Blog

Our 5th annual RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge has come to a close. Before I announce the winner I wanted to express my thanks to everyone who pulls together to make the event so great. The event team on loan to us from marketing who make everything run smoothly. The whole Applied Innovation team who get behind the program and are ready to drop everything to make sure all systems are “GO” for finals day. The T&O Rotational associates who joined us this year to take on all the extra tasks that come up. Especially Jim, our Applied Innovation Program Administrator, who all you NGI alumni know well for keeping us all on track since we started to plan this almost a year ago. And of course our executive judges and program sponsors who donate a huge amount of their time to review all the proposals and presentations and select the winner.
THANKS!

Here are the results for this year’s NGI:

Runners Up:
Tycoons of Tomorrow, University of Waterloo MBET program, Interactive Educational Banking System (IEB)

FFA (Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat), Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, RBC Joint Social Account - Linking social media to social purpose

-AND-

Rotman 12 AM Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Banking 3.0

Second Place:
Mighty Moguls, Waterloo University of Waterloo MBET program, “Future State of Banking Innovation” which directly tackled the needs of Canada’s ever growing and diversifying immigrant population with a blend of strategy and technology.

And THE Winner,

ROKUR AII,Waterloo University of Waterloo MBET program, with the RBC "We Care" Portal, addressing the link between the aging Canadian population and those who care for them with a novel mix of strategy and technology to create real value in banking interactions.

ROKUR AII we’re also the Peer Voting winner this year. The audience had their say, and the judges agreed, these students are the new Next Great Innovators.

We just had a great kick off from ROKUR ALL; your Peer Voting winner form this year’s earlier judging rounds. The team brought in some great statistics about the drastic demographic changes coming in Canada as our population ages. Building from the stats and personal experience they have a great model enable the work that younger generations are doing to support our aging parents. This model enables the caregivers, via a combination of video and other services, to assist their older family members with their financial needs. In turn this can help the retiring population live a more independent life in their retirement.

This was a great example of technology enabling comfort, value, trust and relationship.

Rotman 12AM has looked all the way ahead to 2015 and how we will work differently on the technologies we use to support banking systems and services, from a lens of what the client will expect in 2015. They propose that technology will enable organisations to really understand the individual customer and allow true personal customization, then layer on community comparisons. They also show, form their research, that customers will expect this.

Although this was a technology oriented proposal, the team had great strategic fundamentals as the basis for thinking about their concept. (Great foundational work!)

And to close their presentation Rotman 12AM broke out the iPhones to show the judging panel working prototypes.

The Mighty Moguls from Waterloo’s MBET have tackled another great future looking topic- new Canadians. They’ve looked ahead to how Canada will change in 2015. They demonstrated a great 3 phase program to address the needs of new Canadians today and in the future. Beyond the plan, the team members used their own experiences as international students, intent at becoming new Canadians, to bring the concept to life. Great job sharing our future by sharing your futures!

(And our first ever Justin Bieber reference in an Innovation presentation!)

They are a team from Waterloo’s MBET program, but no that I’ve seen their presentation; I realize the tycoons of tomorrow are not the team, but the next generation of Canadians. The presentation took us back to our earliest days and memories; to when learning was an adventure. Then they brought us forward to present what we can do today to help our children become truly financially literate. They demonstrated their Interactive Educational Account which links features with the psychology of learning through play, to not just create customers, but address a prescient problem for Canadian society.

“Play needs to be cherished and encouraged, for in their free play children reveal their future minds."