Editor’s Note: This is the second piece in a series on corporate innovation in Charlotte.
When it comes to innovation centers, most will likely visualize a high-tech, lab-like environment high up in the skyscrapers of a busy city. But how realistic is the expectation to secure corporate buy-in for such a lofty investment when first pitching the idea of implementing an innovation program? More importantly, does a tech-focused approach always work when solving everyday business problems?
Ally Financial discovered early on that having a space to innovate doesn’t necessarily mean more technology or expensive expansion. By keeping it small, simple and strategic, Ally’s TM Studio in Camp North End has been able to achieve meaningful results that are helping to reshape how the world thinks about banking.
Innovation & Location, Location, Location
As you enter TM Studio’s unassuming office space in Camp North End, one might question whether or not they’re in the right place.
“We always joke when people come in here for the first time,” says Emily Shallal, senior director of customer strategy and innovation at Ally Financial. “We always ask, ‘What did you think it was going to be?’ And they always respond with, ‘Not this!’”
But this stark difference from the expectation for innovation centers was done intentionally. In fact, Ally’s TM Studio doesn’t identify as a “high-tech innovation lab” at all. Rather, they call themselves a “concept development studio.”
“We wanted to take it back to kindergarten where kids are extremely creative and passionate and energized,” Shallal explains. “We didn’t want to have people walk in and see TVs and 3D printers where it looked like we were using technology for the sake of technology.”
This stripped-down nature is partially what drove Ally to select Camp North End as their innovation destination in February 2018. Perhaps more important than the bare-bones aesthetic were Camp North End’s distance from Ally’s corporate headquarters and easier access to real people working in the real world.
“We intentionally wanted to remove constraints from the team that was going to be here, which meant removing any obstacle that we could envision,” says Shallal. “One of the main ones was having people bounce in and out, or feeling like there’s a meeting going on elsewhere so I need to get back to the Ally office. We also liked the fact that being at Camp North End allowed us to be around people building and doing things with their hands. We felt we could learn and be inspired by what they’re doing.”
These daily interactions with everyday people are essential to Ally’s problem-solving approach. When a stakeholder approaches them with a business problem, rather than resolving it through the lens of a bank employee, Ally goes directly to the consumer purpose and vision to present solutions that actually work.
A Continuous Cycle of Creativity
Implementing an effective innovation program at Ally meant more than selecting a small and simple location. It also required the team pitching the initial movement to think strategically about how they would choose to involve their employees.
“The reality is, our teams are never more than seven people because we don’t want to create inefficiency in team size,” Shallal explains. “We try to keep them small and nimble because team dynamic is extremely important in this setting.”
Rather than embracing an open-door policy, the TM Studio carefully selects its team members for a period of six to 12 months, depending on the project scope. Once their time is done, the team members go back to Ally’s corporate center and a new team takes their place in Camp North End.
“It’s this cyclical learning environment where smart people from Ally come in, they bring their skills, they create this process, they learn things while they’re here and then that goes back in and fuels Ally’s culture,” says Shallal.
After carefully researching innovation labs all over the country, Ally realized that by taking this rotational approach, they could foster innovation in their employees without sacrificing resources or taking on unnecessary risk. Not only did this help with securing early buy-in from executive leadership, but it also created a wealth of cross-departmental learning opportunities that would not have otherwise existed.
“It’s not only about bringing in different people,” Shallal reflects. “It’s about exposing those people to different groups at Ally to work on a problem that would never have reached out to in the past. We’re helping to connect those dots to make sure that everything we do here is truly cross-functional.”
Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks
It’s easy to see success in Ally’s approach to innovation through their latest development: Approached by an executive team member, TM Studio was tasked with finding a way to lower the interest expense forecast for bankers while still providing value to savings account-holders.
“If you think about the historic view of a savings account, savings and interest are one in the same,” says Shallal. “Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of value, so we started doing a bunch of user testing to better understand what people need in savings, where they are lacking and why they aren’t saving.”
After interviewing thousands of individuals, they were able to develop a comprehensive solution that empowers customers to take control over their financial future.
“What we found during our research is that people were doing this all manually or using mental math,” says Shallal. “Some were literally taking money and putting it into an envelope or opening multiple accounts at different banks so they’re not enticed to use that money. So, we set out to develop something that makes saving easy, automated and seamless for consumers. It’s more experiential to try to drive behavioral change with people who have not been able to necessarily save enough to where the interest rate is even meaningful to their financial journey.”
Already rolled out to hundreds of thousands of customers during a series of beta testing in Q4 2019, the official debut for Ally’s latest product development is set for February 2020.
Keep It Small, Simple & Strategic
For those looking to bring innovation to their workplace, tech immersion and fancy spaces aren’t necessarily the keys to success. By remaining nimble and flexible, the chances for developing meaningful solutions becomes exponentially higher.
“As leaders of companies, if you believe in your people and you empower them, good things are likely to come from it,” says Shallal. “Start as small as you can so that you can grow into a competency as opposed to trying to throw something down on paper — and ending up placing yourself in a box because you’ve promised things you can’t actually operationalize effectively.”