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After a very exciting session with a panel of execs from across the bank we’ve landed on our 4 finalists for this year’s Next Great Innovator Challenge. (More on the top 4 later.) Now it’s your turn; you can tell us who the 5th finalist team should be.

Way back in the fall when the teams were crafting their proposals we asked them to write an extra summary section: the peer voting synopsis. We asked them to be brief, but this synopsis was to allow them to tell you about their idea or innovation in their own words if they were selected to be in the running for that 5th spot. The PV is important in a number of ways; it lets everyone participate with us (the students, teams, fans and followers of the competition), it sends us a clear message about what is important to people outside of RBC and finally it is a real mark of distinction for the team who takes the spot. For that team they know that not only was there proposal a top 15 contender it was the most resonant with the audience. Regardless of how they place in the finals that is something to be proud of.

Anyone can vote once per day here.

You can discuss the merits of the ideas in our forum. (Note to post a comment you must complete a simple registration, and only comments in context please!)

Now you tell us, who will be the 5th finalist?

I wanted to pick up with the tips on the different sections of the proposal template for this year’s Challenge. (Just a reminder you can download the template here.)

Today I’ll write the final sections to write, the Peer Voting Synopsis and the Executive Summary. Ironically these are the first section your audience or judges will read. It is vital that they are clear, compelling and lead the reader to want to dig into your proposal. And of course they have to be connected to what you have contained within that proposal. (For other tips on a winning proposal check out this blog entry from last year.)

Peer Voting Synopsis:

This is a departure from most formal business proposals or cases, but a lot like the real world. Since there is a pretty good chance that your team may be chosen for peer voting you have to have an “elevator pitch” prepared for the audience of the Challenge. Imagine that you are in an elevator with a group of top Executives and you have only a few minutes (or in this case 250 words) to give them enough insight into your idea that they would want to give you the time for a full presentation or even better ask for a copy of the proposal on the spot. What you say has to be tight, compelling and to the point. Remember, in this case it’s your peers reading your Peer Voting Synopsis and sending your team in for a chance at $20,000.00! Final tip: Have a couple of people who know nothing about your proposal read your PVS and then ask them a) to tell you what they think your concept is and b) if they would vote for you.

Executive Summary:

This is a key section in a complete proposal. It’s called an executive summary for a reason. It really is an…. EXECUTIVE…. SUMMARY…. In the real world you have about a page to hook an Exec into wanting to spend the next ½ hour with your proposal. If you don’t hook them, they won’t read further, unlike the academic world where the Executive Summary is more of a primer as your reader/Prof/TA is required to read your work to mark it. In our judging everyone reads the proposals completely but your Executive Summary is the first impression.

- State your problem and assumptions clearly and succinctly. Tell us exactly what you are tackling, why this is important and in what context it’s important.

- State proposed results and outcomes. Cliffhanger endings are for TV and movies. You want an executive to read on? Jump them ahead to the AMAZING result, and tell them if they read deeper they can find out the exact details. Readers want to hear “what’s in it for me” early. Dedicate about a paragraph or two to this.

- State anything that is really special or stands out about your idea. One or two lines about what we’ll find in your idea that we won’t find anywhere else is very compelling. Your audience will read on for fear of missing out on something great!

- Avoid giving a team bio or long winded explanation of how you came up with the idea, unless it is absolutely essential for some reason. If you must, keep it very short and indicate more details are in the body of the proposal or appendix.

- Summarize, summarize summarize. This is not the place for the whole plan to be laid out. Tell the reader you have a plan and the details in the briefest way possible. Indicate the full plan is in the body of the report. Lay out the Executive Summary once, then reread it and see if you can summarize more. Repeat. A masterful Executive Summary is a tease that makes the reader want those plan details.

- Final tip: Just like the Peer Voting Synopsis, have a few people read your Executive Summary and then ask them (without reading it from the summary) to tell you what they think your idea is and what the outcome of implementation will be. If what they say sound substantially different from what you think your idea is you need a rewrite on the Executive Summary . Ask the reader if your Executive Summary makes them want to read on and find out more.

