Interview with Renata Talarico Petrovic, Head of Open Innovation at Banco Bradesco.
Bradesco is a Brazilian financial company with a different, and I have to add: fresh, approach to innovation.
Let’s call it Innovation as a Service.
What Bradesco has done is to create a hub where its corporate clients get access to the products and services of start-ups. Bradesco’s prime purpose of this hub is to foster innovation to contribute to its internal businesses and also to the businesses of its clients, helping them to move forward. Innovation as a Service, as in offering innovation to serve your clients.
The one who told me about this program was Renata Talarico Petrovic, Head of Open Innovation at Banco Bradesco.
“We build a community around innovation”, Renata said to me.
But why an innovation hub run by a bank?, I asked.
She told me Bradesco does this for many reasons: to develop a radar of innovative solutions to address its own business challenges, to increase the internal culture of innovation, but also to intensify the bank’s relationships with its corporate clients. By helping their corporate clients to innovate and exchange knowledge with other members, the bank’s bond with these clients becomes stronger.
Many banks focus on Fin-tech start-ups as a way to keep track of where the finance world is heading, but, besides that, Bradesco is also focused on helping their clients’ businesses.
So a bank helping its companies become more innovative by connecting them to start-ups. At the same time, a bank helps start-ups get easier access to big potential clients, contributing to the growth of their businesses.
It might be a health company getting help to be connected to an AI start-up to improve how they analyze X-rays or a start-up developing better journeys to convert sales in a retail company’s online store.
“The value is collaboration”, Renata continued. “Our tagline has always been ‘Collaborate to Innovate’.”
If you were to offer to help someone else become more creative, who would it be and how would you do it? How could you offer innovation as a service? How could you serve by helping to innovate someone else? And what would be in it for you?
Feb