Debbie Gamble - Digital Transformation Strategy Development at Interac

Summary

In a digital transformation journey led by Debbie Gamble at Interac, the focus is on implementing a robust strategy framework that emphasizes strategic foresight. The process involves recognizing and integrating weak signals from the market and technology trends, and aligning them with strategic goals to ensure meaningful development. Interac employs a methodology that includes backcasting and experimental prototyping through its innovation lab, collaborating with startup ecosystems and educational institutions for practical exploration and alignment with societal implications in payments and digital identity landscapes.

Highlights

• Emphasizing strategic foresight helps in identifying weak signals in the market. 🔍
• Integration of technology trends and societal norms into strategy development is crucial. 🌐
• The innovation lab at Interac serves as a hub for safe experimentation and prototyping. 🧪

Key Takeaways

• Strategic foresight is key in digital transformation, helping companies anticipate market trends and societal changes. 🔮
• Interac uses backcasting to explore 'what if' scenarios, aligning strategies with potential futures. 🌟
• Collaboration with startups, accelerators, and educational institutions fuels innovation through practical prototyping at Interac's lab. 💡

Overview

Interac has taken a forward-thinking approach under Debbie Gamble's leadership. The focus is on strategic foresight, incorporating market weak signals, and aligning with broader economic and societal trends. This method helps them to stay ahead in the evolving payment and digital identity ecosystem.

Interac's strategy doesn’t just stop at insight; it’s backed up with practical application. By using backcasting from potential future scenarios, they align current strategic goals with what might be needed for future success. This preparation involves understanding not just technology shifts but also societal impacts.

A practical aspect of this strategic foresight is seen through the Innovation Lab, which collaborates with startups, accelerators, and universities. This ensures that they remain agile and innovative, working with real-world, hands-on experimentation to pioneer solutions that align with potential societal changes.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Strategy Development The introduction to strategy development highlights the complexity and length of the process. It requires considering numerous stakeholders, including suppliers and other organizations, which provide crucial information and advice.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Importance of Framework in Strategy Development This chapter focuses on the crucial role frameworks play in strategy development. A participant highlights that having the right framework in place is essential when thinking about the future and developing strategies. The chapter suggests that learning from the experience of others can be beneficial in strategizing effectively.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Revamping Strategic Framework and Strategic Foresight The chapter discusses the importance of implementing a strategic framework effectively. It emphasizes that strategy, while valuable, requires proper execution to truly deliver value. The chapter highlights the need for a robust framework to leverage strategic thinking and exploration fully. It also mentions that the strategic framework has been revamped in recent years, indicating a continuous evolution and improvement in strategic planning and foresight.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Integrating Weak Signals and Strategic Insights This chapter discusses the concept of strategic foresight, emphasizing its importance not only within the organization but also extending to the board level. Strategic foresight involves examining weak signals in the market and conducting thorough research, which helps in anticipating future changes and crafting informed strategies. The integration of these insights is pivotal for students and professionals alike to master the art of strategic planning and decision-making.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Exploring Payments and Technology This chapter delves into the intersections of payments and technology, examining how emerging trends and societal shifts influence potential developments in this space.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Utilizing Strategic Foresight and Hypotheses The chapter explores the concept of strategic foresight through mapping weak signals and developing hypotheses. It delves into the method of backcasting to envision various 'what happens if' scenarios, aiming to understand the art of the possible. This process is applied across different sectors, including their own market and the financial services sector, emphasizing the importance of this approach in analyzing transactions and payments.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Roadmapping and Corporate Alignment In the chapter 'Roadmapping and Corporate Alignment,' the focus is on integrating various elements like authentication in payments, human and machine interactions within the IoT world. The chapter emphasizes the creation of frameworks using strategic foresight, along with formulating hypotheses to advance these integrations.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Innovation Lab and Prototyping The chapter focuses on the methodology used in an Innovation Lab to align strategic goals with potential future scenarios. It talks about mapping out current standings, identifying opportunities and challenges, and creating a strategic roadmap. The process involves comparing optimistic and not so optimistic scenarios against corporate priorities to chart a course forward.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Collaborations and Hands-on Experimentation The chapter titled "Collaborations and Hands-on Experimentation" discusses the speaker's experiences in applying rigor to their work over recent years. The speaker highlights the benefits of this approach and mentions the existence of an "innovation lab" within their team. This lab allows them to explore possibilities by engaging in prototyping and safe experimentation.
• 08:00 - 09:00: Engagement with Students and Educational Impact The chapter discusses the engagement with students through collaborations with accelerators and startup organizations. This includes building relationships with hubs like Communitech in Kitchener-Waterloo and the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. The aim is to leverage these partnerships to explore potential opportunities and foster innovation, providing hands-on experience in the startup ecosystem.

