Bank of America Case

Case: Bank Of America

Questions:

1. How would you characterize B of A’s new system for developing new services? Focus on its process, organization, management and culture.

B of A’s new system is more of a process/service innovation rather than a more Paradigm Innovation. They are not trying to achieve big leaps in terms of innovation. They are committed to improving innovation and willing to learn from mistakes.

The senior management at B of A is very much interested in innovation which is evident from its approval of 50% more resources to the I &D Market. So far they have been into consolidation, but now the management wants to focus on improving existing service and introduce new service all geared towards increasing customer satisfaction index and attracting new customers.

The management also viewed the internet as a way to overcome geography and providing better services to its customers.

However the innovation team seems more reluctant to take on the other 10 branches offered to them as text beds. The reason might be that the innovation team thinks, it might lose focus on the experiments and jeopardize the existing experiments.

2. Compare B of A’s approach to other product development systems. What are the differences? What are the similarities? Does it matter if it is a product or service that is being developed?

Comparing B of A’s approach to other product development systems, we understand that services have a number of attributes that are inherently different from products. We now examine the similarities and differences in the innovation processes needed for each type.

Innovation in service and manufacturing (products) industries differs because of the contrasting general characteristics of the two offerings. Due to the labor intensive nature of services, typically service innovations require much less capital investment. Service innovations usually require less R&D, require less in fixed assets, and need...