Loraine Lawson
Good day, I’m Loraine Lawson, deputy editor of Bank Automation News. Welcome to this episode of the Buzz. Each Friday of this month, we’re highlighting some of the conversations featured during our Bank Automation Summit, held March 1-2 in Charlotte, North Carolina. This week, we share a discussion about ideation and how technology fits in – for better or for worse – with that process. We start with a question: are there technologies that limit ideation and how do you deal with that. First, you’ll hear from Pepe Porrata, chief operating officer at Varo Bank. Then, you’ll hear Ganesh Krishnan, enterprise chief information officer, PNC Financial Services Group. He’s followed by Abhijit Chaudhary, chief product officer, Green Dot Corp.

Loraine Lawson
I have sort of a two part question. And I’ll start with FA this time. But this question is how do we encourage and execute ideas when silos and technology tend to complicate or mute their impact? And I think maybe a sub part of this question is, are there technologies that limit ideation? What are those technologies? And how do you deal with that?

Pepe Porrata
I mean, it’s a, it’s an interesting question. And I would, here’s how I think about technology. I start first with complexity, I say, like, what is what is the thing we’re trying to accomplish? It, let’s make sure that we make it as simple as we possibly can. Oftentimes, we make things way too complicated. I then say, then, once I do that, once I get the team to realize like, this is the core of what we’re trying to do, and then saying, Alright, great design a flawless experience, from beginning to end, how do you want that thing to work? And don’t let barriers get in the way. But make sure that that thing is designed really well. And then once I do that, then I say great, how can you use technology to help you deliver on that experience? Oftentimes, we start the other way around. We start with technology. And we work our way backwards. And the reason that’s not the right way to do it is because oftentimes, what we end up doing is we automate poorly designed experiences that are built to manage unnecessary complexity. So you got to really shift the way people think about this thing. You got to start with complexity first, and then work with great, where can we just continue to answer the question is any technology that becomes the starting point of the conversation is about technology, stay away from it? That’s not, that’s not that should ever be the starting point of any conversation that is about ideation or experimentation should be what I mentioned.

Ganesh Krishnan
I completely agree with that. Right? So innovation, it’s a classic case, right? Innovation is not equal to technology, you start with that conversation, right? Innovation is about the business idea. So find out what that business idea is, from that business idea. Go experiment with that idea, you know, I have a different answer for you on the hobby, stuff that. But the fact of the matter is, if you don’t go experiment with the idea, you will never know whether that idea is value worth or not. But you got to do it in a time box manner. And you got to have an execution engine that can go execute like the ideas concert, what we’ve seen is if you take that business idea, and then say, don’t start with that technology, stuff that you can apply any disruptive technology to it. Right, you know, but once once you figure out what the idea is, you can even apply apply a mainframe technology, I have a fundamental problem with the question itself. The question should not be about what technologies could be applied for innovation. That’s a fundamentally flawed question. It should be the other way around as as we just said, right? So but you can even apply mainframe technology to solve a problem not really, we think about everything in this notion of everybody thinks of innovation being this big, earth shattering Uber like idea, right? It’s not, we categorize innovations into three buckets, a small light, a medium and a bigger, right, a small I can cause a significant cost reduction or cost saving or a revenue increase that people don’t realize. So once you get that out of the way that you have to think about this big next idea, and just say, get the idea onto the table. You don’t want to see that people come up every day, stop doing the status quo job and reinvent every day in their regular jobs. That’s what the content is about. That’s what the DNA is about. As you as you as you go forward with it. And once you start doing it, you’re going to see that virtually It expands across across the organization. So that’s my answer to it. And in no previously to it used to be about hobbies and stuff, right? But now it’s not, you know, because if you if you just say only these people can innovate and can do stuff, you’re never going to make progress. Now, if you do 10 ideas, let’s say I take an example I do 10 ideas in agriculture, 10 ideas, eight out of the 10 ideas, after I do a POC, don’t strike a chord, I got to put it on the shelf and move on to the next one. A person can’t continue the idea because it’s their idea. And they’re invested in making it happen. It’s this motion of fail forward, fail fast fail forward concept, right? Put it on the shelf and move on the two or the 10, that stick are going to take you miles ahead of your competition if you stick to that strategy. So that’s my perspective and prepare really well,

