Intrapreneurship: The Inside Story | Aleks Petkov-Georgieva (Raiffeisen Bank International)

Hey everyone, thanks for joining us. Welcome to Future Foundry Live. I'm super excited that we've got Alex joining us today from ArtBI. Alex, I've been looking forward to this conversation for, for so long. I, yeah, read all of your LinkedIn posts. I think you're one of my favorite voices in corporate.

Oh wow.

Corporate Innovation. I think I even get a little notification, Alex, when you, when you post. And so I know that you've been traveling over the summer, but where do we find you today?

Hi, hi there. Thanks a lot for having me, actually. So I'm at the moment in Vienna, uh, in our headquarters overlooking a beautiful, uh, Stadtpark, which is kind of like city, city park. Um, and I'm at the office at That's where you find me.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, look, I know that this time of year, particularly with planning for 2024, is incredibly busy. Thanks so much for carving time out for us. Because I spend so long reading a lot of the stuff that you write, I noticed that your headline on LinkedIn is that you're a corporate punk. What, Alex, is a corporate punk?

So I just, I got that nickname. I think it wasn't really meant in a positive way, to be honest. I think it was more like an insult. I was in a workshop, a senior person kind of told me like, what do you think you are? You're some type of corporate punk. And I was like, that's exactly what I am. I'm part of a corporate system. But of course, I try to push boundaries. This is what my role in innovation is. It's all about, you know, staying relevant in the future, you do have to push boundaries in the corporate settings too, in order to enable that. So this is where I got my nickname from, the corporate punk, but I'm now wearing it with lots of pride. And I'm trying to push the cause of actually, you know, also talking a little bit behind the scenes about what goes on in innovation when you do corporate innovation.

I used to rock up to a lot of meetings in like hoodies, like I am today, like jeans, Converse. At some client offices, that wasn't like a big problem. Others kind of, you know, I was trying to send a message that we were here to do things maybe a little bit, a little bit differently. But what are the characteristics of a corporate punk?

That's a good question. I think the dressing style is not on purpose, but I do, I do work for a bank, so I kind of try to combine sometimes not always, uh, being very classically dressed and putting a twist into it. Um, but with regards, I think it's more a character, like character type of, uh, of an attitude that I, I try to bring in. So I think when it comes to, uh, corporates, we're large organizations where there are structures, where there is maybe hierarchy, maybe there was at times maybe even old school. Um, to come in with the truthful, purpose-driven drive to, to, to kind of twist things a little bit around and maybe sometimes stretch the boundaries in order to come back to a slightly different state than it was before. And, um, and I think there are a lot of innovators in, in large companies who probably relate to that, that you have to have this amazing balance between, on one hand, you know, stretching the boundaries, but then on the other hand, not being also a complete outsider that is kind of rejected from the system. So it's my, my, my, my boss Nikki calls it the dance. You know, you, you like, you, you have to, you have to kind of fit but then not fit too much. And, and I think this is what the corporate punk is all about, right?

Um, Are there other corporate punks, Alex, inside?

Oh, for sure. Like, I can, I can see corporate punks everywhere, right? So I have— we have corporate punks also in our bank, in our group. We've been running lots of innovation programs. So we attract corporate punks kind of naturally. And especially the community, the innovation community is full of them. So I'm always very happy to You see corporate punks everywhere, people who are just trying to really make a change that makes a difference.

Do you think that this point of view, this outlook, these characteristics, these ways of being have been kind of looking back over the last 6 years that you've had at the bank, do you think that it's been a net positive? I remember kind of going into a large organization with a relatively kind of similar outlook. I don't think that I did the dance particularly well. I think that maybe I fell flat on my face, um, a little bit in trying to stretch things too far. And, you know, I just got kind of rejected by the corporate sort of antibodies. But, but looking back over the last sort of 6 years, net positive or net negative career-wise for you?

Uh, all honesty, career-wise, it depends how you define what career-wise means. Uh, so it depends why you're in it in the first place, right? If you talk about title, I wouldn't say so. I think there are better career paths if you want to move up the corporate ladder than innovation. Actually, there is even some theories which to some extent I can also relate to where you can even say, you know, innovation can even be career suicide. So, so like, if you are a person that is very much motivated, um, to climb up the corporate ladder, I would not recommend you to be in innovation. Um, frankly speaking, um, what drives me is slightly different. For me, it was always about, you know, making a change, having an impact, seeing how, how the— like, how my, my time and my effort and my energy actually moves either individually or organizationally something. And I've been— that is super net positive for me in the last 6 years. I have had so many different roles. I have learned, grown so much as a person, as an innovation expert. I have— it's not been easy. But if you're after growth, it can't be easy. You know, like you have to have the pain and the suffering. And it's a roller coaster. But— Net positive for sure. Um, and, um, more to come, more to learn, more to understand. And, uh, um, I look forward to it. So yes, but it kind of depends what type of a person you are and what's actually motivating you. Um, I don't think that this is for everyone, and it shouldn't be, you know.

