Bank of America

1.

The Bank of America is the second largest bank in the United States. It was started in 1998 as a result of a merger between a California based Bank of America and the NationsBank of North Carolina. The Bank of America had a rich history that spanned more than 150 years with the last 30 years being spent on acquisitions that resulted in the bank having locations nationwide. To give you some ideas as to the size of the bank, they process more checks per day than the Federal Reserve System and employ over 140,000 employees across 190 nations. “The Federal Reserve Banks serve many useful functions that could not and are not performed by private institutions, such as discounting, clearing of checks,

and provision of vaults for the safekeeping of securities” (Carson, 1964, p.653) They consider themselves as the leaders in innovation and development. They are often used as a benchmark for other banks. Although they were successful, they could not rest for fear of losing ground.

One of the ways to meet the challenge of competition, Bank of America started decentralizing its national operations and encouraged bank managers to take on more responsibilities. All the years of acquisitions had left the bank with basically no organized rhyme or reason to the structure. With this structure the bank could take care of day to day business in a mediocre way, but change was required to continue to be leaders in the banking business. One of the senior process design consultants named Al Groover was quoted as saying “Our banking branches haven’t changed much in the last hundred years. If Jesse James brought his gang here, he’d still know where to go for the cash” (Thomke, 2002, p.1). I think this statement proves that although Bank of America was successful, it hadn’t changed much which lead to the development of the Innovation and Development (I&D) department.

The newly formed department would be headed by the three leading managers in the...