2. DESIGN
AND PRODUCTION PROBLEMS
SHOULD BE WORKED OUT OFFLINE, IN A LAB SETTING WITHOUT
CUSTOMERS, BEFORE THE SERVICE
DELIVERY IS TESTED IN A LIVE
ENVIRONMENT. —STEFAN THOMKE
3. The case study describes how Bank of America is
creating a system for product and service innovation in
its retail banking business. Emphasis is placed on the
role of experimentation in some two-dozen real-life
"laboratories" that serve as fully operating banking
branches and as sites for testing new ideas and
concepts. Focuses on:
1) How learning from experimentation can be
maximized;
2) Incentive and reward systems that motivate
employees to experiment in "life" environments;
3) The challenges of managing innovation in an
industry that eschews risks, failure, and change.
4. Organization
Until relatively recently, Bank
of America had never made innovation a
priority. It lacked
any formal infrastructure for developing
new ideas. However, recognizing several
years ago that it needed to improve its
innovation performance, the bank decided
to create a new corporate unit called the
innovation and development (I&D) team
5. Culture
Core values of Bank of America:
• Doing the right thing. Each of us has the freedom, authority, and responsibility
to do the right thing for clients, customers, communities — and each other.
• Trusting and teamwork. Comapny rely on each other and succeed together.
They take collective responsibility for the quality of client and customer
experiences.
• Inclusive meritocracy. They care about each other, focus on results and strive
to help all associates develop their full potential. We respect and value each
other's differences.
• Winning. They have a passion for achieving results and winning — for our
clients and customers, for our teammates and communities and for our
shareholders.
• Leadership. They're decisive leaders at every level, communicating our vision
and taking action to help build a better future.
Management
To run the processes effectively Lewis (CEO )was to consult several outside
executives what they considered to be “best management practice”
6.
7.
8.
9.
Within all I&D branches the customers were monitored closely to see
their reactions to the innovations by a variety of means like surveys
or statistics on such factors as revenue growth or number of services
used by each customer.
Shorter turnaround time for feedback would held experimenters learn
and prepare modified experiments more rapidly.
Despite the great success of the I&D Team, Amy Brady and Warren
Butler want to enlarge the learning through experimentation. So in
particular,the need for failure so as to generate more learning.
But: Butler commented, “(…). If we have too many failures, we just
won´t be accepted. Currently, we may have failure within
concepts, but not failure in concepts.”
