Enterprise innovation in action: Collaboration must become second nature to us

“Transformation is not a thing; it’s a mindset,” shared Saurabh Gupta, HFS’ President, Research & Advisory Services, as he kicked off the thought-provoking enterprise innovation panel at the recent HFS Super Summit held in New York City. Saurabh joined a panel of industry leaders representing different aspects of enterprise innovation:

• Kelly Fisher, Head of Corporate Sustainability, HSBC Bank USA
• Gareth Morgan, VP, Global Finance Transformation, Walgreens Boots Alliance
• Rohan Ranadive, SVP, Head of Third Party Risk Management, Truist
• Sandeep Sacheti, EVP, Customer Insights and Operational Excellence, Wolters Kluwer
• Rickard Wieselfors, VP and Head of Automation & AI, Ericsson

Three key session takeaways can help your organization contextualize and act on innovation

Digital is a survival tactic—the future of enterprise innovation belongs to ecosystems

In HFS’ view, digital is Horizon 1 on the enterprise innovation framework in Exhibit 1. The scope of digital transformation has been tech oriented and functional. We’re moving toward the OneOffice, where the entire organization must collaborate to bust siloes. But OneOffice is inward looking. As we seek new sources of value, we need to collaborate, maybe even with our competitors, toward developing the OneEcosystem. None of these horizons are linear, and all are happening simultaneously. Rohan Ranadive at Truist shared during the panel, “We have a lot more collaboration today… How do you know what’s happening and make sure the risk in the ecosystem is managed? As risk management, our key goal is to not say no, but see how to make it happen with the right boundaries for the enterprise to innovate.”

Exhibit 1: The HFS Enterprise Innovation Framework is non-linear and emphasizes collaboration

Source: HFS Research, 2022

Developing enterprise innovation requires a mindset and cultural shift of who does what in the organization and why

Rickard Wieselfors at Ericsson called for a rethink on entire ways of working, sharing, “You can’t put digital into old ways of working. We need to rethink why we have these functions, and would a new generation of employees like to work like that? That’s transformation for me.” Many companies have failed to digitally transform in the last five years. According to Rickard, “Starting COEs [centers of excellence] is not transformation, but instead rethinking ways of working and achieving exponential business outcomes.”

Gareth Morgan at Walgreens Boots Alliance summarized a fundamental truth—innovation is about culture and mindset shifts. He shared, “It’s not just finance but back-office functions like procurement and HR, too, that don’t want change…In retail, the pandemic brought the need to change experiences. Suddenly needing to support same-day delivery and pickup, for example, how do we change the organization to support that? How do we provide data to support whether the decisions we’re making are the right ones at the time? Driving change using customer experience and other measures is important to the company to drive transformational change.”

Innovation can come from anywhere—find ways to encourage grassroots idea sharing and then amplify results from the top

The panel discussed that while a great idea could come from anywhere, leadership teams hoping to push forward innovation must empower individuals and groups to be internally motivated to achieve shared outcomes and results. That’s the core skill set a new leader needs to enable transformation. Sandeep Sancheti at Wolters Kluwer emphasized the power of listening across your employee, customer, and partner base, sharing, “Celebrate small failures, which is more of a learning. This is about how you listen to the front line and become intensely curious…talk to all stakeholders with no judgment.”

Kelly Fisher at HSBC Bank USA spoke about giving colleagues data and facts about key change programs to encourage a dialogue. She’s taken an inclusive view to drive sustainability at the company, sharing at the panel, “We want front-line bankers to talk to clients about green bonds, but we also want someone in HR to think that ESG is part of their jobs. My US CEO said, ‘I’m the Chief ESG officer, and the responsibility starts with me.’ …Things are slowly starting to change, and I now have more people wanting to talk about sustainability than ever before…We have a ‘Dragons’ Den’ on ideas where we started including sustainability ideas from the whole company.”

The Bottom Line: Innovation is not a one person’s, one company’s, one COE’s, or even one digital platform’s job. It’s all of the above, and the key to success is collaboration.

Enterprise innovation frameworks need to look inside and outside the organization to find the best ideas and consider the impact on data, sustainability, and culture to drive real transformation. This is ecosystem collaboration at its best.