Improving the innovation pipeline at Mellon Financial
Speaker: David Merritt, Sr. New Business Development Manager for Mellon Financial
The key elements of their newly-redesigned program were:
- Innovation was integrated into each employee’s peformance plan… they must generate at least one idea
- Innovators were recognized publicly via posters and in company meetings
- Innovators were given rewards via a point system, with the winners receiving crystal trophies
Some of the processes they put in place were:
- They implemented Stage-Gate for Financial Services, which was different from standard Stage-Gate.
- They did not focus on cost reduction or process improvement.
- For small enhancements, projects were reassigned to the line managers rather than kept by the innovation team.
- They created a new “Gate Zero” for pre-assessments of ideas.
- They conducted an “executive sniff test” at Stage 1, to get top management feedback.
He presented info on their portfolio of projects:
- 134 Kills
- 131 Reassigned projects
- 34 On Hold
- 23 Active projects
- 18 Launched products
A new product he described which came out of this renovated innovation process was Mellon’s Liquidity Management Service, which is a product providing money market funds to corporate treasurers as to way for them to invest cash-on-hand in their accounts.
