How do you get an ideation initiative off the launchpad and into orbit?
At TD Bank, the iD8 internal innovation program has collected tens of thousands of ideas — and implemented thousands — since its inception in 2019. InnoLead spoke with Vlora Muslimi, a senior manager at the bank, about the role of open and challenged-based ideation; ensuring sustainability by rewarding and recognizing participants; and how metrics for success have evolved with the program. Publicly-held TD Bank traces its roots back to 1955, and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.
This interview is part of our new research initiative, Making Innovation an Enduring Capability.
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About the ID8 Program
My responsibilities include leading the iD8 program. It’s essentially a crowdsourcing program internal to the bank. It enables colleagues regardless of their role to submit ideas big or small around how to make something better and how to innovate.
iD8 was formally started in 2019, but various forms of the program actually began even earlier, sometimes under different names. It was a grassroots program that started across various areas of the bank, especially when it comes to businesses having the most interactions with customers. They had the most ideas about what we can do to make customer interactions even better.
Ideas can be process changes, simplifying processes or removing barriers for customers. For example, if certain transactions currently require customers to visit a branch, allowing them to complete these transactions remotely.
We have a technology solution that enables employees to submit their ideas. They provide a title and describe the idea, and the benefit (saves time, effort, or money). On the back end, champions in different lines of business evaluate the ideas, prioritize the ideas that stand out, and work with various lines of business to implement them. We updated the technical platform to Planbox (now HYPE Innovation) in 2024, which enables more collaboration between businesses.
Challenge-Based Innovation
We’ve really anchored on challenge-based innovation. Although we still have open ideation available to employees, we have each line of business sponsoring different challenges for problems they really want to solve. There’s a very clear beginning and you run the challenge for, let’s say, a month, and you decide the winning ideas, and go ahead and implement them. That has been a game changer for us.
Challenge-based innovation provides the business with the ability to solve problems they really want to solve.
Challenge-based innovation provides the business with the ability to solve problems they really want to solve. The beauty of open innovation is you can find ideas that you didn’t know existed, and keep that innovation ongoing, and the majority of ideas still come from open innovation. When it comes to challenge-based innovation, any business leader can decide what’s keeping them up at night. You put forward a problem statement, and then you leverage the talent across the enterprise to solve that particular challenge, and you have the ability to look at it from different perspectives. You’re not limited to implementing one solution.
We had an enterprise-wide challenge about how best to support people with disabilities and many ideas came through. Challenges can really be anything. I’ve seen challenges highly focused around automation to make colleagues’ lives easier, customer irritants, and financial literacy. The problem can be anything under the sun — it’s just a matter of if it’s a big priority for your business.
Recognizing Contributions of All Kinds
We’ve realized that a critical component of innovation is to reward and recognize contributors — the idea submitters and other contributors to the program, such as a champion on the back end, working with partners to prioritize ideas and implement ideas. These are all critical roles and in order to maintain that process and add fuel to the fire, it’s important that rewards and recognition are present and continuously reevaluated to ensure people feel like they’re being seen and appreciated. People can be intrinsically motivated to contribute, but it is so important to have that external motivation as well.
We work with the individual businesses to state the problem they want to solve. It takes a lot of time and energy to craft the problem, interpret it appropriately, and set parameters around the challenge — the duration, expectations, and commitments which the business will make to participants. One of the worst things that can happen is that someone runs a challenge, and there’s no communication about what happens with those ideas. You can see how it could very easily demotivate people. To avoid this, we work with the business to define their commitment to idea implementation, estimated timeline for implementation, and communication plan for participants. We also help to identify the reward or recognition for the winning team or individual.
We work together to make sure a challenge is managed appropriately and moves along to the different phases. Once businesses have run a couple of challenges, they become more independent. However, every challenge is a little different, and we’re here to help.
Metrics and Best Practices
As an organization, we wanted to nourish and follow the community in terms of how they wanted to run innovation, as it was a grassroots approach when these efforts began. We’ve taken best practices from various different programs, and we also look externally to understand how to best tweak the program.
When we first started, a key metric was the number of submissions because it showed quality engagement. As the program matured, the rate of implementation became a key metric…
The metrics change as the program evolves. When we first started, a key metric was the number of submissions because it showed quality engagement. As the program matured, the rate of implementation became a key metric — the conversion rate in terms of making those ideas come to light. We’re also leaning more into the value piece of innovation. The other thing you want to look at is if you’re solving the problems that you really want to solve. You could be solving a lot of great problems, but if they’re not a priority for your organization, you may be spending resources and effort on something that may not be top priority.
We want to continue to improve that level of innovation and encourage more colleagues to participate and contribute in different ways. We also want to think about the role of artificial intelligence, whether that be segmenting ideas, prioritizing them in a more efficient way, or finding insights around ideas being submitted.
Vlora Muslimi is Senior Manager at TD Bank Group.
Featured image by Hugo Breyer on Unsplash
