Innovation Needs More Fist-Bumping
I now have at least four digital devices that I use for various chores. The latest, a Google Nexus 10 Tablet, has taken up residence on my night table within the last couple of weeks.
Oddly, however, I have grown to appreciate not the technology of innovation, but the human aspect of it, especially for big, monolithic financial institutions for which innovation is anything but an ingrained exercise.
What I mean is, bankers need to be in close enough proximity to fist bump in order to affect true innovation change. Last week, I was in Europe at various financial institutions, and two stood out: ABN Amro and Rabobank, both headquartered in the Netherlands. Both banks have created physical spaces that foster innovation.
ABN Amro has a recently opened Innovation Centre, and it is not unlike other innovation centers. There are large screens, funky play toys, open architecture, and bright paint colors. This is a place that screams “happy,” and looks not unlike my son’s pre-kindergarten classroom several years back.
AT THE CROSSROADS
But ABN Amro has done something unique with its Innovation Centre that puts it on another level entirely: it placed the center at a physical crossroads for the bank’s headquarters. If you work for ABN Amro and you want to get to a certain part of the bank’s offices, you need to walk through the Innovation Centre. This puts the center literally in the face of every banker working in the Amsterdam headquarters, and it’s a smart move on the part of the bank. Innovation is on every ABN Amro banker’s daily path.
Rabobank, which is based in Utrecht, Netherlands, a 30-minute train ride from Amsterdam, has similarly made innovation into a physical activity. Up a flight of elevators from the bank’s lobby, and open for all to see, is a floor — and it is huge — dedicated to interactions among staff and visitors alike. The floor boasts scores of seating areas, some of which can be closed off temporarily, and at least four places to grab food or a coffee. If you want a sandwich at lunchtime at Rabobank’s headquarters, built in mid-2011, you are likely to go down to that first floor and stand on line. (The sandwiches are pretty good, parenthetically.)
BUSTLING SPACE
This space bustles, especially during lunchtime. What happens on a practical basis on this floor is that bankers from every corner of Rabobank converge. The bankers I spoke to told me that each time they come to that main floor, they see someone with whom they strike up a random conversation or who offers a reminder that a response is due for some project or other. The space, in other words, creates the interactions.
This is compared to my experience at JP Morgan Chase’s headquarters at 270 Park Avenue here in New York. I went to visit one of JPM’s innovation leaders — the head of digital for the bank. First, the lobby of JPM is like a mausoleum, replete with artwork and loud echoes. We went up to the 17th Floor and there wasn’t even a person to be seen. Everyone was huddled in cubicles. There was no fist-bumping among bankers in the vein that I saw in Europe last week.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not perfect either. Royal Media is spread across various cities and the kind of physical interactions I write about above are difficult for us, too. But banks here in the US need to think about the physicality of their innovation in a way that starkly addresses the logistical deficiencies of banks. Sadly, many banks are fine with bank branches that offer the same type of echo I heard at JPM’s headquarters. My belief is that those echoes are the sounds of stagnation, and who wants to hear that?
