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Registration Extension! Now open until Midnight Oct 31
Thanks to everyone who registered on time. Amazingly, we had over 70 teams register in the final 72 hours. But based on feedback around fall scheduling of mid terms and study breaks we will be extending the opportunity to register a student team for the RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge to Midnight EST Friday Oct 31. We hope this extension will give any student teams who wanted to get in the Challenge ample opportunity to participate this year. The final proposal submission date, Dec 5th, 2008 will remain unchanged. Teams of 3 or 4 students need to register online here.
Teams already registered can begin submitting proposals any time. Take advantage of the jump on any tardy teams and start your innovation process! Check out the Innovation Centre for resources to get you going and check back here soon for a list of some of the innovations we’ve looked at for RBC in the last few years.
Website update and our new INNOVATION COMMUNITY
For those of you following on twitter or who have set up an RSS for the Challenge website you know we’re been up to something over the last week. Registrations have been coming in (with Rotman/U of T in the lead) but more importantly we’ve added in some new resources and features. We want you to have a wealth of material to help you innovate.
What’s New?
Innovation course – the RBC Applied Innovation team has shared a primer on innovation including our process and a glimpse into “Innovation in Action” at RBC. We hope this gives you a peek into what we do and where we start.
FAQ Podcast – Join Avi Pollock, Head of our RBC Applied Innovation team, and Tim Hanlon, the program manager for the Challenge as they answer FAQs from students.
Peer Portal – Students will want feedback early on to make sure their idea is a winning innovation… now registered teams can use our optional peer portal (a feature of your Team Profile) to privately share their idea synopsis out to a list of peers and see what they think. Load up and idea, create a contacts list and then review their input and ratings.
Collaboration Space– The Collaboration Space allows each registered team to securely share documents and manage version control and timelines. After registration, we'll activate their collaboration space and send the login information directly to each team member. This is OPTIONAL- you can collaborate any way you like. But this particular “space” is part of an Applied Innovation pilot; you’ll be helping us assess it!
Campus Innovation Centre – The Campus Innovation Centre is a public forum where schools can post information about their innovations. Each school’s page allows comments and promotes discussion about your institution’s role in supporting innovation in Canada. We have material from 6 schools so far:
- Waterloo
- McMaster
- Simon Fraser University
- Sauder Business school
- Queens
- OCAD
We’re particularly excited about the last item as it extends the Next Great Innovator Challenge from just being a competition to being the basis for a community around Innovation. We think Canada is a great place for innovation and we want to hear about it from you!
So have a look at the new features and tell us what you think. And don’t forget REGISTRATIONS ARE DUE SUNDAY OCT 26th. If you don’t register you can’t submit a proposal and lose your chance at $45000 in prize money.
Kick off Questions and Answers
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!
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The Innovator Blog is your inside source for advice and guidance on the RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge™.
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