From the PDMA blog:

Speaker:  David Merritt, Sr. New Business Development Manager for Mellon Financial

The key elements of their newly-redesigned program were:

  • Innovation was integrated into each employee’s peformance plan… they must generate at least one idea
  • Innovators were recognized publicly via posters and in company meetings
  • Innovators were given rewards via a point system, with the winners receiving crystal trophies

Some of the processes they put in place were:

  • They implemented Stage-Gate for Financial Services, which was different from standard Stage-Gate.
  • They did not focus on cost reduction or process improvement.
  • For small enhancements, projects were reassigned to the line managers rather than kept by the innovation team.
  • They created a new “Gate Zero” for pre-assessments of ideas.
  • They conducted an “executive sniff test” at Stage 1, to get top management feedback.

He presented info on their portfolio of projects:

  • 134 Kills
  • 131 Reassigned projects
  • 34 On Hold
  • 23 Active projects
  • 18 Launched products

A new product he described which came out of this renovated innovation process was Mellon’s Liquidity Management Service, which is a product providing money market funds to corporate treasurers as to way for them to invest cash-on-hand in their accounts.

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