I mean, there are, well, What percentage of today's, I don't know, FTSE 100, S&P CEOs are from an accountancy background proportionally? Probably lots, right? How many from like corporate innovation background? Not many. But then I guess like it's a relatively new sort of function and endeavor in terms of being formalized. I wonder in the future how, how we might see that change. Maybe there'll be one out of 100. Yeah, but definitely.

Yeah, yeah, actually, and I think, like, frankly speaking, I don't know that many executives in other companies. I have very, very few touchpoints with them, but I think I can actually talk about RBI's perspective. We've been on a learning journey also with our board and also with our CEO, for example. And our CEO has become a little innovation expert himself. So, he understands everything, what we're after, why we're doing what we're doing. That it's systematic, that it is, you know, he understands also the language that we're starting to speak. He also understands that that change can be something positive. And maybe he doesn't, you know, understand it fully, but he sees that there is something and he pushes us. And I think as an innovator, you have to have that connection to the C-suite. And even if they're not corporate innovators, I think it's also our duty to educate even the C-suite in what do you do, what we do, what would be different if they went a corporate innovation route, and what do we promise and what do we make, what kind of difference do we make. And I think that there is, I think the C-suite is understanding in general that we're undergoing cultural shifts, that the way business was done in the '90s or 2000s is not the way business is done today, and that organizations need to change. And I think some of them are seeing that innovation can be actually a very good reason and a transformative reason to go for that change. So I think it's a very exciting time to be a corporate innovator because I think we are also in an inflection point in terms of also organizational maturity where it's a good time, it's a good new exciting thing, and where we're also professionalizing our functions. more and more. So more and more innovation titles around, and that's cool to see.

So you talked about the fact that being a corporate innovator might not necessarily be the fast track to the C-suite necessarily. I heard Elon Musk, it's an old interview, but I was watching it yesterday, and he talks about entrepreneurialism. The way that he described it was like staring into the abyss or chewing glass, like the abyss is the idea that, you know, the company may not be here tomorrow and, you know, the chewing glass is dealing with all the problems that other people want to deal with. Yes, there are some subtleties, right, between intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship. But if not for career advancement, what is it, Alex, that you get out of corporate innovation? Why do you love it so much at the sake of— that kind of advancement that so many people in corporates are often seeking?

I can talk about me personally, right? So for me, I find it interesting and fascinating to work in big systems, you know, large organization complexity. It's like a riddle that I'm trying to solve, you know, and corporate innovation, there are still a lot of, like, unanswered questions, and I'd love to, you know, figure out how to solve them. And while the entrepreneurial journey is one that I'm familiar with, so I have been there, done that, I always felt that it's very much on the project, on the value proposition, very close to the customer, with the abyss as you know it, right there and you do not know whether you survive the next month or the next 3 months or however, however long you have your funding for. Um, and here you do have that excitement too, but in a completely different scale because it's, uh, I like how the entrepreneurship— there's like this, um, kind of entrepreneurship rules, you know, go to your job every day willing to get fired, to say out loud what needs to be said so that you can move your cause forward, uh, if you're not doing it for your career, but if you're doing it for the cause. cause, that it's the right kind of purpose to do it. So you do have that as well, you know, like always a little bit, as I said, on the abyss, but maybe not as extreme as it would be in an entrepreneurial setting. And I think this is also a value proposition that large organizations can still provide to entrepreneurs, maybe at different stages of their life when they also need a little bit of job security. Having said that, this is not also The job security of an entrepreneur is also not guaranteed. So it's a bit of a question to think of what every individual is looking for. For me personally, it's more the challenge, the complexity, and the intellectual challenge. I think that's the thing that holds me here for 6 years and most likely longer.

Where else could you, you know, if you, I guess if you have kind of And you kind of think, well, where else could I go where there's like an already established brand? So like credibility already exists versus like starting my own thing. There's access to, I don't know, thousands, maybe millions of customers that you can—

Customers, yes.

Access to working capital, like you're not out raising money from VC firms. every week or for every round. So yeah, like nuance, right? But there's, you know, a ton of upside. I think that point around kind of where you are in career terms is kind of super, super interesting. I mean, you've made it really clear previously that kind of people are really central to your approach to innovation. In fact, you said that innovation is not a process. Innovation is about people, and it's people who make innovation happen, not the process. Can you expand on that for me a little bit?