Debbie Gamble - Digital Transformation Strategy Development at Interac Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 interesting so in what you've described there what i'm hearing is that there are a lot of stakeholders you've got to consider there are a lot of suppliers and other organizations i'll provide you with information and advice on what you should do so your strategy development process is presumably quite a lot lengthy but certainly one that has a lot of
• 00:30 - 01:00 participants could you maybe say a little bit about that and particularly any lessons from that that would be useful for other people um yeah actually this strategy is a it's a big part of my group's focus too i didn't mention that earlier but you know you can imagine that when you're thinking about the future you also have to have that kind of you know appropriate framework in place to to explore and develop a strategy but a
• 01:00 - 01:30 strategy that is actually going to provide value so strategy is fantastic but it needs to be implemented obviously right so you have to have that framework to be able to um get the best out of some of the thinking and and and the explorer exploration um so we yeah we actually we have quite a um quite a framework for strategy and i would say we revamped that probably over the last few years and we started to
• 01:30 - 02:00 embrace the notion of strategic foresight and so we've spent a fair amount of time not just internally at interact but we actually have taken our board on that journey as well um and um you know for many of your students i'm sure they already know you know what strategic foresight involves is really looking at um things like weak signals in the market and also you know doing your research of course but but looking at
• 02:00 - 02:30 things that are happening on the fringe um and being able to pull those weak signals together and look at what's happening in technology where society going you know bring in some some kind of insights from societal norms and economics um to really think about not just you know the journey we're on but what the the hypothetical so the potentials for what might happen so we embrace this notion of monitoring
• 02:30 - 03:00 weak signals mapping out various hypotheses and then doing um what's been called back casting to look at the art of the possible the you know what happens if scenario um and that we do that um in a number of different sectors so obviously we look at we look at our own market we look at financial services but as i said earlier just even the kind of process around thinking about payments you know pretty much every transaction
• 03:00 - 03:30 that we do involves a payment involves a way of authenticating who you are and who um you are connecting with and then when you think about that in the world of iot and and you know where we're going it's not just humans right so it's machines and devices and all of those things so we bring those various different elements together we try to embrace a a framework um of strategic foresight um and we do some hypotheses around um you know the
• 03:30 - 04:00 optimistic and the not so optimistic scenarios and then we map out where we think we should be going against what our strategic goals and priorities are so we map out where we are today where we see the opportunities where we see the challenges and then align what our corporate priorities are um to our kind of roadmap for the future and we've we've actually put a fair
• 04:00 - 04:30 amount of rigor into that over the past few years which has been actually a fantastic experience um and we also in support of that my group as you would imagine we get to explore um some of that art of the possible and we um we actually have a group within my team um call the innovation lab um that we actually then do some some prototyping so we do some safe play
• 04:30 - 05:00 and uh we do that with as you said the broader ecosystem so we have relationships with a number of of accelerators and startup um organizations uh including communitech in in kw so we have a team um that works very closely with the folks at communitech or at mars discovery district in toronto to be able to um think through the art of the possible but it gives us that kind of hands-on
• 05:00 - 05:30 experimentation um capability too and um we do that actually with students as well so we do that very actively with um you know students whether they're in a co-op uh structure or or just intense um and that gives us a bit of a framework to map out you know what our priorities are how do we how do we kind of align that with where society is going where we see um kind of societal interactions and
• 05:30 - 06:00 what it could be the art of the possible for interact to continue to be a leader and service canadians absolutely and that's a very helpful description of what you do and the people who will be watching this uh are going to be learning about how their organizations should do these things and your description there uh is very practical and i think very helpful for them to be able
• 06:00 - 06:30 to understand that you