shaping the future of peruvian banking
Sector: Financial services
Company: Banco de Credito del Peru (BCP)
Role: Content contributor and facilitator
Date: 2019
THE CONTEXT
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As a collaboration between the Design Research Team, we came together to delivery a full-day workshop on Future Thinking for +30 key leaders and stakeholders from different areas of the bank.
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The workshop aimed to give an introduction on Future Thinking, inspire participants to imagine future scenarios for the bank, generate powerful initiatives from future scenarios and land them in a business model oriented to their implementation. It is important to anticipate and understand future needs from our clients. The Future Thinking methodology allows us to imagine different futures and find business opportunities.
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The +30 participants were divided into 6 teams, each focusing on a different profile and trend.
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I was in charge of the Trend Safari (collecting trends and signals for each macrotrend), as well as creating visual materials and facilitating one of the participant teams.
Workshop participants and facilitators
the pre-work
I prepared a 20-page material for the participants to read as pre-work, for them to start familiarizing with the macrotrends, trends and signals that we would cover during the workshop. As teams during the workshop focused on a single macrotrend, this material allowed them to get a grasp of all the other ones present and start thinking how could they be applied at the bank.
Extract from the pre-work material I created.
* Blurred and deleted content due to the proprietary nature.
the workshop:
PREPARING FOR THE JOURNEY
As one of the team facilitators, I guided the activities for a group of participants throughout the day. To set the tone for the session, participants reflected on how things have changed through time by leaving ideas on a timeline of what were
the most representative things of the 70´s, 80´s, 90´s, 2000's and so on. To think on what is yet to come, participants had to choose a partner and predict his or her future for 2029.
Finally, as an individual reflection, participants had to think of how they imagine 2029 will be (how will we shop, communicate, interact, etc) and share it with the rest of the team to start identifying recurring themes.
Participants predicting their partner's future
forecasting a future
On this section, I guided participants to forecast and simulate a typical day of a person in 2029. I started by presenting the 6 macrotrends and thinking how are we experimenting them now-a-days, what products, services or signals are related to each of the macrotrends. After the general walkthrough, our team focused only on one and unfolded different trends within that specific macrotrend. Participants were presented with different examples that they had to match with each unfolded trend.
Participants discussing examples and matching them with each trend
Once all of the trends and examples had been discussed and understood, the team identified the trend that presented the greater opportunity for the banking business in the future. To achieve this, they had to categorize the trends as emerging, maturing or burning. Participants voted to define what emerging or maturing trend they preferred to focus on, in order to re-think the actual bank's business model. Then, they had to create future scenerios influenced by the chosen trend.
Boards with the created scenarios for 2029
BUILDING EMPATHY
Collaboratively as the Design Research Team, we developed several personas for each of the teams at the workshop. Each team focused on one persona and imagined how he or she acted, shopped, handled finances and more. The participants deepened on how the scenario created around the trend influenced the persona's behavior.
Personas created for the workshop
* Blurred content due to the proprietary nature.
Participants discovering the persona and building up upon her
discovering foresights
Participants were guided to identify opportunities and threats within the scenario for the persona. To identify opportunities, participants reflected upon 'How might we be involved in the experience of the persona to be relevant in his/her life?', for threats, 'What changes lead to us loosing competitiveness and market share?'.
All of the ideas were shared within the team and clustered by similarity. Participants had to vote for power opportunities for the persona and killer threats for the banking industry. Finally, they portrayed the chosen opportunities and threats in a statement.
Part of the team's work throughout the session
proposing SOLUTIONS
The final step was for the participants to ideate possible solutions focusing on the persona and the chosen trend.
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The first ideation loop aimed to brainstorm ideas freely on the how to maximize opportunities and reduce threats.
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The second ideation loop aimed to imagine that banks cease too exist in the future, how might BCP adapt to this situation? If our persona does not need banks anymore to acquire, disburse or save your money, how would BCP remain relevant in his/her journey?
After participants voted for their favorite ideas, the most voted one was detailed on a Napkin Canvas and portrayed by using a storyboard to show how the proposed idea worked. All of the teams presented their solution in front of the rest.
After the workshop
The team I facilitated came up with a solution that is now being implemented (on 2020) by the Innovation Center of BCP, so being part of the idea inception was incredible.
On a personal note, this workshop was one of the most complete ones I haves participated of, it required a lot of research as input to put together the macrotrends, trends and examples. It was an amazing opportunity to interact with stakeholders from different business units, each with a different perspective on how could trends be applied to the bank.
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