Total Innovation Podcast
Welcome to "Total Innovation," the podcast where I explore all the different aspects of innovation, transformation and change. From the disruptive minds of startup founders to the strategic meeting rooms of global giants, I bring you the stories of change-makers. The podcast will engage with different voices, and peer into the multi-faceted world of innovation across and within large organisations.
I speak to those on the ground floor, the strategists, the analysts, and the unsung heroes who make innovation tick. From technology breakthroughs to cultural shifts within companies, I'm on a quest to understand how innovation breathes new life into business.
I embrace the diversity of thoughts, backgrounds, and experiences that inform and drive the corporate renewal and evolution from both sides of the microphone. The Total Innovation journey will take you through the challenges, the victories, and the lessons learned in the ever-evolving landscape of innovation.
Join me as we explore the narratives of those shaping the market, those writing about it, and those doing the hard work. This is "Total Innovation," where every voice counts and every story matters.
Brought to you by The Infinite Loop – Where Ideas Evolve, Knowledge Flows, and Innovation Never Stops.
Powered by Wazoku, helping to Change the World, One Idea at a Time.
Total Innovation Podcast
4.Bea Schofield, Lloyds Banking Group: The Innovation Centre of Enablement
Join Simon Hill, CEO of Wazoku, in an insightful conversation with Bea Schofield, an expert in Challenge Driven Innovation and co-author of the Corporate Explorer Fieldbook. Currently leading Corporate Exploration and Innovation at Lloyds Banking Group, Bea brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in driving innovation within large organizations.
In this episode, Bea shares her professional journey, starting with her academic achievements, including a strategic innovation degree from Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and an MSc in African Studies from the same institution. Her career path, marked by various influential roles, has shaped her innovative approach in the corporate world.
The discussion delves into the concept of Challenge Driven Innovation (CDI), where Bea explains its significance and practical application in today’s business landscape. Learn about Bea’s role as an advisor on CDI and how she implements these principles at Lloyds Banking Group. For those interested in further reading, check out the Wazoku resource on CDI: Organizing for Innovation.
Discover the current innovation projects at Lloyds Banking Group, led by Bea, and the strategies she employs to overcome challenges and foster a culture of exploration and innovation. Bea’s insights from the Corporate Explorer Fieldbook provide valuable lessons for corporate innovators, emphasizing practical approaches and key takeaways from the book. For more details, explore the Corporate Explorer Fieldbook: Corporate Explorer Fieldbook.
Looking ahead, Bea shares her thoughts on the future of corporate innovation, emerging trends, and technologies that will shape the industry. Aspiring innovators and corporate leaders will find her advice on cultivating a culture of innovation particularly inspiring.
Tune in for a thought-provoking episode filled with actionable insights, practical examples, and strategic advice from one of the leading voices in corporate innovation. Don't miss the opportunity to connect with Bea Schofield on LinkedIn: Bea Schofield LinkedIn.
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Introduction and Guest Welcome
Welcome to today's episode of the Total Innovation podcast. This episode is super exciting for me because it's a longstanding friend of Wazoku who's joining us. She's an advisor on challenge driven innovation, the co-author of the Corporate Explorer field book. She's currently driving corporate exploration and innovation at Lloyds Banking Group.
And as I've said, she's a long term friend of Wazoku's. So very much welcome, Bea Schofield. Well, thank you for having me. So Bea, it's been a busy week, eh? We were just catching up before this recording. For folk that don't know you, they really should check you out.
Bea Schofield's Journey in Innovation
There aren't many that have trodden so many different sides of this, uh, This innovation conundrum, can you just, just set the scene a little bit, tell people a bit about you, I gave that, that high level introduction, but be, be the innovator.
Ah, lovely. Well, um, actually I have you to thank for, um, piquing my initial interest. in innovation and [00:01:00] particularly challenge driven innovation after spending many happy years at Wazoku working with organizations to build and scale sustainable innovation management programs by tapping into the power of both internal and external crowds to make What is inherently a very complex process, a lot more efficient.