Abhijit Chaudhary
Ganesh, I really like your three eye concept. Fantastic. You know, when you talk about trying to do something, and you talk about simplicity, how do I make concepts simple. And in your strive to achieve simplicity, you realize that you’re challenging the status quo. And I’m a product guy, I’ll give you an example. What I mean by that, in green. We had a lot of ideas. One idea was that would impact millions of customers in North America. Great. That’s a fantastic idea. How do you implement it? Oh, wait, you know, the technology guys will tell you you can’t? Because to do the idea. You need a core banking platform. Okay? No, that’s a technology problem. Well, you must be crazy, we can’t go solve that. We are 21 year old company, can you imagine migrating millions of customers, I think all of you probably understand it’s a painful, painful exercise. But guess what, we decided to go through that, because that will allow us to simplify. This year we are doing it we are migrating and we are eliminating a processor dependency just because that allows us to simplify. And we took that cord, it was a very bold call. But again, this is challenging the status quo to ensure that you’re going forward projects are simple, easy to integrate, and you can scale.

Ganesh Krishnan
I think I think the two to add to what you said the funniest thing I’ve found when we started this process is we would do a full day, prog product focus user group ideation sessions. So we’ll bring together people from business technology and ops together, put them in a room use design thinking and put them the first star was okay, come up with your ideas. And it is so funny the first star is the best people will say this system cannot do that, that system cannot do that. And the system cannot do that. And that. And we let them say don’t stop them. Let them get it out of our chest for an hour after they finish. And are we say a reminder, if all these things did not exist, and you had a clean slate, and you stop worrying about system barriers and constraints and everything, what would you like to have? What would you think he should have, and all of a sudden takes half an hour for them to get going. But all of a sudden the light bulbs go off. And by the end of the day, the design thinking walls are painted with hundreds of ideas, hundreds of ideas. And if you use a typical design thinking thought but notion and put the teams together, by the end of the day, you’re at least up with 10 or 15. New platform authoritarians, that’s the power of it right? You got to let people take things off the chest because they have 2030 years of frustration that it come out. And then you can see the ideas emerge. And we really seem we have actually created ground of products. I have one of my colleagues, Dave on the here from our treasury management and who leads innovation. We have created ground up products and platforms through this innovation concept ground. It works. But you got to stick to it.

Loraine Lawson
The conversation next turned to cores and the effect they might have on ideation. Alex Sion, managing director and head of market growth at Citi Ventures, led the response and Ganesh Krishnan of PNC responded.

Alex Sion
core Oh, yeah, so I mean, I I think to me, you I agree with everything that’s been said. But I it’s funny because I’m usually not the most conservative guy But I wouldn’t say that there is. I think that when you’re talking about ideation kind of within the core that I would say is more related to automation and efficiency and things like that, like then 1000, flowers bloom like lots of different kind of concepts, because there’s so many things broken within sort of operations, when you’re talking about innovation at kind of a business growth level, actually think it’s, it’s, I’ve come now, I did not used to be this guy, but I’m more like, now, I don’t want to hear a bunch of ideas, I want I want to, I want to narrow in like, growth is known. Like, there, there is a known, like, you know, set of either segments or characters or markets, that you could look at that have a set set of problems that are not infinite, that that will drive growth. So to me, it’s kind of like that be buttoned up, like really know, like, what’s going on there, like the ideas of what customers want me things like that. You know, to me, I feel like, you know, to drive business growth, you need to start with more business thinking rather than customer vague. And I, it’s weird that, I would say that.

