Book excerpt: Creating Value in Financial Services is a compilation of state-of-the-art views of leading academics and practitioners on how financial service firms can succeed in today's competitive environment. The book is based on two conferences held at New York University: the first, `Creating Value in Financial Services', held in March 1997, and the second, `Operations and Productivity in Financial Services', in April 1998. The book is essentially designed to be a compendium of leading edge thinking and practice in the management of financial services firms. There is no book today that has this focus. It contains ideas that can apply to other service industries. Topics addressed are increasingly important worldwide as the financial services industries consolidate and search for innovative new directions and ways to create value in a fiercely competitive environment.