is currently APAC head of product management, UBS Research. “We’re trying to interpret what’s going on in the world in a way that helps our investing clients make better decisions,” he says.

When you talk about innovation in finance, how much of that involves predicting the future?
It’s a combination of things. Part of our work is trying to assess what is going to happen in the future. Part is about providing roadmaps, a thought process and a framework that helps our clients reach better investment decisions. We innovate a lot in techniques that will help us make better decisions and think about what our clients are going to need. UBS was very innovative about 10 years ago in creating UBS Evidence Lab, which collects all sorts of non-traditional information such as geospatial analysis, surveys or uses other novel techniques to help assess pivotal investment questions in a market or sector, for example: tearing down an electric vehicle, to better understand the supply chain and help identify who the winners might be from the rise in EV penetration.

How do you balance introducing innovations with maintaining a corporate framework?
We don’t want to be an organisation that doesn’t allow for challenge because if everyone just believes the same thing and turns out to be wrong, you’ve got a very serious problem on your hands. Challenge is critically important to the sustainability of a good financial services organisation.

How important is knowledge sharing?
One of the incredible strengths of UBS is the fact we have extraordinarily good communication and collaboration between people. It’s really part of the DNA of this organisation. Within research, we have 700 analysts, strategists and economists around the world with whom we have a very open dialogue. Trust is a critical part of communication. I don’t fear if a colleague in the US or Germany or India calls me out on a view, I don’t feel that it is a personal affront. I know it’s being done because we’re trying to reach a better decision.

What is the most underappreciated aspect of the craft of banking?
Financial services and banking in general involve risk and often high degrees of complexity. Managing that sustainably is all about having the right culture. What is underappreciated are the enormous lengths to which we go to ensure that we have the right culture; one that focuses on the long term, encourages collaboration and innovation, fosters challenge, and, most importantly, puts our clients at the heart of what we do.

Away from banking, where is the greatest potential for innovation?
AI has created enormous excitement. While there will be huge innovations in critical areas like the environment and tackling climate change, I’m particularly excited by what it could do for healthcare: more rapid drug discovery, enhancing our understanding of our physiology and exciting breakthroughs and insights into our own minds. And ultimately, people being able to live healthier, happier and longer.

DR JORDAN NGUYEN

THE CRAFT OF SHAPING EVOLUTION

Biomedical engineer and inventor

Born to an engineer father and artist mother, Australian-Vietnamese futurist Dr Jordan Nguyen grew up surrounded by robots and paintings, leading to a deep understanding of how science and art can work together to make something extraordinary. Nguyen is the founder of Psykinetic, a technology company that uses AI, robotics and a keen sense of design to create accessibility-enhancing devices such as mind-controlled wheelchairs.

When you’re working on a new project, do you start with the research first or envisioning the final product?
I was always a daydreamer and told I needed to stop daydreaming in class at school but it turned out to be a really great skill. I can visualise entire ideas and how they’re going to be at the end. Even now, with all the different things that I’ve built, I will still start projects where I know about 10 per cent of how to do it. I always do a little bit of research. But usually I know that the projects I’m building are pretty ambitious and they haven’t been done before. So I form my own idea of what I want to be able to build – and I just get started.

How has the advancement of technology helped your design process?
The tools available are more abundant and the knowledge is more open. We’ve got things like open-source code now and it feels a lot more like an artistic outlet than before. When it comes to the electronics, the software, the construction and the mechanical side, all of it feels like creative expression now. With things like my robots, it’s not just individual components all moving together; you also want to be able to give it a soul. The ideas come from a level of purpose, which comes from inspiration. And inspiration to me always comes from seeing things in the world that I would love to see – a solution that could improve quality of life, whether that be for friends and family, or for something bigger.

What roles do craft and design play in your engineering?
The commercial version of our eye-controlled keyboard looks like an absolute space-age device; it’s so beautiful. There’s so much to the aesthetics and the flow of the design. Traditionally, a lot of accessibility devices have been pretty terrible-looking, and they’re very expensive andclu nky. What we’re going for is something that is so adaptable and is so able to be personalised – you can change the colours, the lighting, the fonts – that it allows you to express yourself the way you want. A beautiful device can completely change the paradigm of assistive or inclusive technology. It’s much more than an add-on or afterthought. It’s something that can be built into the core of a product, and it really helps with getting across the vision, the dream and the message of why you’re doing what you’re doing.

How can aspiring inventors cultivate a sense of innovation?
There are so many things that have already been built and tools that we can harness, so to achieve new ideas you can often start by piecing together things that are already there and then add that extra leap. Invention, which is pure creation, is more difficult. But innovation opens up new spaces of opportunity for people to come in and try new things. There is an amazing wealth of tools available for us to achieve any idea that we set our minds to. The truth is, I’m not surprised by things any more. Anything is possible.

DR LAURA SUTCLIFFE

THE CRAFT OF WHAT COMES NEXT

Healthcare analyst

Dr Laura Sutcliffe’s job involves advising investors about where the healthcare industry is heading. Based in Sydney, and with UBS since 2019, her role as head of Australian healthcare equity research involves deep analysis and number crunching. She might be listening to a big reveal at a medical conference or talking with doctors, all of which helps her form an expert opinion from the deluge of data about what trends to follow and where stock prices are going.

What does your day-to-day role involve?
Helping our investors identify opportunities, either to buy or sell a stock, in the healthcare space in Australia. My day-to-day job involves looking at pipeline technologies and seeing how they are gaining traction in the healthcare community. We might talk with physicians or patients, and also work with companies that make these things, to understand how they’re making decisions about the future, how they might look to develop new tech or drugs, and then form an opinion on the share price based on that.

It sounds like a balancing act, no?
Stock picking is a balance between the science end and the art of understanding how those technologies are going to impact the market, knowing how to interpret the signals for what people might want, and where the need is. So how are these things going to sell? There is a certain angle to it that is an art and not a science, so I’m balancing both.

Your job is to analyse statistics but there must be an important element in building relationships?
Ultimately making these judgments is about the relationship between the technology and the people. You can have fabulous technologies – we often see this in med tech – but if people don’t want them, there’s a limit to how much impact they ultimately have. Trying to get into the weeds of the relationship between the people and the science is something that’s unique to individual analysts as well. So, if you were to look at my peers across the healthcare space, the way they choose to go about evaluating those opportunities is very individual. So maybe you get people who really can discern the signal from the noise by being heavily numerical. Other people lean more on what they hear from doctors.

What makes you stand out as an analyst?
I’ve now covered major stocks in the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region so the first thing that I bring is a global view. But it’s not just about what I bring; I’m also part of a healthcare ecosystem or family here. What I bring to my team – and what we do together – is a kind of craft.

What are some of the new frontiers in healthcare?
The healthcare space has a lot of work to do in neurodegeneration and that’s one of the next frontiers that we’ll be confronting. You can see some of the work that’s been done in things like Alzheimer’s disease but we’ve still got potentially quite big strides to make before we can declare any kind of victory.

So, your job is to speculate on the future?
It’s an art form because it’s about learning to distil things that are complicated in a way that is not only understandable and meaningful, but also investible. And sometimes a concept can be very intriguing and very satisfying to understand – but it’s not necessarily an investible one.