So that's really where, where my journey started with innovation, particularly interested from both internal and external perspectives on how to tap in, as I said, to that long tail of potential problem solvers. And for the past, I think coming up to. 16 months in house doing the job, uh, within a central innovation team, sitting within CTO to actually help build that muscle and support the organization specifically focused on the insurance pensions and investment business, but also how do we identify important problems to [00:02:00] solve?
How do we get into a process of running short experiments to be able to prove if there's something there, can it if there's something, and in parallel to that, help to build really the architecture to enable more innovation at scale, versus just thinking, which often a lot of leaders do, that You say innovate and it just happens magically.
So, yeah, a few things that I do. You've taken, you've taken the leap from the, uh, the dark side to the light side, or maybe it's the other way around. It's the other way around. The other way around. Um, and I'm sure there's a million and one lessons, uh, from both sides of that, right, which could probably be another podcast all into itself.
There's a, there's a million things you and I could talk about. Um, the purpose of this podcast is to try and go as deep as we can with sort of practical advice on quite a close thematic, right? Like this is such a broad topic area as you, as you, as you've said. I thought knowing you as I did, that we'd unpack this in, in a [00:03:00] couple of ways and, and really lean into this.
You know, the, the sort of the trilateral things of your experience around your background with us and challenge driven innovation, the book that you were part of helping to write last year, which I know was quite an achievement and also has landed very well in the market. Um, and your role now at Lloyd's and start to think about this.
So you've got this role within the CTO's office, right?
Centralized vs Decentralized Innovation
Which sounds very much like a. A centralized function. So can you talk to us a little bit around around that and what your experience is on something that I know you and I threw around a lot the other side of the fence of, you know, this, this, this constant challenging dance of centralized versus decentralized innovation.
Yeah. So it's interesting being within CTERNA that that's not uncommon in financial services. Um, and it has advantages and disadvantages. So we are part of the group, um, kind of chief operating office so that you really become what we [00:04:00] think of as a conventional central innovation team. And actually historically the team I'm part of was more akin to what we would think of as central innovation team.
operating as a lab, um, to be able to explore new business models. And it was actually part of a restructure that the team ended up with in CTO. Um, that has advantages and disadvantages in that, uh, as we know, being able to leverage, Both new and emerging technologies to provide value is actually fundamental.
And I don't think you can decouple now innovation from technology. Um, but again, the disadvantage of course, is that it becomes too technology centric. So I think. In order for any innovation team to succeed within a CTO, you've got to understand the technology within the wider sort of socio economic political landscape in which those technologies are [00:05:00] appearing, because that's really where you're able to better understand how might we use technology to be able to provide value, either through improving what we do today.
Better serving existing markets or to, to edge more into what we think of as horizon to an adjacent market. So I think from a positioning perspective, it has advantages. You just have to be very certain to the business. This is not just purely about technology. And similarly, tell your colleagues and CTO, innovation isn't just technology.
It's the application of technology to better solve problems.
Understanding Innovation in Financial Services
And you might even find that some of those problems aren't even solved. question around the sort of modelling. So in the, in, you know, we often think about the sort of three different models, how innovation teams run, that's really fully centralized.
Typically we've got a lot of really deep expertise. You might find that more in pharma. You have the sort of, More federated, which in an organization such as Lloyd's is all the different businesses do it themselves, or which we've [00:06:00] really opted for with the hybrid. So you have more of an interface between the business.
So I think an analogy, which I find helps people is thinking about sustainability. You could just have a sustainability, but you recognize what you're really trying to do is get. More ESG focus in every element of what the business does. That might be proposition development. It might be operating models.
It might be process improvements. So you have to be able to understand the needs of the, you know, the organization and have that sort of enterprise wide view, but also able to contextualize the application of innovation methods to the specific business, which is where I feel we are certainly entering as a innovation team of What is really organization wise, but also what's quite specific?
I know you referenced earlier, and I know this is a matrix or a view [00:07:00] that you use in some of your presentations, is that very much that, not just the three horizon thinking, but this mix between capabilities that you have and markets that you serve today, all the way out to you. Capabilities you do not have in markets that you that don't maybe don't even exist, right?
