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#BostonInnovationFest: Sustaining and Accelerating Disruptive Innovation

Posted by on 28 May 2019
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This presentation was delivered by Himanshu Sharma, a Strategy Dude at Citi FinTech

He delivered four big points with charm and personality. His intention is to avoid metrics as a cliche term, but provide human language for the audience to measure success.

Kindergarten vs Conservativism — balance is essential, corporate hurdle rates vs throwing toys around — over abundance of these two ends of the spectrum doesn’t work, but disciplined balancing both does.

Sustainable innovation is hitting every part of any enterprise. An idea can originate in one place, but needs to move across the organization — certainly the case in Citi. Most companies want to be platform companies — to see the difference is key. Platform driven companies get more funding for innovation. Citi has a built a portal for app / digital developers to integrate using the Citi technology platform.

Clear eye to business viability, covers a number of items — economic benefits articulation, process innovation, cost structures, mindset change — but has some great nuggets for a viewer. What are real competitors, new startups are important to watch, but only because they are changing human behavior and that is a leading indicator of our success. But, seeing them as a primary competitor isn’t healthy. The reusability of services is paramount — the idea of the org learning from new processes and repeating it on the next project.

Mindset change, not entirely measurable or measured, but important to consider incentives, respect, co-ownership and educational tools to motivate a real change at Citi. For instance, co-ownership, create together, build together and align scorecards as a follow-up. And, respect for what a team has to work with and consider not asking “is that all you have?” for an early conversation with your team.

Himanshu delivered some practical items, but all along the road it felt like if you worked for him it would be a really amusing journey. His sense of humor was ripe and peeking out of his points along the way.

Thoroughly enjoyed.

About the Author: Aaron Keller (aaronkeller@capsule.us) is co-founder and managing principal of Capsule (capsule.us), a Minneapolis branding agency. He co-authored The Physics of Brand, physicsofbrand.com.

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