Overview
One of Africa’s largest banking groups asked us to design a large-scale innovation effort across the 20 most critical burning platforms in the business. We designed a “HotHouse” innovation programme that combined design thinking with agile and Lean Startup methodologies.
The Challenge
After a careful review of the innovation portfolio across the business it was quickly discovered that many of the efforts were not customer-centric and actually resulted in a traditional product push approach. The main challenge was thus to design an innovation methodology driven by the voice of the customer and encouraged by co-creation as a strategic innovation mindset.
Our Approach
The main component of the methodology was a week-long design sprint that was preceded by immersive ethnographic research into the specific customer segment that was being addressed. The design sprint then went from insights into ideation and up to the prototyping stage which involved a full day of co-creation with customers. The final element was a pitch deck that was presented to the business. In successful cases, the business decided to fund the project and thereafter the proof of concept stage was initiated. After a six month pilot phase the business decided to either integrate this new concept into its current portfolio or spin it off as a new venture.
Key Insight
Many large financial institutions still work with an investment model for new product development that requires untested assumptions about the potential users of any new offering and thus leads to a “product push” approach before being able to start an innovation journey. In this case the innovation team was able to turn this way of thinking on its head and funding was only unlocked based on evidence of external insights to validate the initial viability of the new solutions.
The Outcome
Some of the innovation efforts resulted in better product experiences, but a few breakthrough innovations and new ventures were also launched as part of this process. Due to declining leadership support, many of the new ventures had to find new homes in the business and this was more or less successful. One of the other, more long-term benefits was a change in staff mindset and organisational culture as employees are now able to solve problems in a more impactful way based on the training in design thinking that they have received.