One-to-One Meeting with Alistair Newton

Today, I had a one-to-one (well actually a 2-to-1) meeting with Alistair Newton, to talk about how to promote innovation in a bank, especially in the context of the one I am working for...

The "right" innovation is one that will satisfy customers needs and requirements. There are 4 possible drivers: acquire new customers, retain existing customers, add revenue or reduce costs.

Therefore, the first requirement for innovation is an ability to listen. This translates into a necessity to collect, filter and assess information from clients, partners and the business stakeholders.

It is important to get the right channel to the information and it depends on the organization. The collection process is some kind of a detective work. It may involve analytics (for example, determining a client needs from its payments history). This is one point where partnerships with retailers can make sense.

Practical recommendations for the information collection include: measuring the customer satisfaction (even on only 2 or 3 questions), identify customers with an issue (this can be found on public web sites, blogs, social networks...). Positive returns also provide useful findings.

It should be quite easy to find about 10 issues and fundamental trends relevant to the business. Then act on and fix 5 of them.

Some fundamental shifts (such as social networking, risk management...), that you cannot ignore, are the "background" and cannot be treated in the same way. For one, they are not actually measurable. Example: Alistair thinks that by 2011, 10% of customers will negotiate at their bank.

Other bits and pieces:

• Innovations are often too complex.
• Innovation has to cross the organization silos.
• From the information sourcing to a solution delivery, the link (and focus) must be kept at all times.