So I think it's both. I think it's people and process. So, and also with regards to what you said, you know, like if you're in, if you're working in a corporate, you have certain kind of synergies and things that you can use. Yes and no. I think it's really important. Sometimes I see this with when we have entrepreneurs coming in and working in our organization thinking, oh, but you have all of this. No, it's not necessarily right. You know, if you want to tap into the synergies of the organization, you need to also understand how do you manage your stakeholders and give them what's in it for them. Because Big, large, complex organizations have priorities, have backlogs. You have to fight why your item is going to be up the backlog, right? So, it's a different type of work than the entrepreneurial work that is in a startup, right? So, corporate innovation is fundamentally because of that different than entrepreneurship. But yes, you do have to have that entrepreneurial mindset and entrepreneurial entrepreneurial drive and yet understand how complex big organizations work. This is, uh, not an easy thing to find, you know, the best of those 2 worlds. But it's, it's also important to communicate that early on, especially for entrepreneurs, that it's not that you get everything served on your plate that you don't have in a startup and then you just try to know that the work is slightly, is slightly different. But when it comes to process and people, I think people mindset Is so mindset is the most important thing when it comes to innovation, because I, I sometimes underestimate how, when I look at an idea, how much thought goes without even like without process, right? Just like automated in my mind, like, aha, yeah, that's the market. Okay, desirability. What else is there? How much are they paying actually for the solution right now? Okay, that means this is the margin. Okay, this could be the total addressable I'm like, okay, maybe not that, or maybe no, it's too small, let's kick it up. You know, this thought process, which is inherently natural to me, which would be inherently natural to entrepreneurs, is not a given. It took me a really long time to understand that. And I think if you have that mindset, you either have it or you can maybe to some extent learn it, but you have to have it ingrained in yourself. And I love to work with people who have it and who can really strive, but at the same time understand that you're working in a corporate setting and that you have to also on the feasibility side work a little bit differently than you would in an entrepreneurial side. Think of banks, think of regulation, think of other things, right? So this is not the same type of animal. But I think process is also really important, especially to manage your stakeholders, to manage expectations, to manage The money, the budgets that you get to make, to make your success visible. All these things are just as important, especially in a corporate setting. So it's both, I have to insist. But if it would be a priority, of course, always people over process, right? A process without people is nothing.

And thinking about people, you know, when you're Hiring Alex into your team, what sort of— you talked about mindset a lot there, and I'm curious to know what kind of traits are non-negotiables for you when you're bringing talent into your team?

Traits. That's a good— so I think it's the ability to to navigate in uncertainty. So if you're not feeling comfortable with that, if you're under stress, if you, if you can't endure uncertainty, there, that, I think that, that would be for me knockout criteria. So, um, to like, we have managers which are great managers, but when they come in a setting where things are completely undefined, it's not, not clear yet, and, and it's fuzzy, and we're, we're dealing with data that is very fuzzy, and we need to make decisions even, even though we don't, we don't really know. If you're not feeling comfortable, you know, navigating uncertainty, then I think you would be completely wrong in our team. Um, I think it's also about, um, being a people's person, both very close to the customer. So customers centric in everything that you do. Our process is also designed to completely validate desirability and viability and everything from a customer's point of view, because we know that's number one innovation risk that we have, right? But I think it also needs to be people who the very first thing when I have an idea is like the urgency to want to go and talk to a customer about it. And not to like sit in there in their little hole and try to do it. So, and you know, these are these experiences that you make. Maybe some of you have been entrepreneurs, have done your own products and then launched it too late to the customer. And then you have realized, oh my God, I should have talked on day 2, not on month 2. You know, I've lost so much time, lost so much capital that I could have utilized better. And I think this learning experience to have had it before. for is also a trait that I always look for. So, when I ask entrepreneurs or innovators or even some of our partners, I always ask them, how did you fail? What was it that made you turn into this customer-centric type of worker? Because I think you really need to feel the experience, the painful experience of having done differently. And also, people person in terms of team player. No innovation happens on your own. It happens in teams. And it happens also in collaboration with people who not necessarily immediately want to collaborate. It's about also then the whole component of vision, purpose that holds the team together. So these would maybe be the traits that I think are particularly important when working with for corporate innovation teams. And I think entrepreneurship is quite similar in that regard too.

Yeah, I was going to say, like, that kind of chimes with what you would expect to see as part of the entrepreneurial mindset, right? Like, being comfortable with uncertainty, being kind of customer— and I guess by, you know, by the very nature of being customer-centric, being quite problem-centric, and also being able to kind of communicate and take people along on sort of a journey with you. We talked about entrepreneurs a little bit and life stages and whether corporate innovation roles may be kind of right for some people with those traits. How do you find and attract that sort of talent? Talent into the organization? Because it's hard.

Like, it's really hard.

If you were an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, you'd be like starting or doing like your own thing, maybe. But how do you find people who are just at like the right stage to come into a corporate innovation role?

