Last October we wrapped up a five-month innovation/leadership development program for 50 participants at one of our financial services clients and we have just received the three-month status report on the projects.

Seven of the nine projects pitched to senior management at the closing session are now moving forward. These include an outsourcing solution in Brazil that has already garnered significant interest there and in other regions, a cross-border service for benefits payments (this came from one of the most geographically diverse teams representing Argentina, Italy, Dubai and the US  who have been asked to continue working on it), a solution for retailers with international customers, and a particularly well-received proposal for the carbon credit market. Internally focused projects included a global platform to streamline distribution for which a prototype will be available by the end of this month and a dashboard to centralize partner information.

These results combined with those from a program that wrapped up in July makes 2009 one of our best ever years for innovation projects getting funded – not something many people predicted at the beginning of last year!