I’ve written before about the false promise of Innovation Theatre— getting caught up in activities that look like innovation, but don’t really add value. I wrote this for our blog at FinTech Forge (and soon we will tell you about its newer cousin The Fintech Petting Zoo). I have said that the antithesis of and […]
Leadership
What They Don’t Teach You at Banking School
The financial services industry has a long and important tradition of executive education. Up and coming managers are sent off to graduate banking programs to learn industry best practices developed over prior decades, and in some cases, centuries. These programs are well prepared to teach the evolving art and science of asset and liability management, credit underwriting, portfolio […]
Success is a Poor Teacher
Bill Gates has said “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose”. The sweet afterglow of success has a way of redefining as brilliant decisions all of the ways you got lucky, and glossing over a lot of little things that never were quite right along the way. It […]
No Silver Bullet
Managers have this bad habit of looking for a silver bullet. That magical holy grail that will make all of their problems go away quickly, and preferably painlessly. Those expensive consultants. That fancy new CRM system. This flashy acquisition. That confusing and demoralizing internal reorganization. Not the last one, this one. Many have this same unrealistic expectation about innovation. […]
The Power of One Sigma
Six Sigma is a quality improvement program that gets its name from the concept of 99.9997% quality. In statistics, each sigma represents the statistical measure of 1 standard deviation from the mean in a range of outcomes in a normal distribution. Six sigma translates into no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities. It is often related to (and sometimes conflated with) […]
Beyond Innovation Theatre
Innovation is all about value creation. Or at least it should be. It’s easy to get caught up in the front end of the process. Brainstorming new ideas, drawing on whiteboards, and moving different colored sticky notes around the wall is fun. But all of that should be a means to an end. That end should be about […]
Building Better Bank-Fintech Partnerships
Talk of banks and fintech companies partnering together has increased dramatically in the past year. There have definitely been some interesting partnerships announced, particularly with some of the marketplace lenders, various blockchain projects and some artificial intelligence driven bots. Most are in stages that are too early for a full analysis at this point. There […]
Improving the Consumer Payment Experience
I’m continuing my look behind the scenes at Capital One to see how they are using technology, innovation, and design to create a better banking experience. Last week at Money20/20, I spent some time with Tom Poole, Managing Vice President for Digital at Capital One. I heard Tom speak on a panel called “The Role of […]