Filene Fill-In Ep. 69: How Innovation Turns Failure into Opportunity, with Erin Coleman

Filene Research Institute

We’ve witnessed how much of our societal and economic infrastructure has failed--or is brought to the precipice of failure--with any amount of stress put on it over the last handful of months. Smart organizations right now are looking for ways to infuse innovation into their very DNA: their organizational culture – and create solutions to the most pressing needs of their customers, while energizing their leaders and teams. I wanted to learn more about how an organization gets there – how they shift their organizational culture to be one where innovation is fundamentally centered – and I know no better resource on the topic than my friend and colleague at Filene, Erin Coleman. Erin is Filene’s Senior Director of Advisory Services and has a long history of working with credit unions. What follows is a wide-ranging discussion on why innovation matters in tried-and-true business like financial services, how an organization becomes innovative--the real kind, not just the buzzwordy use of it on websites and in press releases-- and most importantly, in a year as crazy as 2020, have the rules changed about innovation? Done well, real innovation helps your organization jump the line – to be first with a real solution your members really seek, applying your organization’s real-time greatest strengths to deliver what is needed. Through both structured and informal testing and iteration, real innovation is within anyone’s reach – your greatest opportunities are there for the taking, you just have to take them first. To all our listeners here, I hope you do reach out and grab hold of those failures you see happening all around us, and apply a mindset of innovation to turn those into the opportunities we, as both consumers and business professionals need. I know Filene and Erin can help you get started on your path to get there. Reach out to Erin at [email protected] -- but first, take a listen…