Ganesh Krishnan
This is a this is a panel, right? So it should be good constructive dialogue. Right? So we’ll, I’ll constructively challenge you on that. Why would you want to categorize? That is Don’t you lose the value of innovation?

Alex Sion
Yeah. It’s a good question. I think there’s just more to it, it’s more top line bottom line. And I think innovation is one of those loaded terms. But if you think about it, just as continuous improvement, some some improvements are more dramatic than others. But I would say that there is, to me a difference between kind of like, growing into new adjacent segments or markets, at a any product or business or channel level, versus growth that is driven by more, what I would say is, is continuous improvement of the client experience and and the existing business model. And I do think that they’re different. They’re different. But but the spirit of it is, this is the same like I would agree with, you know, a lot of what’s said here, in terms of the creativity, the collaboration,

Ganesh Krishnan 32:20
yeah, I see that more as a difference in your product, right? I see more than a product strategy versus innovation, right? So whether I grow in new markets, or do I introduce new solutions to markets versus what I do with my existing footprint of customers, that’s a product strategy in my in my view, and less about innovation. Innovation is more of like, you can introduce it in your current customers, you can attract leads and prospects with stuff you bring it on. Or you can even do operational things in innovation, right? Like the bank automation is a classic example of innovation through automation, or digitization. So there are different levers you can pull as you as you bring an object, you know,

Loraine Lawson
Abhijit Chaudhary followed up.

Abhijit Chaudhary
Alex brings a good point. But when you look at that lens, Alex, you know, you’re looking at growing your business organically. There’s only so much you can grow organically. And if you look at what’s happened in the last 10 years, there’s a new bank coming up every second week. Now, as an you know, I just looked through my LinkedIn feed on a new new bank offering the same exact product. So when you do that, and you see what’s happened in industry, look at trading 10 years ago to trade your to pay money. With Robin Hood, it’s free, and everybody jumped on that bandwagon. That’s exactly what’s happening in banking right now. So if you don’t innovate in your space, you’ll be left behind. And if you try on searching for organic growth within your segment, we can talk about unit economics all day long, but then you lose that battle.

Alex Sion
Yeah, I think we’re you’re making a great point, which to me comes down to a challenge that the large, large banks have is that there is the danger of being niche, right, like, once you niche products, great, but they only get to a certain level, right of scale. And when you’re dealing with a chassis of a huge company, it again becomes a hobby not and not something that is not meaningful for drives value, but something that simply can’t be processed by a large institution. Right, in a meaningful way. I think that’s a big challenge. Right, as the it may be as a business model challenge, which is, you know, I totally understand how Michie growth is not efficient to pursue for companies that are already massively scaled, but maybe, maybe that’s the problem. Right?

Ganesh Krishnan
Yeah. And I think, look, look, you know, for you mentioned big banks, we are one of the big banks, you know, fifth largest known in the country after our integration. But for us, you know, we are pivoting away from this notion of privatization and what I call, you know, platform of creation, which is creating platforms instead of products. Right. And that comes your concept of strategic partners, right, you know, our term my term internally for my team is three words that define it. Open, shared and collaborative, you cannot build everything yourself. You can’t innovate within your own four walls, you got to partner collaborate, find your niche with the partners, and go go to market with those solutions, but create platforms. And once you create platforms, anybody can innovate on top of those platforms, right? Your customers can innovate on top of the platform, your partners can innovate on top of the platform, your employees can innovate on top of the platform. So it has to keep creating these siloed products, you’re not going to reach anywhere. And that’s where the future in the industry is going. And you will be left behind with the bag if you continue to create products and not.

Alex Sion
Sorry, go ahead. No, just say 100% agree with that. That’s, and that’s the toughest, toughest turn to make, reskill players, and why the software folks on this panel are are…I would invest.

Loraine Lawson
You’ve been listening to the Buzz, a Bank Automation News podcast. Thank you for your time, and be sure to visit us at Bank automation news.com for more automation news. You can also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Please don’t hesitate to rate this podcast on your podcast platform of choice.

