Organization of innovation in the french banking and insurance industry.

Abstract

This thematic paper has for objective to address the importance of digital and technology for companies today, in order to stay competitive and to satisfy customers. The main goal is to understand how digital innovation is an answer to this new reality; and to discern the different strategies traditional and hierarchical companies such as banks and insurance firms adopt to organize themselves around innovation. The scope of research is on 8 French banks and insurance companies, clients of Wavestone. Wavestone is a French consulting firm specialized in business and technology, for which I worked as an intern in Paris during six months in 2018. As a research methodology, I chose to first use theories about innovation and strategies, then I looked for business cases showing how financial entities transformed themselves to make way for digital innovation. Finally, I conducted interviews inside Wavestone with consultants who have directly worked on the subject. I was then able to produce a benchmark and compare different strategies adopted by 8 important French actors around innovation. The results allowed me to put into place a framework showing different levels of innovation maturity through a classification of 8 criteria. There were three crucial findings. The first one was that corporate culture can be an important barrier to innovation. The second one was that an acculturation of all employees around innovation is a necessity for its success and maturity. The final one was that ways of working must change to make room for innovation.