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Make Innovation strategic again: how to significantly contribute to the strategic plan?
In collaboration with the Innovation Director of a major branch of the Top 2 Banking Groups in France, Stim sought to maximise the contribution of innovation to the strategic challenges of this branch (+30,000 employees). Over the last few years, the innovation team has been contributing to a multitude of initiatives, but their strategic impact was limited or difficult to measure. The innovation team was frustrated by the lack of vision and alignment, leading to the limited impact of innovation activities; and by organisational shortcomings that prevented them from completing initiatives from idea to market.
In parallel, the top management had outlined a dozen strategic directions for 2025, some of which could only be achieved through disruptive innovations. The objective of the collaboration was thus to overcome the disconnect between the branch's ambitions in terms of innovation and the capacity of the innovation team to design and launch new high-potential businesses on the market.
The challenge
Change the game: how Innovation can become a centrepiece in the Group’s strategic plan
For the past 7 years, the Innovation team has been mainly focused on business support activities, often involving the implementation of incremental innovations close to the historical activity. For example, they carried out acculturation sessions on new technologies and collaboration methods or organised "innovation sprints" and brainstorming sessions for employees.
These activities are necessary in their own right, but as long as they are not part of a clear strategic vision and ambition, it is difficult to assess their Return on Investment and their actual contribution to the strategy. Not satisfied with the one-off impacts and quick wins achieved so far, the Innovation Director was looking to structure his innovation strategy and raise the level of contribution of his team. He called on Stim to meet a major challenge: to make innovation a strategic contributor to this branch.
Our solution
Build an innovation machine to realise the ambition of the top management
Step 1: Align on one shared vision
Our work started with a Diagnosis to understand what was expected of innovation by the top management and what was lacking in their organisation in order to create a strong innovation capacity.
This Diagnosis lasted 2,5 months, allowing a thorough overview and analysis of the actual innovation situation inside the Group. We also listed the main areas in which the Innovation team can contribute to the Group’s strategic plan.
Step 2: Build an innovation machine
Once this common vision was shared with the top management, Stim proposed a structure for the group's innovation machine based on 4 pillars:
Governance: how can innovation activities be reviewed and decided directly with top management?
Exploration: how can the innovation team generate highly differentiating and innovative concepts to serve the strategic ambition?
Acceleration: how can the innovation team reduce the time to market for its new, high-potential offerings by a factor of 3?
Culture: how can the innovation team acculturate employees and senior management on new technologies/trends, and change their perception of risk in innovation, despite their usual risk aversion?
Step 3: Implement an innovation machine
During the third quarter, Stim participated in the implementation of various initiatives to really get the innovation machine going. This collaboration quickly generated promising results:
Governance: the top management directly steers innovation activities (explorations, accelerations, market launches, etc.) through bi-monthly meetings with the Innovation team.
Exploration: 5 strategic innovation sprints, each lasting 3 months, was set up with the objective of exploring and designing new solutions or offers that contribute directly to the branch's strategic plan.
Acceleration: 3 high-potential concepts have been selected to be accelerated with the best French startup studios. The objective is to quickly produce the first "MVP" (Minimum Viable Product) ready to be marketed in only 6 to 9 months, which is 2 to 3 times faster than what the company used to achieve.
Culture: the first MasterClass was organised for the top management, focusing on key strategic changes that would impact the banking world. It brought together academic experts and entrepreneurs in order to raise awareness among senior management.
In less than one year, this collaboration allowed a full diagnosis of their innovation capacities, and the design and setting up of a proper innovation machine, which went beyond the initial expectations of the Innovation team and the top management.
At the end of Q3 2021, the “Innovation Machine” itself has become a common notion shared by the whole Branch and its top management and a key element in the strategic plan; therefore, the Innovation team has earned a central position in the design and implementation of that plan.
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