Loraine Lawson
Good day, I’m Loraine Lawson, deputy editor of Bank Automation News. Welcome to this episode of the Buzz. Each Friday of this month, we’re highlighting some of the conversations featured during our Bank Automation Summit, held March 1-2 in Charlotte, North Carolina. This week, we share a discussion about ideation and how technology fits in – for better or for worse – with that process. We start with a question: are there technologies that limit ideation and how do you deal with that. First, you’ll hear from Pepe Porrata, chief operating officer at Varo Bank. Then, you’ll hear Ganesh Krishnan, enterprise chief information officer, PNC Financial Services Group. He’s followed by Abhijit Chaudhary, chief product officer, Green Dot Corp.

Loraine Lawson
I have sort of a two part question. And I’ll start with FA this time. But this question is how do we encourage and execute ideas when silos and technology tend to complicate or mute their impact? And I think maybe a sub part of this question is, are there technologies that limit ideation? What are those technologies? And how do you deal with that?

Pepe Porrata
I mean, it’s a, it’s an interesting question. And I would, here’s how I think about technology. I start first with complexity, I say, like, what is what is the thing we’re trying to accomplish? It, let’s make sure that we make it as simple as we possibly can. Oftentimes, we make things way too complicated. I then say, then, once I do that, once I get the team to realize like, this is the core of what we’re trying to do, and then saying, Alright, great design a flawless experience, from beginning to end, how do you want that thing to work? And don’t let barriers get in the way. But make sure that that thing is designed really well. And then once I do that, then I say great, how can you use technology to help you deliver on that experience? Oftentimes, we start the other way around. We start with technology. And we work our way backwards. And the reason that’s not the right way to do it is because oftentimes, what we end up doing is we automate poorly designed experiences that are built to manage unnecessary complexity. So you got to really shift the way people think about this thing. You got to start with complexity first, and then work with great, where can we just continue to answer the question is any technology that becomes the starting point of the conversation is about technology, stay away from it? That’s not, that’s not that should ever be the starting point of any conversation that is about ideation or experimentation should be what I mentioned.

Ganesh Krishnan
I completely agree with that. Right? So innovation, it’s a classic case, right? Innovation is not equal to technology, you start with that conversation, right? Innovation is about the business idea. So find out what that business idea is, from that business idea. Go experiment with that idea, you know, I have a different answer for you on the hobby, stuff that. But the fact of the matter is, if you don’t go experiment with the idea, you will never know whether that idea is value worth or not. But you got to do it in a time box manner. And you got to have an execution engine that can go execute like the ideas concert, what we’ve seen is if you take that business idea, and then say, don’t start with that technology, stuff that you can apply any disruptive technology to it. Right, you know, but once once you figure out what the idea is, you can even apply apply a mainframe technology, I have a fundamental problem with the question itself. The question should not be about what technologies could be applied for innovation. That’s a fundamentally flawed question. It should be the other way around as as we just said, right? So but you can even apply mainframe technology to solve a problem not really, we think about everything in this notion of everybody thinks of innovation being this big, earth shattering Uber like idea, right? It’s not, we categorize innovations into three buckets, a small light, a medium and a bigger, right, a small I can cause a significant cost reduction or cost saving or a revenue increase that people don’t realize. So once you get that out of the way that you have to think about this big next idea, and just say, get the idea onto the table. You don’t want to see that people come up every day, stop doing the status quo job and reinvent every day in their regular jobs. That’s what the content is about. That’s what the DNA is about. As you as you as you go forward with it. And once you start doing it, you’re going to see that virtually It expands across across the organization. So that’s my answer to it. And in no previously to it used to be about hobbies and stuff, right? But now it’s not, you know, because if you if you just say only these people can innovate and can do stuff, you’re never going to make progress. Now, if you do 10 ideas, let’s say I take an example I do 10 ideas in agriculture, 10 ideas, eight out of the 10 ideas, after I do a POC, don’t strike a chord, I got to put it on the shelf and move on to the next one. A person can’t continue the idea because it’s their idea. And they’re invested in making it happen. It’s this motion of fail forward, fail fast fail forward concept, right? Put it on the shelf and move on the two or the 10, that stick are going to take you miles ahead of your competition if you stick to that strategy. So that’s my perspective and prepare really well,

