201. Innovation By Design & Scaling Innovation

Sam Yen, the Chief Innovation Officer for Commercial Banking at JPMorgan Chase, joins us for this episode of The Innovation Engine to discuss Innovation by Design and Scaling Innovation. Sam is responsible for JPMorgan Chase’s digital products, platforms, innovation, and product strategy, so there is a massive amount of responsibility that falls under his purview.

We kick off the episode by diving into Sam's guiding principles for leading teams and prioritizing work in a financial institution of JPMorgan Chase's scale. He stresses the importance of being customer or client-centered, maintaining effective communication, ensuring a deep understanding of end-to-end experiences in product delivery, and keeping the bigger picture in mind while fostering a culture of quick learning and iteration.

Sam shares his insights on the power of design in crafting user experiences that are intuitive, delightful, and even "forgettable" in terms of ease of use. We discuss the challenges and constraints of fostering innovation in a large financial institution and how the constraints by which financial services companies are bound can, perhaps counterintuitively, lead to more focused solutions. We also cover Sam's previous work at SAP and the four phases of scaling innovation in large organizations he uncovered with Janaki Kumar and Baba Shiv. The four phases Sam details on the innovation journey run from the "lonely soldier phase" all the way through to a fully scaled culture of innovation.

Episode Highlights

• Why the role of design includes but also extends well beyond delivering a delightful and intuitive user experience
• The concept of thinking of risk as a line of boxes that gets increasingly larger over time, and the process of de-risking ideas incrementally as they scale
• Why innovation requires excelling at both creativity AND execution; you don’t get to pick just one
• Sam shares why the emphasis that’s often placed on creative problem solving would be even more productive if it were instead placed on creative problem finding
• The value of diverse teams in delivering innovative solutions and the difference between constructive tension and destructive tension

About Sam Yen

Sam Yen is an acclaimed design leader who has had an exceptional career trajectory. Prior to his role as Chief Innovation Officer for Commercial Banking at JPMorgan Chase, he served as Managing Director for SAP Silicon Valley and was SAP's first Chief Design Officer. At SAP, Sam led their Design Thinking practice both internally and for customers. Sam offers a valuable perspective on integrating design principles at the highest levels of corporate decision-making and scaling innovation throughout large organizations.

Resources

• Connect with Sam Yen on LinkedIn
• Read one of Sam’s recent interviews for more on the 4 phases of innovation
• Learn more about how JPMorgan Chase Commercial Bank is banking the innovation economy
• Read volume 1 of “Payments Unbound,” a partnership between JPMorgan and Wired on the future of digital cash and more
• Read volume 2 of “Payments Unbound,” which focuses on the future of commerce  

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