That's sort of, you know, the multiple different types of innovation before you get into the, you know, what that mix might look like inside your business from a portfolio perspective. How well understood do you think that whole topic is? It's interesting. We lean into another example like sustainability.
Rather than using innovation, because I, I get the feeling we do that because people can get their head around it a bit more. Right. And like how do you, how, how well understood do you think the topic is? I spoke to Aidan McCullen in the first podcast in this season, and he spoke about the, one of the most important moments for him in the, in the profession is the professionalization of the, of rugby as a sport.
In its massive evolution in the way [00:08:00] that the health and what was not just total innovation in this case, but sort of total rugby as a concept really evolved around the time that it became a professional sport, not an amateur sport. And I posited the question to him, do you think innovation will ever professionalize?
Um, slightly tongue in cheek, of course, right? But, um, but yeah, how well understood do you think it is? across the business. Um, so I'd say very, very poorly understood in the ask anyone what it means and you will get a significantly different answer. Someone might say it is just a behaviour. Someone might say I innovated by Painting the walls a different colour.
So actually understanding that it is not just curiosity or innovative thinking, but it's actually a process through which organizations are able to realize value by building hypotheses and running [00:09:00] experiments and simply ruling out what doesn't work and building on what does work. I would say that was very, very helpful.
Poorly understood by large organizations. Yeah, not very well centrally visualized or managed either, I guess, right? It's really hard to get your arms around the myriad of things that are happening or are not happening in the business. Yeah. So what is, so what specifically is the role of, your innovation office and in this CTO's office then?
Yeah, so we, um, we see it as a role to enable the group to innovate at scale by providing the relevant tools and capabilities to enable people to get idea through to impact to run experiments and to be able to leverage the advantages that the organization has to compete and to stay relevant in order to ensure that we Remain relevant in the eyes of our customers so I think about it [00:10:00] more as a, as a centre of enablement through which more people can do innovation versus a lab where it is restricted to a finite number of people.
This concept of a centre of enablement's a nice one, right? Something we should, uh, we should probably pull on a little bit. Like, what does that, what does that mean, do you think? I read into it, it means that you're not, you're not a team of, Innovation doers in that nice sense, right? You guys are not necessarily the ones doing the innovation.
You're trying to help the business to do the innovation, I guess, in a more systemic and systematic and repeatable way. But why don't you explain that a little bit? So I think it's interesting because we often say to enable, it's part doing and part enabling. So with something where it is a relatively new process or skill that someone's trying to say, I think there's something over here.
Can I go and investigate it a little bit more? Often the approach you need to take is to be very guided and very hands on and almost [00:11:00] talk people through. Now, in the same way, when someone's done it with you once, it's less like, it's more like touch, sorry, in the next, innovation cycle and then more and more like touch to the point where you simply are just capabilities.
So I think thinking of central, the vision of course, is to have, I think with most centre of enablement or excellence is that there's a sort of front door, more of a push and pull. You can access relevant recent research. You can have digital innovation tools. And that's actually something should be aspired to, I'd argue you need to go a step further and that people just innovate without a centre of enablement.
But I think the reality of that happening is very, very small, which is why it's actually quite a key, um, area to have within an organization. Um, So I think that's sort of a view as to what it is and how it should work and that you actually need [00:12:00] to be within that context, have a really good foot into the outside world of innovation management because you're, that's always changing as well.
So you need to be able to have that foot in and say, what should we be thinking about as innovation management people in order to ensure our business can innovate better. So if we dig If we dig into the topic a little bit more deeply then and get a bit more hands on practical, right, like one of the things that comes out in the book, you know, you wrote a chapter on challenge driven innovation, and I'd like to delve into that a little bit.
Challenge Driven Innovation and Hunting Zones
But before you get to sort of defining the challenge. I guess, where, where do we innovate, right? There's a million and one different places, problem areas, uh, they're called hunting zones in the corporate field book that you, um, that you coauthored. So talk to me about these hunting zones and if you can be as, you know, as apply it to [00:13:00] Lloyd's, right?