I know I had promised a blog about the executive summary and the all important appendixes, but I thought I would interject with a kind of concept map about “The Bank” (Canadian financial services companies). I wanted to suggest a way to think about them; to peel back the layers and perhaps help you find a place to start or to anchor your workforce/workplace innovation.

So what is a bank? In Canada, the banks are relatively large (RBC has around 80000 employees, most of them in Canada!). Brokerages and wealth management providers can be any size. I just want to focus you on the big banks for now.

Within each bank you will have organizations in each area to rival size and scope of any company in that specific field or industry. You can research and dig into the specific models or the areas of practice/lines of business, but to give you a glimpse, a bank can be:

- a retail organization to handle the day to day banking services and all the physical structures that support it
- a business banking company almost large enough to be a bank on it’s own, and commercial banking on top of that
- a wealth management and investing arm also large enough to be it’s own bank
- a training organization as large as any in Canada
- a huge law firm to handle all the legal needs of the different lines of business; internal and external facing
- research and archive groups to rival most universities
- a distribution system as large as any major retailer
- a real estate division managing bricks and mortar across hundred is not thousands of locations
- marketing groups for every line of business, most demographics and sometimes even specific products, often including media and production services
- not to mention groups for partnerships like credit card offerings, processing and inter bank services
- a communications “firm” that can handle all the communications work large and small, inbound and out, public and investor
- a huge accounting arm able to keep track of it all
- head office and management services to keep it all on track
- an HR organization to serve this many employees, retain talent and attract the next generation of the workforce
- a full service technology company with the ability to manage and develop any type of technology, with someone in almost every technology roll you can imagine
- security and anti fraud groups to keep operations safe and sound
- the executive teams and the services like strategy and internal consultants that support them as they steer the enterprise

These workplaces all exist in a bank; a service provider, a massive tech company, a huge management and consulting company, a communications firm, a law firm and more all rolled into one. A lot of us work in many of those areas at the same time, or cross form workplace to workplace thorugh our career. Any one of those areas of work could be a great place to change the workplace or the way we work. All of them face the issues and the opportunities of the workplace of the future.

Which will you transform?

I know it is still early in the proposal submission period (at least from a student perspective) but I’m sure a number of teams have landed on very innovative ideas and are beginning to wonder how to describe them. And more importantly, how to describe them in such a way that will WIN a spot in the finals. It has been my experience that it can be helpful to understand the framework that the narrative (the story of your idea) needs to be presented in early- not to bias your writing but to balance it. I thought I would tackle the proposal template for you to make sure you can spend more time on your idea and have less to worry about in the write up. Unfortunately we can’t post the contents of prior years’ proposals, but I can go through the template section by section in the next few posts, giving you some insight into what should appear there.

My first recommendation is please follow the format. In order to be consistent as a judge the format has to be uniform across all submissions, thus enabling us to really look at the content. Every year a few teams invent sections while it may have great content it doesn’t track with the judging criteria.

Let’s look at each main section:

Proposed Innovation

“Suggest innovative methods or tactics to transform the workplace to match the needs of an evolving and increasingly diverse workforce.”

You can tease us in the executive summary, but in this section you have to give details! Bring in the context of your idea, why you feel it has value and for whom and start fleshing it out. Use tight conclusions on the “whys” and results, but don’t provide every shred of evidence here; use the appendixes to hold your evidence and back up your proposed results.

You can describe:
- Describe the target of your innovation and their value structure. Who are they? Give us their characteristics and the conclusions on what will need to change and why they will benefit.
- The description of the innovation itself: why is it, what does it do, for whom, when, where, where it’s coming from, why you think it’s important, what supports it etc.
- The unmet need or opportunity your innovation targets, or the risk it mitigates.
- Interim conclusions, summaries of results and proposed outcomes; make the reader want to continue on to find out more.
- Why your innovation is something Financial Services providers don’t know or do but should!
- Anything you feel really introduces your innovation to us and sets the Canadian Financial Services context.

