The Innovator's Path: How Individuals, Teams, and Organizations Can Make Innovation Business-as-Usual

Foreword

As I read Madge Meyer's book The Innovator's Path, I could not help but think about my first week at my new job at State Street Bank. I had been working for a competitor for twenty years where I watched as State Street built an unassailable franchise serving the mutual fund industry. Luckily, after twenty years of competing against State Street, I had an opportunity to join the company and manage its largest business, the mutual funds servicing business. That first week told me why they had been consistently successful all those years, and why I had such difficulty competing against them.

Very early during that first week I had many conversations with the senior officials of the company. One of them took me aside and said, “You need to know one thing, you are not working for a bank, you are working for an IT company disguised as a bank.” It became very clear to me why I had such difficulty competing against State Street. I had been working for a bank that thought of itself as a bank and used IT as a “necessary evil.”

State Street very early on figured out what Madge writes about in her book—making innovation business-as-usual. In today's fast-paced, high-tech world, this approach is more important than ever. Any industry using technology, and I would suggest that almost all do, may want to think of itself as an IT company disguised as whatever it is they do—at least when it comes to innovation.

Later during that first week, a young, aggressive salesperson bounded into ...