Corporate Innovation Portfolio — From Business Need to Market Launch

The challenge

The bank was building its corporate innovation capability from the ground up. External technologies had to be connected to real business needs, evaluated consistently and moved through a credible route from discovery to experiment, pilot and production decision.

What I owned

I joined the original 5–7-person team and helped shape the operating model for business discovery, technology scouting, solution evaluation and pilot delivery. I owned the Skolkovo partnership from the bank side, including contractual coordination and the first corporate accelerator. As one of the scouts, I contributed to a shared database of 800+ startups and vendors from 12 sources, supported structured evaluation of 100+ solutions and conducted 50+ interviews with business and technology stakeholders.

I worked across 20+ innovation initiatives and managed selected pilots through problem framing, vendor coordination, experiment design, launch preparation, evaluation and handover decisions.

Selected outcomes

• An online branch-appointment journey moved from pilot design to deployment on the bank website.
• A digital agent-sales channel for auto loans moved into production and improved conversion.
• A personalised customer “Year in Review” campaign reached almost 800,000 communications and generated more than 122,000 story views.
• Wearable-payment solutions were launched and used in customer-acquisition activations before later external payment-network restrictions stopped the initiative.

The wider function and the Skolkovo relationship continued through subsequent organisational changes — evidence that the work contributed to a durable capability, not a one-off innovation campaign.