This thesis represents the result of a graduation project for the master programme Strategic Project Design of Delft University of Technology, carried out in collaboration with INNOPAY. The approach that is used to successfully complete the graduation project, is based on the Double Diamond model. According to the conducted iterative design process, the main topics of the thesis are summarised.

INNOPAY
INNOPAY is a consultancy agency which is committed to creating a world in which all people and organisations confide in and use digital transactions. The company's corresponding mission is to guide organisations worldwide to fully embrace the opportunities of the digital transactions ecosystem. The originally Dutch company often operates at the cutting edge of business, technology and legislation. Payments, digital identity, e-business and cybersecurity, are digital transactions related areas in which the company excels.

The challenge
The retail banking industry is transforming to a more open ecosystem. Due to the implementation of new European regulations, mind-blowing new technologies, increased competition and a change in customer behaviour and expectations. However, it is unclear what new products and services could emerge in the Dutch Open Banking ecosystem that are of true relevance to customers. To stay at the forefront of digital transactions, INNOPAY seeks to obtain a better understanding of innovative products and services that can be realised as the openness in the financial landscape will move forward. Therefore, the aim of the graduation project is to design a representative concept from the retail banking customer's point of view that could fit in the future emerging Dutch Open Banking ecosystem.

The Dutch retail banking industry
Dutch retail banking is generally known as mass-market banking and is strictly regulated and dominated by a small number of large national banks. The financial landscape originally has a very conservative and closed character, and is typified by a lack of innovation. Within the boundaries of the law, the banks are fully in control.

The four emerging forces
The transformation of the retail banking industry is caused by four emerging forces, namely: the implementation of new European regulation (1), an increase of competition (2), technological advancements (3) and a change in customer behaviour (4).

The implementation of Payment Service Directive 2 (PSD2) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) act as a catalyst for the concept of Open Banking. PSD2 is introduced in order to improve customer protection, stimulate innovation, lower costs in the payments value chain and increase the security of European retail payment services. A controversial key aspect of this regulation is, that it obliges retail banks to grant licensed third parties access to the customer online accessible accounts, if the customer has given explicit consent for this. GDPR is a privacy regulation which aims to strengthen and unify data protection for all customers within the European Union.

Non-traditional players are entering the retail banking industry. FinTech and BigTech companies are upending the status quo by surpassing the expectations of the retail banking customer. In order to prevent becoming a back office utility, retail banks are forced to develop truly relevant innovations.

The rise of open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) provides the possibility to securely share data, content and functionalities. Additionally, multiple business rationales stimulates parties to open up their digital doors.

The ongoing digital transformation causes that the customer expects to be offered personalised support and seamless to use digital products and services.

Open Banking
Open Banking ecosystems stand for the totality of interconnected systems of individual customers, third parties (non-banking) and other financial institutions, which by means of multisided platform business models enables exchange of value and data via open APIs.

Open Banking embodies a real evolution which stimulates innovation, enables openness and puts the customer in control over their financial data. Combining banking resources with non-banking resources, enables parties to develop truly relevant products and services for the customer.

The voice of the customer
The voice of the customer is represented by a customer profile which consists of the following key aspects:

The most important jobs to be done concern the control and management of financial transactions, the activity to get the most out of their money, the optimisation of time spent to recurring activities and achieving savings goals.

The most extreme pains related to doing banking business are caused by a lack of context, a lack of continuous feedback, a lack of discipline and the absence of an incentive.

The most essential gains are a more informative overview, relevant guiding advice, products or service that are flexible in use, more informative updates and motivational incentives.

The Dutch retail banking customer needs to be supported in pursuing optimal control over their finances, because they want to be enabled to live now and be prepared for the future in a time efficient and effortless way, so they can get the most out of their money.

MoneyMaster
The voice of the customer is translated into a representative concept, which is called MoneyMaster.

MoneyMaster is a customer-driven Open Banking service which via a conversational interface proactively the Dutch retail banking customer empowers to have optimal control over their finances in a time efficient and effortless manner. MoneyMaster utilises banking resources, non-banking resources and advanced cognitive technologies to serve optimally as the customer's digital financial assistant in a contextual enriched and intelligent manner. The smart chatbot is channel agnostic, 24/7 available, has an unconquered response time and is capable to mimic human behaviour.

