Submitted by

Raiffeisen Bank International

Logo of Raiffeisen Bank International
19/09/2019 Banking Innovation

About

The innovation brought about is twofold, employees get to experience a new, modern, work environment and also get to produce innovative ideas and products.

Innovation presentation

Innovation Garden is a groupwide one-year Intrapreneurship Program which empowers all employees to shape the future of the group. It fosters intrapreneurial spirit by providing employees with the freedom to use their work time for creating and developing their own ideas into prototypes, minimum viable products and – at best – marketable products.

In the ever-changing world of modern banking, the answer to all the challenges brought upon us by tech giants and fintechs alike, is to create an environment, in which our own organization can work in a similarly effective manner by creating small fintechs within the company.

After a phase of idea collection, the inputs are clustered into areas of business. Out of a pool of hundreds of ideas, management decides on 20 that advance to the so-called Innovation Jam – an intense two-day workshop in which the best eight ideas are chosen for the twelve-week program phase, where they get extensive support from mentors, innovation management and HR. In the end, two ideas are selected to go to the six months MVP phase.

In theory, all the bank departments are involved, since every single employee can submit ideas. Of course, Innovation Management is involved the most, due to the nature of the initiative.

People within the bank are extremely happy about this project, as it offers them an array of new opportunities. Even areas such as recruiting and employer branding have benefitted, as the initiative has helped to attract talents, who would have chosen differently otherwise.

Here, you can get an idea of what Innovation Garden is like: https://youtu.be/KtWI5boc6Go

Uniqueness of the project

The project is groupwide, over 50.000 employees from eleven countries were invited to send in their ideas and they can also apply to become an intrapreneur, without sending in an idea. The teams that work together during the twelve-week program consist of people from all business areas. They also differ in age, experience and background, leading to incredibly diverse teams. These intrapreneurs are expected to commit 70 per cent of their working time to the program. This is, of course, coordinated with their superiors to avoid excessive workload. Moreover, employees receive precise mentoring, leading to training and education they will also benefit from outside their professional environment.

Furthermore, the level of engagement by the innovation board, which is chaired by RBI’s CEO, is exceptionally high.

In-Depth Analysis

The Reason Behind

The Innovation Garden program provides new opportunities and perspectives for employees. This is especially important for those who were previously frustrated with their jobs. Furthermore, it gives workers an incentive to become more innovative and to put their own ideas into effect.

Additionally, employees who normally wouldn’t be as closely integrated into the process of innovation, such as retail-workers who are in close contact with customers, can offer a new outlook on certain problems. Of course, external factors are relevant as well. The fast-paced world of modern banking inflicts new challenges upon us, which require innovative solutions. These challenges can only be solved by the most important asset a company has – its employees.

Results

'- High engagement of employees

- 7428 employees participated in idea contest (3629 in 2018)

- 21974 interactions on online platform (13128 in 2018)

- 563 ideas were submitted on the group wide online platform

- The program was launched with 45 Intrapreneurs from 11 countries

our innovation in videos

Key Dates

  • Launch date 2 April 2019

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