And that's a very— frankly speaking, I don't know. And I'm sometimes surprised about who we can attract, you know, because of course, let's face it, right? These really super great talents that we also would need and that we look for and that we hire, if they went out and they did their, you know, were able to form a team and were able to raise capital, So the upside that they would get would be so much larger than anything we could ever provide in that bank, right? So, um, so I don't think the financial component is the thing that we can actually offer as a, as a, as a corporate, uh, to innovators like that. I think it's essentially then also this, you know, security type of thing. You know, your job it is to validate innovation, and if you fail, it's fine because it's part of your job description and you do the next idea. And to have this kind of job security— and I think even entrepreneurs, I mean, those crazy entrepreneurs that only live for entrepreneurs will never ever do anything else, we anyway will never get those, right? So like, they're out of our scope. We'd love to probably get them on board. Maybe they're even not right, I do not even know. But I, I'm not even dreaming about, you know, Elon Musk joining RBI as an innovator. or, you know, or the future Elon Musks of this world. But I think there are some people, and maybe I belong to one of these, that category too, that, you know, love the work of entrepreneurship and, and love this validation work and love doing these type of job, but know that it's a high-risk job and maybe have, you know, family, kids, um, have obligations, need maybe in, and at this particular time of their lives, also that type of job security, and we can provide that. And, and, and I think this is maybe the value proposition that a bank provides to innovators. You know, you do your job, you do the validation work, but you do have some job security and, um, and some job benefits that go with it. And of course, potentially, maybe if our, you know, innovation becomes a larger profession, maybe new opportunities might pop up. Or if you are part of one of 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 ideas that make it work, maybe this can be a future career path for you too. Because maybe we spin it out or maybe it becomes an own business line and maybe you can then drive the purpose through the corporate and also be there for the work itself. But I think this is really important. And that's why, for example, I'm not really a huge fan of these external innovation entities always. Like, you really have to be careful how you set that up because I feel that the job security component is then not there. If you, if, you know, if you, if you do not provide that job security, sometimes I'm wondering like, why are you— how can you then really attract the good people? Because what do you bring? What do you bring to the table, right? So that's— it's a very valid question. And I think it's a It's the most discussed question of entrepreneurship. Like, is it really like, do you really get entrepreneurs inside of organizations or is that essentially a myth? But I think there are people who love entrepreneurial work, who also maybe did startups, who maybe will do startups in the future, but for that moment in their life just need something else. And we can provide that, right?

I think you made a really interesting point around Sort of upside. I guess the upside here is that like there's less abyss to stare into, right?

Because to your point, like there's less risk, less return.

Yeah, like yeah, there's an element of joy and that is the and that's the trade-off. I guess I was curious to know kind of in a bank that is used to you know designing, architecting, promoting sometimes quite complex. financial products and instruments. Have you done any work at RBI to look at creative ways of compensating corporate innovators, or is it something that you've talked about?

We've definitely talked about it, but we haven't done it. I have to be 100% honest. There are different, different means and models that we've been thinking about from you know, classical pooled stock to, you know, um, when spinouts have the founders participate, uh, with some type of shares. And, and I think it's very difficult to do that on a conceptual level, and I don't think that there is an answer that fits all. I think it very much depends on the concrete case that you're looking at. I mean, and on the company that you're working for. RBI, for example, has a very, you know, in general, a very strict strategy and investment participation strategy where they want to be majority owners, etc. So how does that fit together with the innovation thing, right? So you have to find a common denominator there too. But then again, you have things like, okay, in some specific cases, you might want to do joint ventures with other industry partners and things like this. So then you have to revise that to. And this is also strategy work. So strategy work is not— sorry, innovation work. So it's not only, you know, the corporate innovation validation process, innovation process-related work, but it's also the higher level of how do you fit that into corporate strategy? And where do you make what type of also adaptations to it?

I guess one of the things that I've been thinking about lately is like, if it's not the upside in terms of thinking about creative ways to compensate entrepreneurs, and maybe that isn't like, you know, a part of the value proposition for joining a large company, I kind of wondered what the future of sort of graduate recruitment schemes might look like. And I think corporate innovators, they could be really interesting, right? Like the ability to say, to graduates that we're going to take you through, you know, kind of a multi-year program that is going to get you entrepreneur ready, right? So at some point in your life, like, go— like we talked about the life stage being, you know, maybe not, you know, young upstarts kind of straight out of university. Maybe that is the life stage, right? Maybe there is an opportunity for big corporations to train graduates on entrepreneurship so that they're ready and they understand the sector and they understand the pain points and the customer problems and things that don't work. so that they're ready then to go off and kind of do that in the future?

I mean, kind of depends what you want to achieve with that, right? So I think it's an interesting concept. And, you know, Oster is built on apprenticeship. I don't know how it is in the UK, but we have lots of, like, you know, banking apprenticeships. So you even sometimes get people out of school, 16 years old, They kind of go through understanding how banking works, and then you know they climb up the ladder. So maybe there can be innovation in apprenticeship. Why not? Right? There's also, as I know, even organizations like the Moonshot Pirates that, for example, also do this type of educational programs and entrepreneurship for kids in schools and things like this. So there is a lot of movement happening there also to acquaint young people. at the youngest age possible with entrepreneurship and that being very viable, I think, career path. Let's put it this way. And that has a nice purpose to it. But I think also when it comes to— and I want to— I'm not 100% sure that this, oh, somebody fresh out of college is going to be the super founder of tomorrow.

