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I’m happy to say there are a few teams registered already. I’ve had a number of questions from students in person, via Profs and through the nextgreatinnovator@rbc.com email. I’ll answer some here to help you and your teams get settled in as you register and start thinking about your winning innovation.

Innovation from another part of the world? Another Industry? What does this year’s Question really mean?

From working with students in the first 2 years of the Challenge we see that you have enormous international experience. And a lot of you already have a wealth of experience in other industries from summer jobs, internships or careers prior to returning to grad school programs. We thought “why not let the students draw on those past experiences and tell Canadian financial services where we are missing out?”. Take something that is a valuable and everyday part of banking client experience in Hong Kong or Rio de Janeiro or Mumbai and tell us how to make it happen for Canadian clients. Take a process or strategy that a retailer or manufacturer or small business knows all about but no one in financial services has considered and you could transform the bank. In a lot of ways it’s the adaptation and implementation from somewhere else that seeds innovation here.

So I can just tell you about an innovation I like?

That’s only the start. You have to be able to describe the innovation you’ve chosen clearly AND you have to show us how it fits within the financial services industry to create value.

What if the innovation I like or know about doesn’t fit into financial services?

In that case it’s probably not the best candidate for the Challenge. Regroup and see what else you can come up with. In our Applied Innovation process many of the interesting ideas are put aside or on hold as they just don’t have a banking context.

What is your definition of innovation?

Wow, that’s a biggie- and another good topic for a full blog entry. Innovation has a multitude of definitions, so I won’t try and nail it down in a one line definition. But I will say this as a thought starter for you “Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business. You get paid for creating a customer, which is marketing. And you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation.” (Peter Drucker).

At RBC we hold to an enterprise wide definition of innovation: "Innovation connects what is possible to what is valuable to our clients and/or shareholders." We look at innovation on a number of levels; products, processes, services or technologies that are:
i) new to the world
ii) new to financial services and
iii) new to RBC.

Here’s a great comment from Avi Pollock, Head of Applied Innovation in response to some feedback on the Challenge question and innovation. I think Avi’s perspective is a good and touches on all the FAQs presented thus far.

“First, we believe that innovation is not exclusively invention so the fact that an idea is not net new to the world is okay with us. Our view on innovation also includes new to the financial services industry generally, new to the Canadian financial services industry and even new to the bank. Second and even more important, we don't view an idea in itself as innovation. Our view of innovation is about an idea being implementable because it is applied in context. This is at the heart of what we want to see from the competition - creative, interesting ideas from other geographies or industries that can be applied in a Canadian financial services context, backed up by research on why it would work in Canada and with Canadian consumers. This is the magic we're hoping to see in this year's submissions.”

Does it have to be technology based?

Not at all! We know that technology is a great tool and certainly is more and more present in all out lives, but innovation and good thinking are often “technology agnostic”. They solve a fundamental problem in a creative way and select the tools as needed instead of anchoring on a technology. Your innovation could be a process or service or technology or a multi-faceted plan incorporating many types of change and change agents.

About the Teams:

Can we be from different academic disciplines?

Certainly! In fact we’ve noticed that the winning teams tend to be from mixed disciplines and very diverse backgrounds. A lot of the time the team members are in the same overall program (commerce, technology management, MBA) but the best innovators seek out diversity.

Can we be from different schools?

You can; we’ve even amended the rules to accommodate inter-school collaboration. Keep in mind the team is registered as being from the school of the team lead member though. And there are certain advantages to all being in the same place; then again there are many ways to collaborate over distances. You decide what will build a better team.

Can we change members?

You can change your team members any time up to proposal submission on Dec 5th, 2008. After the proposal is submitted team members cannot be changed.

Can you clarify the steps in the Challenge?

Register your team now online. Registrations are due by Oct 26th, and if you don’t register you can’t submit a proposal.
Submit your proposal between Oct 26th and Dec 5th.
Finalists are contacted in January
March 5th, final presentation and gala here in Toronto!

Do we have to complete a team profile?

It’s optional, but why not show off your team and your school? We had over 60 teams create profiles last year.

How can I keep up to date on the competition?

This blog is a center of activity, and will include general innovation postings and proposal specific tips.
You can also follow and comment on Twitter- about half the postings will be about the competition and half about Innovation at RBC.
Sign up for text alerts to keep you team on track for the milestones.
RSS the Challenge website so you will know when we add a feature, resource or new tool to help you make a winning proposal.

That's all for now, register soon, and please tell your friends about the Challenge!