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So in the, in the concept, right. This sort of By hunting zones, really talking about ensuring that there is focus. So rather than unbounded innovation where anyone can come up with any idea, what we're looking to identify at the very start is the. Areas to explore, which have the highest degree of sponsorship, because if you do not have sponsorship to even explore that area, the likelihood is you're not going to get up an idea, develop that idea and pitch that idea, which is all quite a lengthy process and quite a lot resource intensive.
So firstly, and I take very much the view that you, you can start anywhere. Now your exploration zones or your hunting zones might be. That you've uncovered through existing research, a very high value customer problem. [00:14:00] Um, it might be to do with the fact that younger people simply aren't getting on the housing ladder in the way that they used to.
And you need to find a way to help them do that. So potentially very high value customer problem to solve in an organization like Lloyd's. Um, you may also say we've already got some capabilities, some technology, some data that we. Can, you know, will provide us some value that we can monetize. So that might be potentially another area for you starting with those capabilities, but I think in my kind of world where I'm focused, I'm specifically starting with, if, if let's say an area of the business, not sure where to start, the easiest starting point is to look at either emerging trends or even more relevant mega trends.
and be able to say which of these trends do you think will either impact your revenue streams in the future or provide you with an opportunity to actually create [00:15:00] products to help to attract and retain your next generation of customers. Um, so depending on the type of Business you're looking at, it might be very relevant to Gen Z and actually what behaviors, traits are we seeing, what are the needs and emerging needs of that particular, um, potential customer base that we will need to meet in order to ensure that they actually, um, you know, don't just go and join another neobank in reality.
And then I think the, the. Rather than dictating what you feel the hunting zone is for the organization, I always say my expertise is simply in the process. It is not in the trends that I am deep diving into, is to provide a picture of what the world might look like in five years time and then get the people who know their business.
The best to say what opportunities and threats this [00:16:00] present because they are tell you will be able to do it in 15 minutes compared to me trying to identify all the potential threats to a business that I don't know. And that I think begins to shape that landscape of potential opportunities. And I think that alignment between the center of enablement, bringing the process and the skills of, of the how aligned to the subject matter experts of the what and the where is a nice, is a nice way of positioning it.
I guess you're still always going to be competing in this landscape of, I guess on the one side, interest, preference and ego. And on the other side, You know, still resources, too many problems, right? And I, maybe on the third side is the AI, AI, AI, everything must be AI bat bouts as well, right? Of like, you know, all, all resources are suddenly being pulled in that direction and not, not necessarily others.
So how do you think about prioritizing those? Those hunting [00:17:00] zones and then weaving that into the CDI sort of narrative charge driven innovation narrative as well. Yeah, so I think around prioritizing I, there are loads of potential areas that you might explore and I think the To ensure that it's of a priority, you want to explore an area which will have both near term and longer term impact.
So it's something that is a concern of you and is relevant to you because it's likely already linked to a problem that you want to solve in the near term, as well as providing you the breadth to explore that in the long term. So it might be particularly with a specific segment of users. And you go, I need to find out more about them now because I'm already seeing that when I'm, they're not buying what I'm selling them.
Um, but I also need to use that, um, at, to be able to think about how it might serve that market in the future. I'm really from a CDI perspective [00:18:00] is if you were to look at the hunting zones, I think Once you've identified a megatrend or a problem that you want to explore, that really is the goal or opportunity area that sits at the front part of the CDI process.
And then what you need to be able to do is identify the challenge areas that sit within that. broader macro trend. Uh, so that really ensures that you could be, let's say, dealing with the sandwiched generation of parents who are perhaps stuck dealing with, you know, helping to support elderly parents.
I've got kids that are still living at home well into their 20s. And there might be several challenge areas within that particular, you know, how do we help this particular group of people, uh, might be on a challenge related to that might be, you know, are we providing them enough, you know, might they need, you know, [00:19:00] In house care support for their ageing parents.
