Societal and technological trends are developing at an exponential pace. We see it, sense it, and read about it every day. While corporate innovation is often labelled as a viable strategy for improving the company’s performance, a successful implementation of corporate innovation remains challenging for most companies. Here, we share the most important innovation lessons we have learned over the last three years in a financial services context to help organizations, hopefully yours, avoid common pitfalls.

When Eric Haller graduated with a degree in finance from San Diego State University in 1990, he didn’t have a clear idea of what he wanted to do. If he was on the east coast, he probably would have gone to work at an investment bank, but he ended up as a statistical analyst at Visa in Foster City, and would later say it was a case of being in the right place at the right time.

Innovation for financial services is to a large degree around using technology to disrupt various business model components. The focus is on achieving economies of scale, increasing efficiency, and facilitating peer-to-peer in-teraction. Different stakeholders play different roles in the FinTech ecosystem. There is a trend toward better ser-vicing customer needs relying on omnichannel experiences. Regulators should be seen as a friend rather than an enemy. But most important, the future starts now, and can only be approached with sound change management capabilities.

Recently I had the opportunity to have an insightful conversation with Mick Simonelli to talk about innovation challenges in the insurance industry. Mick is a dynamic thought leader on innovation in large organizations. Mick served as the senior innovation executive for USAA, and as a lead innovator within the Department of Defense, Today, Mick is an executive innovation practitioner with his work appearing on NPR, American Banker, Harvard Business Review, Workforce Magazine, Fast Company, and academic articles.

A series of personal innovation stories from a new book by Luis Solis, "Innovation Alchemists: what every CEO needs to know to hire the right Chief Innovation Officer". Today's essay on CULTURE comes from Mick Simonelli who is an Innovation Thought Leaders & Independent Consultant.

Bankers take too much comfort in the perceived protection provided by operating in a highly regulated business. Relying on regulations to protect the industry will only hasten its reduction to utility status. Regulations are also a poor excuse for not innovating.

In USAA’s world, innovation is conducted with one goal in mind: benefit the customer. In this member-based insurance and banking organization, no idea is a bad idea – there’s a structure in place that makes an innovator out of each and every employee, and their efforts yield 95% participation.

I was in a Chinese buffet last week, and found myself humming along with the oriental muzak. In fact, I couldn’t stop. Why was I humming along to music I’ve never heard before? It turns out I had heard these songs before, as they were Chinese takes on American melodies. They covered the likes of Celine Dion, Whitney Houston and ...