Yeah.

I think this is— there is a bit of a myth around this that most kind of billionaires or unicorn founders have dropped out of Harvard and have created their startups. You know, not necessarily. I mean, there's a great book called Superfounders that talks about actually the data correlations, what type of background do you need to have. And it's usually much, much older people having had even corporate jobs that become the unicorn founders, right?

Mm-hmm.

So I think it's about, it's about, you know, also maturing in innovation and maturing in entrepreneurship. So, um, I'm, I'm, I love that. I love the idea. I think there is, there is something to it, but it's also from a corporate point of view, you know, you need to kind of understand what's in it for the corporate and why would they do it? Because, you know, why would you educate then somebody knowing that they will leave and potentially even disrupt you? Exactly right. So So that's also something you need to take into consideration then. How does that fit together? And in terms of also this entire strategy, but yeah, in theory it's a good way also to gather talents. Maybe that would be the reason to do it, right?

So you have an MBA from, and I don't know how you say it, it's 2 Is it TU?

It's TU and WU. Yeah, so it's the Technical University and the Viennese University of Economics. So it's a joint program that existed back in the days where Technical University and Viennese Economic University came together and did an MBA program in entrepreneurship and innovation. Yes.

And how helpful do you think that having that really rounded knowledge has been for you? And, and do you look for that? Did you look for that kind of formal training in everyone that you bring in?

Um, a trick— tricky question, I gotta be honest with you. I mean, for me personally, I think it was— it, it did help me maybe land my job at the RBI. I have to ask my boss actually, if she ever considered that factor. But I assume it did because, you know, you also have HR processes and if you have lots of candidates applying, you know, you sometimes look for the special and then maybe it's just this one little sentence that makes a difference, right? So I think it might have played a role. If I think about what it has done to me, I think for me, the most valuable time I had in my MBA I was actually writing my master's thesis and digging really deep into something and reading academic papers that I would have never taken the time to read, you know, and digging into this material so heavily, being supervised by a great professor in strategy. And, you know, like, you know, having this opportunity to take the time to go that deep into a topic. And the stuff that I read and that I realized back then shaped my work even today, right? So for me, that was my most valuable time. And that's why I think it was very, very crucial for me to do the MBA and really made a huge difference also from a content innovation content perspective, right? So that's at least my personal journey. But if anybody listens here and wants to do an MBA, Please do a thesis on something that really interests you because it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to dig deep into it and, you know, like really put in the effort and the work to make it worthwhile.

Yeah. One of the things that I found really helpful about doing an MBA was kind of it made me fluent in other languages, like not Austrian, but like It made me fluent. Yeah, it made me fluent in the language of finance, I think, kind of probably more than any other. And that's been something that's been a huge advantage for me. Have you found that too?

Yes, yes, as well. And also understanding the complexity of different professions. If you do an MBA, you usually do also marketing and finance and this and that, and then you'll kind of like sneak peek into what is important to those different departments. And innovation is anyway like a cross-functional type of profession. So if you do innovation, you do a little bit of marketing, you step into some HR work, you step into strategy work, you step into IT work. So you step everywhere, and it's good to to then understand the different perspectives and what other people are focusing on. Yeah, very good point.

You talked to Innovators last year about your CEO, which we kind of touched on earlier, Johan, who joined in 2017.

And you talked about him being determined to leave like a legacy of innovation I believe, I believe he has never said it in that way, but, but I believe, yes, judging his actions, yes.

And I know you weren't kind of there, I don't think— were you there before Johan joined, or did you join after?

No, I joined— so, so Mr. Strobl, we're Austrian, and so, so, so we, uh, we, we— I, it would not feel right to, to, to address him first name base. But Mr. Struber has been in the bank for a very long period of time. He was a chief risk officer before, and he became the CEO in 2017. I joined just, I think, a few months later, 2018. Like 2018, I think I joined officially, May 2018. Yes, that was my start.

And I guess what I suppose the reason that I ask is that I think one of the most common questions that I get from the clients that we work with or viewers, members of the fold, is that they really struggle, especially when their leadership teams aren't kind of like design thinking, lean startup, agile natives. They really kind of struggle to take them on the journey. What advice would you give to those people as they seek I guess, generate the kind of support that you've been able to generate at RBI?