How might we retrofit their houses as people move in and out? These are all different challenges that sit within those. And I think you need to take that prioritisation and say, what is the particular problem? And let's kick the tyres and see if there's anything here.
Beyond tech and beyond digital as well, are you seeing, is it, or would you say that most of the type of work that's happening is still very tech and digital? So I think we've at least, and I learnt this at the innovators conference last week, is probably the most sold out sessions are always how we're using generative AI either as part of our innovation process, or to be able to better serve existing markets.
Um, so that seems to be. What people are predominantly talking about from a technology perspective. But again, that's just focused on the technology piece. If you go into the business, [00:20:00] the likelihood is the business is beginning to explore, um, areas more incremental in nature and using those technologies and.
What I'm, you know, getting tired of hearing is Gen AI is the solution. What's the problem? Cause I think they've completely done it the wrong way around is we have to be really good at understanding what the specific problems are and breaking those down into experiments and then say, what is the technology?
Cause guarantee most of the time it is not generative AI. Yes. I think there's, there's a, there's a, there's an inevitable hype there right now, right? But it's also a curiosity, I think, right? And like, there is an element of. If people want to get in and learn and be curious, then that's, that is sort of the innovators dream, right?
Like we really, we'd love people to be loving their problem spaces and really interested in, in helping, helping if AI can help to really frame that bit rather than race into the solution, then [00:21:00] fantastic. Actually, I think that really will unlock value.
The Role of AI in Innovation
As we, as we go forward, what is your philosophy on the role of AI in innovation then?
I think we can't, we can't, can't dodge it too much. And what's the position internally on it? Um, but the, no, it's interesting. And actually I believe in looking at all the different use cases, how innovation teams are using it, um, as more of a co pilot. So how might we generate ideas? How might we help to reduce the amount of time doing the.
you know, the least interesting part, namely the desk research, um, are interesting use cases of it. What I get in there, when I think this applies as much to innovation teams as business teams who are looking to use generative AI is pick one or two things and run proper experiments. There are potentially a million things you could use, ways you could use it in the innovation process, but start with the problem.
What is the most labor intensive? [00:22:00] Where do you feel your creativity is being drained? Then potentially use it as a means of helping with that innovation process. And actually maybe even use it as an opportunity to get your business areas actually using Gen AI when they're learning to innovate, because that again, might help them adopt the process by saying, look, it's not all just hours and hours and hours, you can actually use this.
Emerging technology to solve your emerging business problem in order to create or even create sort of emerging products for your future markets. There are lots of different ways, but as I say, don't focus specifically just on the technology.
Um, I'm going to slowly bring us towards a close because I respect your time on this as well.
Measuring Innovation Success
One of the things that we constantly used to talk about when you were on this side of the fence and now I'm very fascinated on how you think about it on that side of the fence is, you know, you spoke about the path to value earlier, right?
So what are the, [00:23:00] what are the metrics here, right? You Often very frustrated, often struggle. This is one of those economic cycles now where some innovation teams are being pushed, pushed to prove value or being shrunk or disbanded. Feels like there's a, you know, there's a strong investment in this center of enablement and innovation across the business you're working in.
But How, how, how should we be thinking about measuring the value creation here and how, how do you think about it internally? So there's a, well, I often say, which I start most presentations with, with new, and I use a very, perhaps overly generic Jeff Bezos, which says, why is, why is Amazon as good as it is?
Why is it as innovative as it is? And everyone says, Always the same answer, say, oh, it's got, you know, understand it's customers. And actually it's quoted as saying, if you dramatically increase the number of experiments you do, the likelihood is you [00:24:00] will dramatically increase the new innovations you produce.
And I think that people fail, they say new innovations produced equals ROI versus that metric, which is absolutely critical that I believe comes before it is, can I see an increase in the amount of experiments that we're doing? Because if we know that it's a 15 to one for a new product, what am I actually looking at first and where teams as mine such as struggle is you apply very traditional RMI metrics to innovation versus saying, let's just think about increasing the number of experiments.
