CHICAGO — Everyone could use a muse, especially banks. But financial institutions’ sources of inspiration should come from outside of the industry to achieve best revenue results.

That was one sentiment expressed yesterday by Dominic Venturo, U.S. Bank’s chief innovation officer for payment services, during his keynote this week at the Net.Finance conference.

Seeking outside motivation means financial players should observe trends that may not seem relevant to banking on the surface. An example? When teens visit a friend’s house today, they now text their host’s cell that they have arrived, rather than ring the doorbell, Venturo said. The behavior change has implications for the finance business, as the new trend shows the “mobile device is a remote control,” said Venturo.

One way to uncover new behaviors is by monitoring social media. Twitter and Facebook are treasure chests for scoping out who bought what, he said.

“People are sharing their purchase experience,” Venturo said. “There’s a tremendous amount of information out there [in social media] that needs to be unlocked to be useful.”

Venturo, for one, has his product eyes on value exchange through loyalty points and coupons, pointing to the explosion of Groupon and the like as evidence of the relevance of the Groupon model to banking customers. [A startup called Bankons launched at the recent FinovateSpring aiming to take advantage of that relevance. -JJ]

“The deal mentality is picking up dramatically, and incorporating [the behavior trend] into our business model is key,” said Venturo.

What all of these patterns underscore is that a bank is no longer a “bank” by its antiquated definition.

“Now we are getting into the software business when we used to think of ourselves [historically] as financial institutions,” he said.

No wonder why banks want/need financial outsiders as their insiders.