Patience. So I think patience, patience is key. And I think we, we did well in bringing in different people, different experts, saying the same thing from different angles. And that also helps, you know, because— and that, like, it's a learning journey. So, like, the more you hear it from different angles, you get to hear the message, the more you start understanding it, right? And lots of patience because it's not going to happen overnight. And I think, I believe Mr. Strobl has understood where there is something happening in the banking industry. He's feeling something's happening with the people. It needs a change. And he was the first one to actually establish an innovation function at all, you know, and creating the first innovation programs and, you know, pushing that topic and making innovation part of our mission. and everything on that, with that regard. And I think you need somebody up the C-suite, maybe not the CEO, but somebody up there to have that intrinsic drive to do this, because this is not a walk through the park. You need the stamina to push through this. And if you're a board member that is not in it for the cause, but you're kind of in it for— Money. I don't know, the bonus anyhow, not because innovation is not bonus generating, it's more long-term. But if you're, if you're, if you're not in it for the fame or anything, it will eventually stop, right? Then you end up in this, in this fallacy of potentially doing only innovation theater, right? You know, the events, people talk about you as being innovative, but actually when you like scratch the surface, you understand you're not really that. operative. Um, and so my advice is find the ally on the C-suite that is in it for the right reasons and, um, and patiently educate them and provide them whatever you believe they need right now to make their next learning journey step. And, um, and it will not happen overnight. And I would also highly recommend, if you are in an innovation function, you want to make something big, Do not do it if you do not have the support from the upper level, because it might eventually kick you in the ass. I have no better word, for lack of better words, because the moment something becomes a little bit more difficult, more serious, my experience shows that's the first thing to be cut. So we're also patient with also how we scale and how we roll out things. And sometimes I mean, we take sometimes years until we actually get decisions and, um, and, and feel it's right to make the next step forward. And we always— you— I sometimes even hear some of the board members like, why are you always choosing the difficult path and the difficult route? And for us, it's just, it's not about choosing the difficult route, it's just making sure that everybody knows what we're after and aligning expectations and really making sure they understand what we're after and what we stand for when they make the decision, not just get for approval and hope for the best.

Talked about it's really important that they have kind of an intrinsic drive to want to do this. I think a lot of people that I talk to ask me, how can I best convince them? Do you think that they can be convinced, or do you think that it has to be an intrinsic internal drive to want to do things differently, to explore new products, new markets?

So there is kind of like several reasons on why the C-suite or the CEO, board, whoever would be interested to invest into innovation. Usually there are like 3, 4 reasons. One is about survival, then there is about hunting for growth. And then there's the whole transformational component. And in theory, a CEO should have, at least from a business point of view, one of these 3 goals anyhow, right? Or maybe even a combination of all 3 in one way or another. But, and that's the big but, there is a cavity here because— a caveat here because if you A CEO sometimes stays for 4 years. Innovation, for it to be successful, sometimes takes longer than 4 years. So if it's just about the business, if it's just about the KPIs, there's no reason for somebody in the C-suite to support you because the fruition will happen after the mandate potentially. And so then it doesn't work. And this is why I really believe the intrinsic motivation is actually key. Um, but I also think that most C-suite ladies and gentlemen that I ever— as I said, not too many, but I had the opportunity to meet— do have that. And, and it makes, it makes them, makes them actually peculiar. I, I very rarely have seen somebody who's just hunting, um, hunting for, for the bonus, especially in Europe, continental Europe. Maybe UK is already— US a bit of a different animal. But in general, I see a lot of them, you know, especially also in European companies, older companies, you know, legacy, leaving something behind also becomes a very big motivator and changing something for the good of everyone.

I mean, so much of CEO compensation is linked to share price. I don't know what more of an intrinsic sort of motivation there could be for kind of finding growth and surviving. But that's really That's a really interesting, interesting answer. You also, from the same sort of session, I think that I'm sort of referencing, you talked about you really at RBI want to try and drive 2 outcomes with innovation, right? So the first was finding product market fit for new ideas, obviously. The second was transforming the bank culturally, I guess a little bit more broadly by enabling everybody to think and act entrepreneurially. If you could only achieve one of two of those outcomes, which ones would you pick?

So you're asking me would it be culture or output, which one would I go for?

Yeah.

But they need themselves both. I don't think you can go for one without the other. So let me, let me try to elaborate that. If you're aiming output, if you want to create new business, if you want to bring in new revenue, you need to code the cultural transformation to make it happen. You need the people, you need the processes, you need the change, you need the change also to be able to scale. So if you want the output, you need to think in transformation and culture. And at the same time, if you want culture only, you can't just get it without output. Nobody transforms for the sake of transforming, you know. You transform for the purpose of something, of advancing something. So I think culture and output are so intertwined. And I It's not that you can't decide which one is more important. And maybe you design programs when— where one is more important than the other. Fair enough. Where you're— I don't know, you do innovation programs which are focused on cultural transformation, but only— but working on output, but you do not measure the output, you measure the cultural transformation. Fair enough. But I, I really do not believe in the success of transforming for the sake of transforming. I believe you transform always with with the aim of doing something differently, with the aim of pushing something to a customer, with the aim of changing, of improving, not with the aim of just transforming. So that would be my answer to that. There will maybe be other programs where you focus on output rather than the cultural transformation. But I think you need to focus on both. You can't take one without the other. And it's not just because you You can't decide, it's just because they're inherently codependent on each other.

