Innovation as Organization Culture

As I gear up to participant an Innovation forum- I spent very brief time to collect my thought about the topic which we are going to discuss: Creating a organization culture to encourage Innovation especially in Financial Service Industry.

Any successful Organization or Leader will understand and acknowledge that the Innovation is a key drive for business growth. Only by continuously innovation-- new markets, products, services, higher business can be achieved. So It’s important to seed culture to innovate at all levels of organization— Innovations on Strategy/Vision, Procedures/Processes, etc… and senior management should lead this effort by supporting Investments, Empowering employees driving innovations and by setting up cross-functional teams mapping innovation, etc…

Organization has to attract people to share vision, values and enabling them to thrive on performance. Effective and honest Communication is key and will increase employee trust and make them believe that they have an opportunity to be part of decision making process, taking necessary risks and creating environment that is tolerant to mistakes and get recognition/ rewards for performance. Ofcourse, this requires much sustained effort from management team. Leadership has to encourage environment to be creative, experiments, and to certain level encourage individualism. Inspirational managers will become Leaders by creating culture to inspiring employee to be more productive, by articulate vision and shared values. And by helping employees to align their individual goals by working within framework to achieve business goals.

If there is anything we can learn from History, is that-- good innovators has based the work on uncertainty, experiment, and draw the plan from forward-looking customers base. Organization has to create various forum to get employees step out of BAU routines, give them access and involve them through various external & internal resources like forecasting strategy, business plan, technology, new project proposals/plan, employee periodic rotation policy between departments/units which will enable fresh ideas, etc.

Good Example: Google’s 20% time for project of choice. of course, with an required approval process and necessary oversight process, allowing creative employee to be more creative. And Google's also share ideas mailing list: a organization wide suggestion list where people can post any ideas from food, parking to the next best innovations.

Scope in Financial Service Organizations:

Front-End: Changing Distribution Balance. Direct and Indirect Marketing, etc…
Back-End: Optimizing Operational Process, Power of Call Centers & Data Centers, Customer Service and retention, etc..

Few interesting Links:
Centre for Financial Services Innovation
Online Financial Innovations: Strategies & Reports