"Gref knows me as a manager and a specialist in the methodology of thinking": Kurpatov told about the work in Sberbank

- Andrei Vladimirovich, the head of Sberbank, German Gref, in an interview with TASS, said that he very much appreciated the “Fourth World War”. Have you known Herman Oskarovich for a long time?

“As far as I know, in an interview he just said that he read it.” I hope that he really liked the book, but I cannot vouch.

Herman Oskarovich and I have known each other for about fifteen years. Many people mistakenly perceive me only as a psychotherapist - these are the natural costs of television popularity. But German Oskarovich knows me as a manager and specialist in the methodology of thinking and neuroscience.

- On February 12, Sberbank issued an official announcement about the creation of the Laboratory for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, of which you will become a supervisor. Did you immediately agree to this offer?

- Over the past few years, I have headed the High School of Methodology, and we have already conducted a number of studies for Sberbank, which have shown good results. The decision to create a specialized laboratory within the state bank itself became a natural continuation of this cooperation. This format, as we think, will make it easier to implement the developments that we create by our team.

- What kind of work in the laboratory will you do first? What direction is now in priority?

- We want to create effective models of interaction, to help customers and bank employees to feel more comfortable, to improve the subjective quality of the service provided. Fortunately, thanks to the most advanced scientific research in the field of neurophysiology, social psychology and cognitive science, we have new tools that Sberbank is ready to actively implement.

- Will the work of the laboratory be based on your scientific works, or will you introduce the methods of other specialists? If so, which ones?

- Modern science is not a study of an individual scientist, but a huge body of work carried out around the world by hundreds of research centers. The task of our Laboratory is to transform scientific knowledge about the work of the human brain into technologies for solving specific problems, which we, of course, cannot cope with alone. We have a lot of collaboration with other Sberbank Laboratories - Artificial Intelligence Laboratories, Data Factory, and so on.

- In 2017, the American Nobel Prize in Economics was received by Richard Thaler for research in the field of behavioral economics. Are you familiar with his work? How, in your opinion, the study of this area can generally affect the global financial and economic policy in the future?

- The Thaler Nobel Prize is not the first in this series. Here you have to start with the works of Kahneman (Daniel Kahneman, Israeli-American psychologist, Nobel Prize winner in economics in 2002. - RT ) and Tversky (Amos Tversky - Israeli psychologist, founder of perspective theory, which describes people's behavior when making risk-related decisions - RT ).

By the way, Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics back in 2002. In fact, these are prizes for cognitive distortions discovered. I don’t think that such discoveries can significantly change the financial and economic policy as such, there are much more significant factors. But they really allow a better understanding of the behavior of participants in any business process and, accordingly, increase its efficiency.

- The message of Sberbank says that the laboratory will be located in Moscow and St. Petersburg. How, then, will your work be structured? Will you live between two cities?

- I don’t have to get used to living between cities, and Sberbank’s clients are located all over the country, so I would also open a branch of the Laboratory in Kazan and Vladivostok. But this is a joke.

Seriously, the work of the Laboratory is the research on the basis of which a product is created, and the second part is the implementation of products into business processes. We will conduct research in a calm Petersburg environment, and the bustle of implementation is Moscow.

- I would like to talk a little about the substantive part of your work. The Sberbank report states that “The laboratory will conduct scientific research in the field of neurophysiology, social psychology and cognitive science and will incorporate the results of scientific research into the daily practice of Sberbank Group companies in order to“ form an emotional connection with everyone who comes into contact with our ecosystem products, and We regard this connection as the basis of our competitiveness. ”

Andrei Vladimirovich, can you tell us in simple words what exactly the laboratory will do and what benefits can it bring to the clients of the state bank?

- The main curse of the science of man is that each of us, and this is quite understandable, considers himself to be a specialist in it. We do not consider ourselves to be competent financiers, if we are not financiers, or doctors, if we are not doctors. With behavior, social behavior, neurophysiology - everything is wrong, everyone thinks that they understand what is being said. But this is a science, and very complex, so in simple words I can only say the following.

Each person is a set of certain personality traits: psycho-physiological characteristics, needs, etc. Each of us is an individual combination of these universal parameters. In order to qualitatively satisfy any of our requests, you need to know this individual combination. The question is, respectively, how to identify this individuality and how to create a service that will take it into account. Any business wants to have such a tool in their hands.

- Why is this direction now interested in large corporations? I correctly understand that in the West, such practices have long been common (maybe you can give a few examples), while in Russia they are gaining momentum? What, in your opinion, can this be due to?

- Similar researches are conducted now all over the world, you are right. But I don’t know yet a single western company that could boast of a systemic solution of the problem. Yes, they are working on this both in Google and Facebook, but so far personalization processes are private everywhere. And the reasons for the relevance of this task are quite obvious. First, the client is becoming more and more difficult, and it has become more difficult for him to remain interesting in the time perspective. Secondly, corporations are moving away from narrow specialization, they turn into unique ecosystems, and for their success, these ecosystems must be as comfortable as possible for the consumer, and in very different directions. This is not an easy question, and it has nowhere been unequivocally resolved anywhere.

- Let me ask you the last question. I apologize in advance if he seems tactless. Will you still provide consulting or other services to Sberbank in any way? For example, advise top management on business issues or conduct individual or group psychological (psychotherapeutic) counseling for employees and "tops"?

- If we are talking about psychotherapeutic help, then I have not been doing psychotherapy for more than ten years and will hardly ever return to this occupation. Everything I wanted to do in this direction, I did: I created a scientific model of psychotherapy, wrote manuals on various nosologies (teachings about diseases and their classification. - RT ), popularized the psychotherapeutic practice itself.

Since then I have long been a manager in a large business, and now I am engaged in the study of human behavior and the mechanics of thinking. The time has come when business felt an urgent need for this kind of work, and for me it is especially valuable that I received an invitation from German Oskarovich, a manager with an exceptional strategic vision.