Open innovation leaders play a crucial role in navigating the rapid technological changes that challenge traditional financial models. Their responsibility is to balance visionary thinking with pragmatic execution, proactively integrating emerging technologies into business strategies, while fostering a culture of creativity and experimentation. These leaders promote collaboration across departments and with external partners, opening up new channels for new ideas and product development while ensuring innovation complies with industry regulations.
By incorporating Nordic design principles, simplicity, functionality, user-centricity, and sustainability, innovation leaders build resilient, user-oriented teams capable of addressing challenges such as skepticism and risk. They ensure that innovation efforts are continuously aligned with business objectives, fostering sustainable growth and long-term success, thus creating a positive impact on the organization.
As the Head of InnovEcoS, CRIF's Global Open Innovation Hub, Natalia Shchelovanova explains, CRIF is not simply reacting to change; it is actively shaping the future of innovation.
We interviewed her to gain valuable insights into how InnovEcoS facilitates technological innovation at CRIF.
What is InnovEcoS and what is its mission?
InnovEcoS is CRIF’s Global Open Innovation and Startup Ecosystem Hub. Our mission is to open up and accelerate new opportunities through exploration, open collaboration, testing, and ideation, engaging internal and external ecosystems across various execution models. The ultimate goal is to grow CRIF’s offerings, remain competitive, and stay ahead of disruptive trends. Startups of all sizes and stages are at the heart of our activities, helping us innovate, learn, grow, and stay competitive. Our goal is to bring new technologies, use cases, knowledge, and competencies into CRIF to grow innovation culture by building strategic partnerships with startups, scaleups, and SMEs and learning from them as they are the most advanced market players. This approach enables us to adopt the latest technologies and drive business development.
What makes InnovEcoS distinctive?
InnovEcoS stands out for its holistic approach to innovation, combining openness, collaboration, proactive research, and strategic vision. What makes us unique is our global presence, which allows us to grow our ability to foster an innovation ecosystem that brings together diverse partners, including innovation hubs, business incubators, venture capitalists (VC), and corporate investors. Depending on the partner's focus, whether social impact, knowledge sharing, or new technologies, we adapt to achieve meaningful results.
Can you give us some examples of your activities?
Since 2020, InnovEcoS has launched various open innovation programs. The main one is the key open innovation streams to tackle emerging challenges and meet new needs with the Venture Client stream as the first in a row. Through a global network of accelerators, academic institutions, and the startup community, InnovEcoS in line with company goals and a well-established delivery process identifies the most promising startups at a global scale to enable or develop products and business cases, mainly through commercial partnerships. Since 2020, InnovEcoS has reviewed over 630 startups in the fintech sector, initiating important partnerships. This process always involves cross-functional teams, knowledge dissemination, and the incorporation of innovative mechanisms such as qualification, testing, experimentation, unique partnering rules with startups, and alternative result measurements.
Another key initiative is our global Call4Ideas program, which encourages the experimenting of new ideas among our employees across 27 countries. The goal is to generate ideas that could empower or revolutionize CRIF’s offerings, processes, and business models, foster the culture of innovation, and leverage young talents to learn, test, and execute, just as a startup would do.
Research lies at the heart of all our key activities, pushing for new topics exploration via benchmarking and market review. Our Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) arm plays a key role in accelerating startups, particularly those at the seed stage or beyond, with products ready for market. We have invested in a portfolio of 20 startups. By staying closely connected to CRIF's global business strategy, we maintain the right focus and deliver measurable results, ensuring that we are investing in ventures that have the potential to make a significant impact.
What does Open Innovation mean to you? What is your approach?
Open Innovation is embracing collaboration and leveraging global networks to stay at the forefront of emerging trends and best practices, as well as keeping open the gateway for a global approach, utilizing an extensive network of partners, colleagues, and InnovEcoS Ambassadors, which allows us to integrate the most advanced insights, technology trends, and successful use cases from all over the world.
How do you ensure a successful collaboration with startups?
InnovEcoS collaborates effectively with startups and external partners, leveraging their innovation capabilities to drive the development of new ideas and solutions. Our carefully structured open innovation programs place startups at the center of our activities, allowing us to integrate external innovation into our processes effectively.
Our approach focuses on structured engagement programs, a broad network of strategic partnerships, and a strong emphasis on fostering a culture of innovation. We prioritize flexibility, enabling internal teams and external innovators to collaborate seamlessly, experiment with innovative ideas, and test solutions. This creates a dynamic environment that bridges the gap between traditional business practices and the fresh perspectives brought by startups, ensuring the development of impactful solutions that meet the constantly evolving needs of the market.
How do you measure the success of your initiatives and their impact on the Fintech industry? Can you provide success stories?
The success of our initiatives is a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. We track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as the success rate of Proofs of Concept (PoCs), the advancement of projects into post-production, and the delivery of training and research, especially in areas related to disruptive trends and emerging technologies. However, success is not just about numbers. We also assess it based on the recognition and awareness our initiatives gain within the organization. Regular feedback from internal stakeholders helps us understand the impact of our efforts and how they contribute to the company's growth.
CRIF GEN AI Factory is a testament to our venture-building strategy, embodying our commitment to pioneering advancements that align with CRIF’s core business and strategic goals. This initiative unites our company expertise—including data management specialists, product innovators, data scientists, solutions architects, and engineers—to create a generative AI case generation machine that enhances internal capabilities, processes, and the CRIF offering. By identifying and developing cutting-edge AI opportunities, the GEN AI Factory, established at the beginning of 2023, a few months after the OpenAI became accessible to massive usage, exemplifies our dedication to sustainable innovation and advancing the CRIF offering through the combined strengths of teams and technology.
Given your expertise in the Fintech industry, what major trends will shape the industry in the coming years?
Several key trends we believe will shape the industries in the near and distant future are on our radar. Ongoing and continuous rise of new players, use cases, and technology evolvement, especially Generative AI and cloud technology are major forces driving change. AI is rapidly advancing and has already started to be applied in many different ways. An interesting example is the so-called black side of Gen AI, a deepfake technology used by cybercriminals to access the digital data of businesses. On this use, we have recently released a white paper that you can download here.
On the other hand, cloud technology continues to enable companies to scale quickly, manage costs, and improve security and flexibility.
The payments industry is also undergoing significant shifts, as new payment methods and digital solutions transform the management of transactions. This change is fueled by consumer demand for speed and convenience, a push for greater financial inclusion.
Looking further ahead, quantum computing stands out as a potential game-changer, with the power to solve complex problems that current technology can’t handle. While the timeline for its widespread impact remains uncertain, quantum computing could revolutionize areas like encryption, risk analysis, and financial modeling.