Kind of, I guess, thinking about driving towards those 2 outcomes, culture, you know, a shift in culture and, you know, successful outputs in terms of, you know, validated businesses, products, services, hopefully growing. What is something that you've spent a lot of time doing over the last 6 years at RBI that for other innovators listing at other companies, they should skip entirely, in your opinion? What is something that you wish you hadn't spent so much time on?

Hmm, that's a really good question. And I think a lot of innovation experts would love me to say, ah, don't do the innovation theater. And I actually disagree with that. I think the innovation theater we needed to do in the beginning so that we, you know, get people engaged and, you know, bring people on board and, you know, make even the C-suite feel the difference because this is not only about, you know, understanding the difference but also feeling that something else is happening there. And I just wonder, what would you not do? Frankly speaking, I don't think I would— I don't think I would skip anything because everything that we did, and a lot of things did not work. I have to be honest. Like, we—

Yeah. Yeah, right.

But I think we needed to try them, figure them out, understand that it doesn't work so that we could learn and get where we are here today. And I don't think we could have skipped these steps. So maybe the only personal advice that I can give of what I would, I would, I would say I would skip, skip, is building much more empathy from the very first moment on and trying to put myself into the shoes of my fellow business people and not assuming that things— like if it is so sensible that it won't work, but always think like, okay, why is this person not reacting in a way I was hoping? Like what's— behind that? What's, what's the— like, you know, putting your empathy mode on, um, that makes— would have made my personal life much more easier. Because sometimes when you understand, okay, this person is coming from a completely different angle, you know, coming with the assumption this is not a person that is a bad person, it's a good person, it's a smart person. We— I work with only smart people in this company, right? It's a smart person. They're acting in a way that I do not understand. What could it be? And even maybe even addressing the elephant in the room even much more, and then immediately assuming, oh, this is a person who doesn't belong to, you know, the type of people I want to work with, because then you're, you're not going to be successful. And that would be maybe just on a personal level, the thing that I would tell you to skip is like, always go in with the mindset of the person opposite of you is doing their job, they're smart, they're good. If they're not behaving the way you were assuming, to try to understand why that is. rather than, you know, pushing your agenda. That would be— but in terms of everything that we did, I don't think I could actually say, oh, we could have skipped that. No, but then we wouldn't have learned that, and then it wouldn't have been that way. So it's a complex system, right? So you move yourself forward bit by bit with failure by failure.

There's a couple of really interesting things there, isn't there? I think that like the Venn diagram overlap between Type A personalities and corporate innovators would be quite large. I think there's an overlap, and Type A personalities are not particularly well known for their kind of empathy and patience, which I think is interesting and might be something that holds a lot of corporate innovators back. The other thing that you said that I thought was really interesting was that you needed like a little bit of theater. I think that's such an interesting insight because actually Actually, if you can only do what you can get away with, and this is what you can get away with for now to start shifting the culture and start opening people's eyes, then maybe it is kind of harmless, right? If it's not like crazy, you know, if we're not betting the house, right?

Exactly. Like, if, you know, some organizations are also not ready for innovation, and that's the only thing that they're ready for. And then that should be okay as well. But the only thing that you have to be then careful, if you're, you know, if you're a sphere of influence and your ability of innovating is just to do innovation theater right now, do it. But just be very clear about managing expectations. You know, I think that's the fallacy that we're then overpromising and underdelivering, right? So you can say we're going to have a cultural element, et cetera. We do not expect business output because we don't have ABCDEFG, right? But I think we needed the huff and the puff. We did lots of big events, and we needed that. This was the right thing to do at that right time. And we were also lucky to have really lots of senior management support that was also patient with us when we come back and we say, okay, we did this now, and we learned this doesn't work, this doesn't work, this here we failed, this we failed, this we failed, this we did. And in the beginning, it was a bit like, oh my God, we're the only people bringing problems. But it builds such also trust relationship, you know, that now next year we did it better and we did it already different and they could see the difference. So they were like, aha, okay, cool. And, you know, you, you develop and develop further and this will continue to be the way forward for us, right? As I said, advancement failure by failure.

What do you think that you've mastered over the last sort of 6 years, and what do you feel like you're still learning? Or what do you think you've come closest to mastering? There's no one Ever really masters anything, right? But what do you feel like you're still learning?