Well the question has been revealed and the Challenge open for a week now and it’s been a busy one; promoting the Challenge, getting materials out to schools and profs, Twittering, answering student emails and speaking to student groups. If you think there’s an opportunity to speak to your class or club about Innovation and the challenge get in touch and we’ll see what we can do! (email nextgreatinnovator@rbc.com)

It’s been a good week for the Applied Innovation team overall. Two of our team members were recognized at the RBC awards gala (I’ll write about that later) and a really exciting pilot was launched. RBC Mobex, the mobile payments service made its debut on Sept 22. Mobex allows anyone who registers to send small payments via the text messaging feature of your call phone. It’s a very simple service which is going to have a big impact. Mobex is important to the AI team since the idea first got traction with us! My boss, Avi Pollock seeded the idea of mobile payments and pay-by-text a few years ago. At the time it seemed like he was gazing into a crystal ball and the idea met with a receptive but skeptical audience. Avi stuck out the Innovation process, gaining support, providing further insight from research and cross industry examples and finding executive sponsorship through our Innovation Council. Several aspects were put into the lab for proof of concept testing, allowing the RBC group interested to be well informed about something totally new as they formed a strategy. The idea became a full project anchored with the business sponsor and Avi stepped back to take a role as advisor and SME; this is the way it goes within our process. When we successfully move an innovation though the process we have to give it up! But we do so happily knowing that the business sponsor has the ability to take the innovation to market; we enable them and in turn they enable the bank. We find bank context, test, and incubate; they pilot, refine, institute and grow the innovative new product, process or capabilities.

Currently Mobex is in a public pilot mode; a great example of developing by experimentation. It’s been opened up to RBC staff, friends and family, but with Mobex making it so easy to send a few dollars we know it will spread. It’s over 1400 users already! Have a look at the end output of the Innovation process and let us know what you think- we're all friends of Innovation so feel free to try it!

Mobex Home page

A mini review of Mobex courtesy of Yeah I'm a Geek.com

Our 3rd annual Next Great Innovator Challenge is live! The wait is over and this year’s challenge question is now posted and team registration is open. We’re really excited about this year’s question:

"Suggest an innovative concept, product or process from another part of the world or different industry that Canadian financial services providers should adopt."

While it is open ended and forward looking as a good Innovation challenge should be (no stuffy historical cases here!) we’re hoping that it gets you really engaged. From our first 2 years of running the Challenge we’ve realized that you all have tremendous international experience and really interesting prior work experiences. So we thought why not see if the students of Canada can draw on that wealth of experience and pair it up with their assessments of the future of Canadian Financial Services? You have your chance to show us what other Financial Service providers do elsewhere in the world or what other industries have mastered and maybe you can change the banking game!

A few NEW things to note about this year’s Challenge:
- The timeline has been tuned up a little- registration is still 4 weeks, but you have an extra week to finish your proposal.
- You can still sign up for text alerts to remind you of milestones, and soon you’ll have a chance to pilot an online collaboration space and even share a synopis of your ideas with your trusted friends and mentors for feedback.
- A mobile version of the website, optimized for your phone's browser. Try innovator.shrinkraywireless.com on your phone!
- Check out the videos of last year’s finalists and the event. More video to come!
- We’ve added way more Innovation resources: some top SlideShare shows on Innovation, new links, a newsfeed with a round up on what’s new in Innovation.
- Twitter! Follow us, we’ll be updating regularly to give both Challenge insight and to share a little bit of our lives as innovation practitioners.

That’s not all- we’ll be adding features and material all through the fall to not only to help you with your entry, but to give you Innovation resources that you can keep on applying in school or in your careers.

Finally, don't forget you can post comments here on the Innovator blog, and you can send any questions to nextgreatinnovator@rbc.com.

We’re back and getting things together for another fantastic year of RBC’s experiment in open innovation. I’m really excited to be bringing you the competition again and have to thank our RBC Innovation Council, The Next Great Innovator Challenge team, our academic partners and YOU, our audience and participants for a great 2nd year, for continued support in moving the competition forward. Yet again the feedback we received from last year’s participants was incredibly valuable and we have done our best to take it to heart. It is our ongoing goal to continually improve and make each year’s competition an even better experience for students.

We have a new look and feel on the website and many more exiting elements to add as we ramp up to revealing this year’s Challenge question in September. In the meantime I invite all of you to check out this website; read through the challenge details, have a look at last year’s competition and take a first look at some of the resources posted in the Innovation Center- http://www.rbc.com/innovator/innovation_centre.html

If you want to get a feel for last year’s final competition have a look at the archived blog postings for the updates we posted as finalists were presenting. You can even sign up for text alerts and RSS to keep you posted on Innovator Challenge milestones, like the unveiling of this year’s challenge theme. Take a minute to share the site out to your friends too!

That’s it for now and don’t forget to come back to our blog regularly for the latest updates on the competition and on innovation.

RBC has found our next great Innovators. After a morning of great presentations and intense deliberation from our judging panel the Next Great Innovators are....

Team RUMBA of the Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson University! RUMBA will be taking homr the $20000.00 Grand Prize. Well done!

With a very competitive score, the eBiz Innovators of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto have captured second place.

Our 3 runner up teams are Three Bean Salad of Schulich at York University,
Rotman Breakthrough Concepts and The Hype Cyclists both of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto.

All the teams did a fantastic job today. We can all now enjoy a cocktail and some entertainment to cap off the evening.

I’ll close the day with a HUGE thank you to all the team members who helped get this year going and keep the momentum right to the end. To all the RBC staff who have helped and executives who have graciously given their time… THANKS!