Abhijit Chaudhary
Ganesh, I really like your three eye concept. Fantastic. You know, when you talk about trying to do something, and you talk about simplicity, how do I make concepts simple. And in your strive to achieve simplicity, you realize that you’re challenging the status quo. And I’m a product guy, I’ll give you an example. What I mean by that, in green. We had a lot of ideas. One idea was that would impact millions of customers in North America. Great. That’s a fantastic idea. How do you implement it? Oh, wait, you know, the technology guys will tell you you can’t? Because to do the idea. You need a core banking platform. Okay? No, that’s a technology problem. Well, you must be crazy, we can’t go solve that. We are 21 year old company, can you imagine migrating millions of customers, I think all of you probably understand it’s a painful, painful exercise. But guess what, we decided to go through that, because that will allow us to simplify. This year we are doing it we are migrating and we are eliminating a processor dependency just because that allows us to simplify. And we took that cord, it was a very bold call. But again, this is challenging the status quo to ensure that you’re going forward projects are simple, easy to integrate, and you can scale.

Ganesh Krishnan
I think I think the two to add to what you said the funniest thing I’ve found when we started this process is we would do a full day, prog product focus user group ideation sessions. So we’ll bring together people from business technology and ops together, put them in a room use design thinking and put them the first star was okay, come up with your ideas. And it is so funny the first star is the best people will say this system cannot do that, that system cannot do that. And the system cannot do that. And that. And we let them say don’t stop them. Let them get it out of our chest for an hour after they finish. And are we say a reminder, if all these things did not exist, and you had a clean slate, and you stop worrying about system barriers and constraints and everything, what would you like to have? What would you think he should have, and all of a sudden takes half an hour for them to get going. But all of a sudden the light bulbs go off. And by the end of the day, the design thinking walls are painted with hundreds of ideas, hundreds of ideas. And if you use a typical design thinking thought but notion and put the teams together, by the end of the day, you’re at least up with 10 or 15. New platform authoritarians, that’s the power of it right? You got to let people take things off the chest because they have 2030 years of frustration that it come out. And then you can see the ideas emerge. And we really seem we have actually created ground of products. I have one of my colleagues, Dave on the here from our treasury management and who leads innovation. We have created ground up products and platforms through this innovation concept ground. It works. But you got to stick to it.

Loraine Lawson
The conversation next turned to cores and the effect they might have on ideation. Alex Sion, managing director and head of market growth at Citi Ventures, led the response and Ganesh Krishnan of PNC responded.

Alex Sion
core Oh, yeah, so I mean, I I think to me, you I agree with everything that’s been said. But I it’s funny because I’m usually not the most conservative guy But I wouldn’t say that there is. I think that when you’re talking about ideation kind of within the core that I would say is more related to automation and efficiency and things like that, like then 1000, flowers bloom like lots of different kind of concepts, because there’s so many things broken within sort of operations, when you’re talking about innovation at kind of a business growth level, actually think it’s, it’s, I’ve come now, I did not used to be this guy, but I’m more like, now, I don’t want to hear a bunch of ideas, I want I want to, I want to narrow in like, growth is known. Like, there, there is a known, like, you know, set of either segments or characters or markets, that you could look at that have a set set of problems that are not infinite, that that will drive growth. So to me, it’s kind of like that be buttoned up, like really know, like, what’s going on there, like the ideas of what customers want me things like that. You know, to me, I feel like, you know, to drive business growth, you need to start with more business thinking rather than customer vague. And I, it’s weird that, I would say that.