I think what we have been able to achieve is to show the benefits of doing something systematically and demystifying that innovation is about pick— being lucky and picking the right idea. I think, I think that understanding, that understanding of that's not what we're after. And that's what you will get with us that is there. Not sure if everybody believes it, that's a different story. But at least the understanding that that's not what we stand for, that we believe systematically by innovating, by having a large number of projects that you start, that you evidence-based, you know, discontinue in order for that one to pop up that will compensate for the failures of the others. I think that we have been able to communicate quite well to the people who need to also know. Not everybody needs to know that, but we're— I think we need to make this even more— scale this even more in the organization of people understanding what's the difference when you do explore and exploit. And, you know, communicating the big picture of innovation because explore exploit innovation is also truly important. And, but we have to fit this together. And I think that's something we can still advance. And I think where we are in our baby shoes, but I'm really proud that we are where we are, is evidence-based decision-making. So not making decisions based on gut feeling, and I like this project, and I like this, but doing— making decisions based on evidence that we see from the market, etc. We started doing this in the last years. It's, it's, it's, I think it's a learning process for all of us. And it's not always easy, but it is much more helpful for everyone involved because it creates transparency, it creates structure, it just helpful. And I think, I think we still have to learn a lot as an organization on how to do that. But that's something I am, I think we're really, really proud of as well, you know, that we started making evidence-based decisions, and we are committed to doing evidence-based decisions. I think that is really, really cool.

That's really interesting. And it's, I think, a big learning curve for a lot of organizations, because historically, like pre-Lean Startup or pre kind of lean coming into the boardroom, most executives were kind of rewarded for just having the right opinion, right? So, you know, kind of, and, you know, picking winners rather than seeing kind of which winners emerge. And I think it's such a learning curve because all of a sudden you have to kind of like, it feels, it feels feels like you're adding less value. It's not my opinion, it's not me picking a winner. But I think that's where kind of where the tension comes from is that, well, I'm just observing kind of what happens. I'm just making data-based decisions. Like I'm no longer being rewarded for guessing correctly.

Yes. And I think that's a really good point. And I don't understand if everybody understands the mechanisms of what that does. You know, you're paid for having the right opinion or being right on your bets, right? First of all, that is the perfect nurturing ground for, you know, C-suite darlings. You know, these projects that actually everybody knows they're not gonna work, but somebody in the C-suite loves them and pushes them no matter what, because they believe that that's what the organization needs, right? And like every— this is the corporate innovator's nightmare, you know, like managing it, portfolio managing it, you know, hands-off people, like people try to avoid it. It's like the devil in, you know, the devil in innovation, the CEOs or the C-suite's darling world, right? Um, and I think it's, it's, it's this mechanism of, ah, but I am, you know, I'm paid to make these type of decisions, and I know, and I am, I am there because of that, because I've done it in the past. But especially when it comes to innovation and exploring innovation, so innovation that is outside of your sphere of your maybe even expertise, you know, if for example we move towards non-banking, right, then I Like, one has to also say, is like gut feeling is the sum of your experiences, right? So is your gut feeling right? Are these— is the sum of the experiences that we're taking into consideration the right one for you to make that decision right now? And, you know, this is, uh, this is a conversation we've not been having very explicitly. I think we've had once, um, um, an expert coming in and challenging our board on that. You know, like you can't make gut feeling decisions when you're talking about uncertainty and explore because it's not aligned with your expertise. So you're making decisions based on data that you believe is true, but actually it's not. It's actually, yeah, you're bringing in the bias. So it's much smarter for you to act systematically. And that really, I think, made a bit of a shift in understanding, aha, okay, that's the reason why. I can't pick, you know, and it's like, you can't pick the winners without picking the losers. And also, you know, you have to think about VCs that do this for a living, 9 to 5, have a, have a hit rate of 10%. You who don't do that 9 to 5, how, why would you expect that you're so much better than them? And these are really good arguments, you know, to, to explain also decision makers and innovation that When you're innovation, you're making other type of decisions and you shouldn't be making it based on your gut feeling because of the reasons that I had just mentioned before.

It's interesting because it undermines the fallacy of the corporate genius investor, doesn't it, essentially? And I think some people don't like that, but we'll move on from that, Alex, to my kind of final question. So 6 years now at RBI, what would have to happen over the next 6 years for you to look back and say they've been really successful?

I think that we really continue this evidence-based decision-making and that we professionalize our work even much more in terms of eating our own dog food, measuring our measuring our most critical assumptions along the way to kind of design this perfect ecosystem. Um, and, um, and saying— staying truthful to our cause and not, you know, being, being this team that we are where, you know, corporate politics is playing not a big role but the outcome, and we're all in it for the— for for the cause, for, you know, pushing this organization, for making sure that Raiffeisen is a name that even our grandkids know. And that would be, I think that would be something I'd love to look back to if we had the possibility and the ability to do that kind of outcome, but also staying on that path and staying also truthful to ourselves.

Amazing. Alex, you've been such a brilliant guest. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks a lot for having me.

We're running over, and I know that someone will just come to that room and say, I have this room booked now. So I'll let you go.

Yes, that might happen, but it's my colleague, so it's fine. I told her, please, can you please knock and make sure that I'm out of the room? But thanks a lot for having me. It was a pleasure, and see you soon.

Have a great rest of the week. Thanks, Alex.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye-bye, all the best. Ciao ciao.