Implementation Plan

“Describe, at a high level, the key things that should be considered for development and implementation of this idea.”

This is the real meat of your proposal. Here you answer the implied part of the Challenge; that is HOW Financial Services providers actually would use your idea to create a different workplace or way to work. A great idea without a plan attached is not yet an innovation. Here you add the plan and really start to create an innovation. Mastering this is what makes our team APPLIED Innovation.

We know you’ll have made assumptions about the sector, and costs and even lines of business and that’s OK. Just be sure to clearly state what assumptions (also fits nicely in the appendix) you made. It’s the framework that you are setting out to make your innovation fly that we really want to see. Remember this is another section to expand on your idea. Give us the key elements, tactics, capabilities and steps here and any conclusions justifying them, but put the detailed evidence in your appendix.

We want to know that you have a vision on how your innovation will work!

Impact of your Innovation

“Describe the area (who or what) your innovation will impact and the outcome. What implications does this have for the future of Canadian Financial Services?”

This is a fantastic area to really give us the “sell”. Show us who your innovation will add value for. Tell us your insights into those employees, managers, leaders, clients or stakeholders,. Tell us how this will change the workplace in Canadian Financial Services for the portion of the workforce you have concentrated on, and how that relates to customers, other parts of a Financial Services provider or the shareholders. For example: does you innovation allow us to work differently, therefore allowing more talented employees to do more for the client? Or perhaps it streamlines some work function using technology and allows a better work life balance for all employees? Or is it a connection between groups which preserves or creates knowledge and makes the business unit more effective and competitive? How does it make this workplace THE workplace of the future? And the real fun of innovation is taking us into the realm of the possible; make a call on how your innovation will shape the future.

Appendixes

I love appendices. By putting evidence and information in the appendices you can write a very nimble proposal which focuses on the key elements, conclusions and RESULTS while referring the reader to your appendices for the evidence. And since we do not limit the word count on the appendices or in fact the format you can really beef up your argument here. You can use just about any sort of content; we’ve had financials of course, and research, but we’ve also had resumes, storyboards, charts, prototypes, mock ups and even strategic analysis in innovative frameworks (Blue Ocean, VRIO- some of my favorites!)

Next post- the Executive Summary!

A lot of people have commented on the broad nature of this year’s challenge question. Lots of comments have been in favour, as that is what we face in the real world and particularly in innovation, and others who are a little pressed to figure out where to start. I’ll try to lay out some thought starters for you; by no means exhaustive, but perhaps I can get the creativity flowing.

First, we are asking about the workplace and workforce of the future. Of course it is nice to know what that looks like today, but to get your ideas on the board imagine what it COULD BE. What workplace do you want to have? What is the “art of the possible”? Then you can narrow down from there. We are looking for your idea in a financial services industry context, but not necessarily an explicitly as an RBC case.

If you are looking for inspiring materials check out the Innovation Center. We’ve just uploaded new links to some great blogs and reports on the Challenge theme and we’ve also chosen some interesting SlideShare presentations to start you off on the issues and opportunities in the workplace of the future. If you are interested in the diversity angle, have a look at the recent Canadian Immigrant interview with Zabeen Hirji, our Chief Human Resources Officer, and the executive sponsor of this year’s Challenge.

Here are some thought starters I’ve been sharing with students. When you are considering ideas ask yourself things like:

• How do you create collaboration and meaningful connections across a multi-generational and/or increasingly, diverse workforce?
• What technologies will be needed to navigate the evolution of the workplace? What cultural shifts must occur?
• How do those characteristics and needs relate to work as it is? As it will be?
• How will your proposal create value for employees, clients and the enterprise?
• Does your innovative idea and plan: target a specific portion of the workforce, a specific line of business or functional area?
• How does yout innovation create competitive advantage?

That should get you started on your path to innovation. Next blog I’ll talk about tackling the problem or hypothesis and how to get insight about the workplace(s) in the Canadian Financial Service industry.