Brunon Bartkiewicz, the chief innovation officer at ING Bank, tells Joy Macknight about the spirit of innovation within the Dutch institution that reaches beyond the edges of its business.
The seismic changes in business models across many industries, including banking, and an upsurge in entrepreneurship is forcing traditional players to adjust the way they work in order to stay competitive. As ING Bank’s first chief innovation officer, Brunon Bartkiewicz is responsible for driving that change forward.
Appointed in July 2014, he spent his first few months in the role forging a team unified by the common understanding of the chief innovation office’s role and mission: to introduce a new framework for innovation across the bank.
Even this task was done in an unconventional way. Instead of outlining roles and responsibilities at the outset, the team decided to 'work on the go' and frequently reformulates its tasks and modifies the workflow.
Mr Bartkiewicz is convinced that this is the right approach to take. “Repairing the plane while flying is sometimes a good method,” he says. “Certainly it takes a lot [to do it this way] – stress, tension and emotions – but we have learned a great deal and had fun too.”
No stranger to innovation Mr Bartkiewicz was one of the architects of ING Direct, a branchless banking model that launched in Canada in 1997. “ING Direct was originally scheduled as an ‘on the edge’ experiment, but at the same time ING Direct was a part of ING,” he says. “I certainly dream of ING as a large corporation operating as a network as fast and efficient as the smaller newcomers. Experiencing ING Direct allows me to believe that dreams like that can be realised.”
Breaking down barriers
Mr Bartkiewicz refers to his 25-person team, whose personnel alters on a monthly basis depending on the projects in hand, as the “cultural glue” that bridges different communities within ING.
In the past year, teams within the chief innovation office have worked on unifying the language ING uses to talk about customer data and lean measures; improving knowledge sharing to coordinate identifying key challenges and co-create solutions; developing Pace, ING’s lean start-up methodology, and implementing organisational changes to promote new ways of working; ING Customer Experience Centre (ICEC), which performs research and works on concepts and projects such as internal and external accelerator programmes.
Currently, the chief innovation office has 23 projects under its direct supervision, which are funded through a €25m special innovation budget established in 2013. The budget is used to fund projects initiated by the bank’s business units and strategy teams, called 'communities'.
The budget also funds ING’s Innovation Bootcamp, its annual competition among employees. When it launched in 2014, ING staff submitted more than 700 ideas; this year there were more than 1800 entries. The winners receive funding to implement their projects; for example, the Orange Assistant, a 2014 winner, is currently undergoing testing in Turkey.
Beyond the edges
The ICEC is a window for “open innovation”, according to Mr Bartkiewicz, and helps open up ING to co-operating with the broader ecosystem, from other banks and financial institutions, partners and suppliers to start-up companies.
And while the bank continues to invest in external incubators such as Startupbootcamp FinTech, as well as cooperating with the StartupDelta project in the Netherlands, it is now testing how to meld its internal programmes with the outside world.
On July 23 the bank opened its Innovation Studio, combining internal projects and external start-ups that are at a similar stage in the innovation journey. The start-ups gain access to ING mentors and experts, workshops and training for a six-month period, in return for giving ING a stake in their company. “Achieving scale is one of the critical phases in a start-up’s journey; it requires help and support, which is not that easy to find in the current structure of the start-up industry,” says Mr Bartkiewicz. “Starting in September, we will have an extremely exciting six months working with seven projects to bring them to market.”
FinTech Village
Also in July, ING Belgium announced that it had teamed up with Deloitte, Swift Innotribe, Eggsplore and SmartFin Capital, among others, to pilot the ING FinTech Village. The accelerator programme is scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2015.
In order to oversee these initiatives, Benoit Legrand, currently CEO of ING France, will be joining in the newly created role of head of fintech, effective from October 1. “[Mr Legrand’s] role will be to establish guidelines for co-operation with start-ups, as well as coordinate ING’s existing efforts in identifying the most interesting start-ups, with whom we will get in touch with and potentially co-operate,” says Mr Bartkiewicz.
In terms of future plans, Mr Bartkiewicz says: “We have pretty ambitious plans relating to all four areas of our activities. Our organisation is aware of the need to speed up changes and to innovate – we are under pressure to deliver faster and more efficiently. We need to innovate the way to facilitate the innovation in ING in order to keep empowering our customers to stay a step ahead.”