And then you know that if you have to increase the number of experiments, people have to be aware of. What even experimentation is I actually sometimes find that easier explore and experiment and innovation for that for that reason Ultimately though there does need to be a value creation I guess right and that you've spoken a little bit about blending the the near term priority [00:25:00] of I've got a problem today linked to a broader term macro thematic and I guess to a degree that can lend you into a Into a value creation about something towards a longer term something but those horizons are they're difficult, right?
They were very trained today in quarterly performance metrics and everything else and obviously innovation runs cancer to that but There is a value that has to come eventually, I guess. And actually, that's a good point, is where if people, particularly when you're looking as one of the potentially other area, I think this is the fourth one, is attractive markets.
This is very easy to generate. uh, interest in what you're trying to explore by showing market size today and expected growth. You do not have to look far to find those predicted growth. You don't need to have a license to a pitch book. Most of the big consultancies are online. Frequently publishing [00:26:00] data around market growth.
So use that data, gain interest, and then show your increasing confidence that you are edging towards entering that market and have a right to play in that market and can capitalize on the resources you have in order to get that ROI. But I can't say it's easy. I feel it's. Where 90 percent of all our time is spent is trying to convince someone that this is a valuable activity.
And I don't see that going away any time soon, although I wish it was. And I think some of these organizations will go before the people realize that actually they could have just been looking at that all along. Yeah, I think there's something in that that's about education as well, as you're talking through it.
Yes. I'm sitting here with my CEO's cap on thinking of if I'm running this business and there's, you know, there's tens of thousands of people all out doing experiments and I've got this huge experimentation pipeline, but if I was to [00:27:00] draw that analogy to, I don't know, my sales and marketing pipeline and it was full of.
Thousands of new leads suddenly out of nowhere, but none of them were relevant to me Then I wouldn't regard that as a positive thing, right? I think there's a little bit of which i'm sure isn't the case at Lloyd's, right? But it's like how do you know these experiments are relevant experiments versus just people going off and doing things which We've all seen happen, right?
When you unleash innovation into a business, it's like, but why the hell did an innovation team work on this problem when we've got these real ones over here? Um, I don't know if you guys have a structure for that or if you're still experimenting with it, but no relevant quality experiments. is obviously really key.
Yeah, but I think that if you've determined and you've got sponsorship where to explore an experiment, you're removing that problem. So as I say, I may have a, say this is an attractive market. If no one's interested in it, I put that to bed and I move on to the next one, because you have to have, and often get them to [00:28:00] commit money or resource, because I often think even if it's a freebie, there's no skin in the game.
So why do they really care, is. Find the areas that they are interested in exploring that span both horizons. If there is a link to an attractive market or a potential OPEC saving, then make sure you are presenting a good argument, because I think one of the guys said it in the, in the book, um, Pirates in the Navy.
He was a strategizer and said, you know, 90 percent of your job is being a politician. So know your, know your script up front, do your research and increasingly get the buy in to be able to continue doing what it is you want to do. Yes, exactly.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Well, I Really nice way of summarizing things, Bea, that brings us nicely to an end.
I was going to ask you to summarize and you pretty much just, just, just did it there. In a frustrated, we should do this. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, you know, [00:29:00] it's, uh, it can be frustrating at times, but love, this has been a super valuable chat and I appreciate your time massively. It's, uh, you know, it's been amazing to have spent time Learning with you on one side of the fence and continuing to learn with you on the other side of the fence.
So thank you very much. There's always more to do than we can get done. But thank you very much. Where can people find you if they want to connect with you? Uh, I just on LinkedIn. Spend a lot of time there. So, yeah. Go online and post. Exactly. Follow Bee online. And, uh, yeah, thank you. Thank you very much once again, Bee.
For everyone who's enjoying the podcast, um, please subscribe. We've got a number of really exciting future guests coming up, some of whom are going to build on the things that Bee was just talking about there as well. Others are going to take us into interesting areas around ethics of AI and a number of other topics as well.
So, thank you everybody. Thank you again, Bee. And I'll be back soon. Thank you, Simon.