Ganesh Krishnan
This is a this is a panel, right? So it should be good constructive dialogue. Right? So we’ll, I’ll constructively challenge you on that. Why would you want to categorize? That is Don’t you lose the value of innovation?

Alex Sion
Yeah. It’s a good question. I think there’s just more to it, it’s more top line bottom line. And I think innovation is one of those loaded terms. But if you think about it, just as continuous improvement, some some improvements are more dramatic than others. But I would say that there is, to me a difference between kind of like, growing into new adjacent segments or markets, at a any product or business or channel level, versus growth that is driven by more, what I would say is, is continuous improvement of the client experience and and the existing business model. And I do think that they’re different. They’re different. But but the spirit of it is, this is the same like I would agree with, you know, a lot of what’s said here, in terms of the creativity, the collaboration,

Ganesh Krishnan 32:20
yeah, I see that more as a difference in your product, right? I see more than a product strategy versus innovation, right? So whether I grow in new markets, or do I introduce new solutions to markets versus what I do with my existing footprint of customers, that’s a product strategy in my in my view, and less about innovation. Innovation is more of like, you can introduce it in your current customers, you can attract leads and prospects with stuff you bring it on. Or you can even do operational things in innovation, right? Like the bank automation is a classic example of innovation through automation, or digitization. So there are different levers you can pull as you as you bring an object, you know,

Loraine Lawson
Abhijit Chaudhary followed up.

Abhijit Chaudhary
Alex brings a good point. But when you look at that lens, Alex, you know, you’re looking at growing your business organically. There’s only so much you can grow organically. And if you look at what’s happened in the last 10 years, there’s a new bank coming up every second week. Now, as an you know, I just looked through my LinkedIn feed on a new new bank offering the same exact product. So when you do that, and you see what’s happened in industry, look at trading 10 years ago to trade your to pay money. With Robin Hood, it’s free, and everybody jumped on that bandwagon. That’s exactly what’s happening in banking right now. So if you don’t innovate in your space, you’ll be left behind. And if you try on searching for organic growth within your segment, we can talk about unit economics all day long, but then you lose that battle.

Alex Sion
Yeah, I think we’re you’re making a great point, which to me comes down to a challenge that the large, large banks have is that there is the danger of being niche, right, like, once you niche products, great, but they only get to a certain level, right of scale. And when you’re dealing with a chassis of a huge company, it again becomes a hobby not and not something that is not meaningful for drives value, but something that simply can’t be processed by a large institution. Right, in a meaningful way. I think that’s a big challenge. Right, as the it may be as a business model challenge, which is, you know, I totally understand how Michie growth is not efficient to pursue for companies that are already massively scaled, but maybe, maybe that’s the problem. Right?

Ganesh Krishnan
Yeah. And I think, look, look, you know, for you mentioned big banks, we are one of the big banks, you know, fifth largest known in the country after our integration. But for us, you know, we are pivoting away from this notion of privatization and what I call, you know, platform of creation, which is creating platforms instead of products. Right. And that comes your concept of strategic partners, right, you know, our term my term internally for my team is three words that define it. Open, shared and collaborative, you cannot build everything yourself. You can’t innovate within your own four walls, you got to partner collaborate, find your niche with the partners, and go go to market with those solutions, but create platforms. And once you create platforms, anybody can innovate on top of those platforms, right? Your customers can innovate on top of the platform, your partners can innovate on top of the platform, your employees can innovate on top of the platform. So it has to keep creating these siloed products, you’re not going to reach anywhere. And that’s where the future in the industry is going. And you will be left behind with the bag if you continue to create products and not.

Alex Sion
Sorry, go ahead. No, just say 100% agree with that. That’s, and that’s the toughest, toughest turn to make, reskill players, and why the software folks on this panel are are…I would invest.

Loraine Lawson
You’ve been listening to the Buzz, a Bank Automation News podcast. Thank you for your time, and be sure to visit us at Bank automation news.com for more automation news. You can also follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn. Please don’t hesitate to rate this podcast on your podcast platform of choice.