IOOF understands that innovation is the key to their competitive success in a disrupted industry. To ingrain a culture of innovation throughout their organisation, they partnered with Thoughtworks to develop and implement an innovation framework.
This mechanism for surfacing, validating and scaling great business ideas at speed, reduces the cost and risk of an experiment failing, and provides space for organic growth within IOOF.
Whilst innovation is often viewed as a standalone activity; we wanted to create a continuous approach, focussed on the key components of strategy, insights, culture, and practice. With these framing concepts in mind, Thoughtworks facilitated an inspiration tour for IOOF, seeking insight and opportunities from FinTech startups in both San Francisco and Melbourne.
Full of fresh ideas from our experience, we jointly redefined IOOF’s internal startup hackathon, as a platform to explore new business ideas, and co-designed a corporate incubator to support the ongoing exploration of the winning suggestion.
Looking forward, the team continue to analyse the startup ecosystem; building an understanding of the disruptive opportunities and threats for IOOF, from both a business and technology perspective. This analysis informs build / buy / borrow conversations around innovation, allowing the organisation to make the best investment decisions for their future.
Innovation is critical to our business. Our innovation framework will allow us to continually challenge the way we think about financial services, in order to better serve our customers.