Implementing Design as an Organizational Capability

Open Innovation at Credicorp / Banco de Crédito del Perú

2023

Business Design

About

Credicorp, the leading financial services company in Peru, also operates in Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Panama, and the United States. Its subsidiaries offer banking, insurance, microfinance, pensions, investment banking, and wealth management. Banco de Crédito del Perú (BCP), the main subsidiary, houses design talent for BCP and other Credicorp entities. Although the design team exceeds expectations, it faces infrastructural challenges to drive innovation across the Group. To scale innovation and enhance financial inclusivity without sacrificing governance, an Open Innovation Model prioritizing design is essential.

The project was completed in seven weeks as part of the Institute of Design’s Organizational Models for Innovation course, led by Prof. Carlos Texeira and Ph.D. candidate Deaa Batineh. It was completed in collaboration with Credicorp stakeholders and Institute of Design students Jorge Martinez Arana, Morgan Ramsey, Naomi Ito, Nishanth Srikanth, and Urvi Bidasaria.

Objectives

Assessing the existing organizational model of BCP and Credicorp.
Evaluate the design capabilities needed for Credicorp subsidiaries, including BCP.
Re-allocate design as a dynamic capability in the context of the Credicorp, scaling from BCP.
Designing a cross-organization open innovation model for Credicorp.
Iterate and propose use cases that show the value of scaling design capabilities for innovations at Credicorp.

Study

An investigation was conducted to gain a deeper understanding of Credicorp and BCP’s current organizational model. The following stakeholders were interviewed, along with the review of many internal documents.

Mariela Sotomayor | Head of Strategic Design, Banco de Crédito BCP Peru
Cinthy Revilla | Chapter Area Lead, Digital Product Design & Innovation, Banco de Crédito BCP Peru
Jose Antonio Bernaola | Leader Service Experience Designer, Center of Innovation at Banco de Crédito BCP Peru
Marianne Torres | Senior Service Experience Designer, Banco de Crédito BCP Peru
Guillermo Casaretto | Head of Innovation, Credicorp Ltd.
Irán Vargas Ballón | Corporate Agility Leader, Credicorp Ltd.
Alana Visconti | Manager of the Innovation Center, Banco de Crédito BCP Peru

Open Innovation

An Open Innovation Model is a strategic approach for organizations to leverage internal and external resources to advance their development processes. Its key characteristics include Collaboration, External inputs, and Knowledge sharing.

In addition to these, the proposed model for Credicorp addresses the internal challenges of BCP’s design team and addresses social issues through design practices.

Analysis of Current Model

Current Model

Structured around Agile methods, the Center of Excellence (CoE) at BCP houses specialized knowledge and skills that are utilized across Credicorp by assigning designers to the tribes (working teams).

BCP also acts as a consultant with external agencies to support the needs of other subsidiaries. These projects include the need for design methods, design-driven strategies, and design services.

Challenges with Current Model

Sharing the value of design

As design becomes part of the daily operations of Credicorp, the value provided is not well understood or matched to traditional business metrics.

Lack of process and varied expectations

Design teams spread across Credicorp ventures develop knowledge that is not documented, and the expectations vary from each project and team.

Growing demand for design

As design awareness grows across organizations, so does the demand for its services, but the resources remain relatively the same.

External pool of talent and knowledge

Specialized knowledge and talent come from external agencies without a pipeline to consolidate it inside Credicorp.

Proposing an Open Innovation Model

The New Model

Driving Factors of New Model

Understanding challenges of the community (Peru and other Latin American countries) outside of current reach.
Synthesizing and sharing knowledge generated across Credicorp subsidiaries.
Building innovation capabilities by ideating new strategies internally and evaluating them as potential business ventures with external partners.
Learning from the global design community to tackle social issues in Latin America and providing design knowledge for socially aware stakeholders.

Improvements of New Model

Validating the New Model

Working with stakeholders at Credicorp, we planned five initiatives to drive innovation within this new open innovation model. Each initiative would take a team of five people over five weeks and cost less than $5000 (Michael Schrage’s 5x5x5 model).

The results from these five experiments would help validate the new model’s desirability, viability, and feasibility by generating at least 80% of actionable insights while consuming less than 20% of the organization’s resources.