Work Different

BY PAT ALLEN

"Think Different" was a marketing slogan introduced by Apple Computer in the 1990s. Apple?s marketing copy saluted "the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They?re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing that you can?t do is ignore them. Because they change things."

What constitutes "working different" in an industry whose executives are bound by the rules and can?t afford to ignore the status quo? To find the change-makers in banking, the reflex is to point to a finite list. But, innovation in banking doesn't stop and start with the innovative business models developed by Commerce Bancorp, Inc., NetBank, Inc. and Umpqua Holding Corp.

Some people advised us that innovation in banking as a topic in 2006 was a non-starter. Product enhancements and service refinements, yes, but there are those who suggest that banks haven?t innovated in more than 10 years — since the new Internet channel required response from banking as well as every other business.

Rick Spitler, managing director of the New York City-based consultancy Novantas LLC, told our contributing writer Karen Epper Hoffman, "The last major product innovation we've seen in banking was the introduction of free checking," also 10 years ago. In two spring issues of his online newsletter, Financial Institutions Consulting President Charles B. Wendel commented on the reasons not a single bank appeared on a Business Week list of ?The World?s Most Innovative Companies."

How can there be no innovation in a $9 trillion-dollar industry? If not innovations per se surely there must be innovative thinking to be found, the head work that precedes discrete innovation announcements that could herald the return of innovation to banking. Acknowledging competition?s ability to stimulate, we broadened our scope to non-banks innovating banking applications. And we talked to a few solutions providers — the origin of many technology innovations — about the potential impact of what they?re working on.

The result: The following pages just scratch the surface (and include a suggestion from our banker roundtable that innovation may be so subtle as to be overlooked). It?s an admittedly uneven report — inevitable perhaps because of our authorities? uneven enthusiasm for various initiatives. If there are themes emerging, it?s that innovative thinking today is focused in two not disjointed domains: the customer relationship and payments.