New York (HedgeCo.Net) Hedge fund founders, CEOs, COOs and CTOs got together to discuss the critical operational issues and trends that will impact hedge funds and other alternative investment vehicles in 2015.

The 9th annual Gravitas Trends thought leadership event, “Growth. The New Drivers,” predicted trends for 2015 revolving around the following themes: big data, branding, cybersecurity and innovation.

• Big Data: Businesses now have the ability to use cognitive analysis and natural language processing to respond to inquiries, shift through massive amounts of data in disparate sources and respond with a high level of accuracy.
• Branding: To create a strong corporate brand, a firm’s branding must be agile, personal, visible, convictional, memorable, distinctive and contemporary.
• Cybersecurity: There is a push towards increasing the awareness of how data needs to be protected through a combination of culture and process, which is enhanced by technology.
• Innovation: Even though innovation is not rewarded on the non-investment side by Portfolio Managers, it is appreciated by COOs and CFOs who have implemented processes that encourage and reward innovation.

“Firms must learn to be innovative and creative on both the investment side of the business and the operations side,” said Jayesh Punater, Founder and CEO of Gravitas. “The alternative investment industry is all about risk taking. It is time for industry participants to awaken and to focus on taking smart risks that pay off big on the operations side as well as on the investment side of the business.”

Keynote Speakers at the Trends event included Richard H. Baker, President & Chief Executive Officer of the Managed Funds Association; Eash Sundaram, Chief Information Officer of JetBlue; and Patrick Howard, EVP and Enterprise-Wide Head of Market Risk at BNY Mellon. Brian Walter, the Watson Global Transformation Partner Global Leader, Wealth Management and Banking & Financial Markets at IBM WATSON GROUP; Zachary Frayne, Chief Technology Officer at TPG-Axon Management, L.P.; Mich Bergesen, Global Director at Landor Associates; Kurt Brungardt, Chief Information Officer & Managing Director at MSD Capital, L.P.;and Mark Adams, Vice President of Corporate Development at eSentire, Inc., led trend roundtable discussions. Jessica Abo, TV personality and Chief Inspiration Officer at Apploi, served as the event moderator.