İş Bankası - Innovation Strategy

Project Type: Innovation Strategy & Portfolio Analysis 2018 - 2021
Project Scope

 In 2018, İş Bankası, Turkey’s first national bank, established the Innovation Business Unit to manage internal and open innovation efforts and the Entrepreneurship Business Unit to handle relationships with new ventures, investments, acquisitions, and corporate formation. Core Strateji compiled İş Bankası’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Strategy by integrating insights from the bank’s senior management, business unit managers, and Softtech executives, based on their experience in financial technologies (fintech) and international literature. The strategy report provided recommendations on the bank’s strategic priorities, governance structures, and goals in innovation and entrepreneurship for the coming years. In 2021, the bank worked on revising the previous innovation strategy and mapping 240 projects as an innovation portfolio, analyzing how to proceed with each project and creating a detailed report.

Project Delivery

The strategy work involved researching fintech trends and strategic factors to form a strategic framework, setting short-term (Horizon 1), mid-term (Horizon 2), and long-term (Horizon 3) innovation goals for İş Bankası. The final stage included concretizing the products envisaged for each Horizon and mapping the ecosystems needed to develop these products. Governance structures and key performance indicators (KPIs) for creating the necessary ecosystems were presented.

In the 2021 Portfolio Analysis, it was recommended to increase the number of trial projects at the Horizon 1 level and to include long-term, high-potential projects at Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 levels, which create a competitive advantage.

A “Growth Board” was proposed to ensure the necessary actions for projects that would provide satisfactory returns within the bank. The focus areas from the 2018 study were re-evaluated, and new focus areas were added in line with current trends and customer expectations.

Outputs & Results

To implement the strategy roadmap with a long-term relationship approach, İş Bankası took the following actions:

  • Launch of Softtech Ventures and Maxis VC
  • Closing the Pazarama Application from Maximum Mobile
  • Partnership with Yemeksepeti and adding the instant shopping feature (Gördüm Aldım) to create a SuperApp vision with the Maximum Mobile Application
  • Launch of the first internal entrepreneurship program

The 2021 study provided recommendations to increase the effectiveness of the innovation tunnel and defined OKRs for innovation portfolio management.

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