Design Thinking for Banking

The programme is a combination of group led discussions and presentations, together with practical case studies and exercises mainly in syndicates of participants. The training is experiential and participants are encouraged to share their own experiences and contribute to group dynamics.

Over the past decade, “design thinking” has grown to become the leading approach to design. Whether being used to design businesses, products or services, design thinking has swept through nearly all industries.
Design-thinking can often lead to innovative solutions that may revolutionise a business or even entire industries (think of Apple in computing). Design-thinking achieves these results by putting customers at the centre of a multi-disciplinary structured design process. In the last year, leading finance and banking organisations have begun to adopt a deep design thinking approach. In this two-day workshop, we will explore design thinking and see how it can be used in banking and finance. Attendees will learn what design thinking is and will get trained in how to practice design thinking themselves – and how to help infuse a culture of design thinking in their organisations. They will also see how some of the world’s leading corporations use this approach to develop new products/services and thereby gain valuable competitive advantages. 

Whether you are interested in crafting new market offerings, improving your customer relationships or just being a more open and innovative organisation, this course will deliver valuable insights from the ground up. We will start with an introduction into what design thinking is (and ISN’T!) – we will look at its history and roots to gain an in-depth deep understanding of the design thinking approach. We will go on to explore a wide-range of topics, strategies, methods and approaches to innovation. The interactive sessions will involve group work, case study materials, videos and a range of hands-on activities to generate deeper understanding. This short course will provide you with fresh insights into how design thinking can help innovate and inform a wide range of your strategic business choices. 

Participant profile

• Few businesses today are experiencing such rapid change as those who specialise in financial services. What we today call a “bank” may look quite different in a few years’ time. This programme is innovative and ground breaking designed to encourage senior bankers to use their creativity to respond to and anticipate changes in financial products and services. Participants will take away practical tools to enable them to shape their organizations across areas such as customer engagement, new product design, organizational structure, new business strategies, and learning and development frameworks.

Day 1

Understanding design thinking

• Morning Session: Design Thinking – From buildings, through objects, to innovations in products and services
• The aim of the morning session is to introduce attendees to design thinking. Starting with some early examples taken from a range of industries (product design, architecture and urban planning), we will follow the evolution of design thinking.
• This trek will allow us to gain both a better understanding of design thinking and also an appreciation of what is (and isn’t) “new” in this approach. A “beginners guide” to design thinking, this session will provide the background, grounding, and framework for latter portions of the programme.

Lunch with workshops and group activities
Afternoon Session: Bringing Users to the Centre

• The aim of the afternoon session is to begin practising design thinking in the banking industry.
• Practical tools and concepts will be explored and tested in group situations, and through exploring case studies of successful design led programmes in some major multinational organizations, as well as financial institutions.

Day 2

Design thinking in practice
Morning Session: Design Thinking (re)Evolutions

• In the morning session, we will explore a range of design-led innovations. We will study these innovations within their broader context and using a semi-structured “complication” approach. By doing this, we will start to understand how design-led solutions might be developed or evolved within attendee organisations.

Lunch with workshops and group activities

Afternoon Session: Innovations from Design-Thinking

• In the afternoon session, we will explore ways of using design-thinking to craft user-focused innovations. Intriligator will share several well-tested approaches for creating design-led innovations. We will work through examples of how they can be applied to a range of banking-related issues. Then via small-group interactions we will put the framework to use, developing products or new refinements to current products, which we will then test and critique.
• Students will exit with working methodologies for approaching design-led product innovations.