Strategy & Experience Newsletter 31/08/12 - Miscellaneous Inspiration. Via Asen Tsvyatkov

Miscellaneous Inspiration:

Remarkable Ryanair

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The EMC Consulting strategy and retail team recently held one of our customary dinner events, focused on the knotty subject of innovation. One of the topics that produced the most heated debate was a talk by EMC strategy consultant Asen Tsvyatkov on the lessons that we can all learn from Ryanair’s brave approach to product innovation. It raised many questions about the strategic importance of innovation – how can it take a business ahead of the competition, how it impacts customer expectations and how it can grow profitability. The talk is summarised on our blog. If you wish to inflame colleagues and generate healthy debate around innovation thendrop us a line, we would be more than happy to bring the matter to life and moderate the discussion. 

The Open Bank

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Who would have thought open-source code could power up a new business banking product? We are delighted to see Australian Commonwealth bank thake a refreshingly open approach to creating products. They have created anRaspberry Pi- inspired secure terminal, with highly customisable features for forward-thinking businesses. This is a superb way of revitalising what is essentially a stale category, that has too often been taken for granted – business banking. Open API’s are a tremendous opportunity to make the most of financial infrastructures and we are super excited to see banks such as Commonwealth take confident, if small steps in this direction.

Can Sharing Beat Hunger?

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The impact of the sharing economy on the world’s financial institutions is inevitable, and we have reported extensively on developments in shared services models such as Whipcar, TaskRabbit and AirBnB. We came across this interesting article on how the sharing economy can help solve the global hunger crisis. The findings are interesting and inspiring. We ourselves anticipate that shared services models for Business Banking customers can significantly help alleviate cashflow pressures and banks are perfectly positioned to enable this kind of sharing en masse.