MoneyMaster does not solely offer an interesting perspective for the customer, but moreover opens up new opportunities from a business perspective. The opportunities that MoneyMaster creates, are both financially and non-financially related and applies to both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) context.

However, with regard to the final design of MoneyMaster, also multiple challenges are identified. The biggest challenge relates to the public's increasing privacy awareness which makes people hesitant to share (financial) data. Therefore, new innovative products and services such as MoneyMaster need to be provided by reliable parties that clearly communicate which data is used for what reason.

This master thesis is part of the Horizon 2020 funded research project Personalized Airport Systems for Seamless Mobility and Experience (PASSME). The goal of this research project is to reduce door-to-door travel time for passengers (PAX) traveling within Europe by 1 hour and at least improve the overall travel experience for 70% of all PAX.

Earlier research has indicated that by eliminating traditional luggage actions and processes from the PAX’s journey, an average of 32 minutes can be saved. Through the introduction of a door-to-door luggage service, PAX are enabled to send their luggage ahead of their journey. Thereby, eliminating the need to travel simultaneously with their Check-In luggage and bypassing all traditional C.I. luggage processes. This research focused on which customer segment should be target, how this service could be realized from a hospitality perspective, and how a marketing strategy can be designed to drive service adoption.

The adoption of new product and services are dependent on certain risk and acceptance criteria (Evans et al. 2013). Through qualitative research, it was found that the most important risk and acceptance criteria related to the door-to-door luggage service, where the level of compatibility, trialability, relative advantage, financial risk and functional risk.

Research showed that the majority of PAX have a specific booking order when it comes to booking their trip, in which they first arrange their flight and ancillaries after which they will book their accommodation. Combining this problem with the lack of general awareness concerning door-to-door luggage services means that the chances that a PAX will book a luggage ancillary through the accommodation supplier is slim to none.

An analysis of the hospitality sector showed that Tour Operators are hospitality establishments that are fully vertically integrated and manage their own booking flows. Moreover, as families traveling with young children is an important customer segment for such establishments makes them the perfect hospitality business to offer the service.

A study in ancillary strategies identified that more expensive ancillaries can be seen as extravagant and too expensive far from the use state (Travelport, 2017). Thus, the question arises how to convince PAX to make use of a more expensive luggage ancillary, without prior experience or knowledge, and far from the use state.

Instead of trying to sell PAXs an expensive luggage ancillary without any prior knowledge or experience, it is suggested to offer PAXs who have bought regular luggage ancillaries with the ability to have their luggage shipped back-home on their return journey. Therefore, the initial experience with the service is seen as a priming tool to drive returning purchases for the next holiday. Thereby, creating a more loyal customer base.

To realize this back-home service, a new online customer journey was designed which acts as an extension of the current app and online platform of the Tour Operator. Additionally, a set of offline touchpoint were designed to approach PAXs who were not able or reluctant to make use of the online touchpoints.

Furthermore, to create more awareness and drive recurring sales a referral strategy was designed in which both the sender as the receiver of the referral are rewarded. Thus, stimulating further ancillary sales and create brand loyalty. To help implement both the back-home service as well as the referral strategy a blueprint explaining the necessary resources and processes is developed.

Startups are the possible corporates of the future and entrepreneurs are the millionaires of the future. To obtain these future corporates as a customer, ING wants to be there for them at the start. Therefore ING has set the goal to become “the startup bank of the Netherlands”. ING wants to offer startups more than a bank account; access to knowledge, a network and investors. To realise this ambition ING started the Startup Squad two years ago. With the goal of ING to become the startup bank of the Netherlands, their purpose is to be not only the bank, but also the partner of both startup and investor. To become a partner it is important that there is a value transfer between the participating parties. In the current product offer of the squad, the main focus used to be on the investor side. This resulted in an uneven balance of the portfolio. To have a fitting product offer for both customer groups, the research question for this project was established; “Discover the value which can be realised between startups and ING, and how this can be realised into a successful product or service”. The setup of the graduation project is based on the Double Diamond design process (Council, 2005). The red line through the project is dominated by this process as the project is split up in the four phases: discovery, define, develop and deliver Discovery & Define First an analysis is performed to obtain deeper insights on the current situation. The analysis is split up in an internal and an external analysis. The internal analysis focusses of the strengths of the squad and ING. The squad is a relatively new team, this results in the opportunity of not having a clear objective. Depending on the opportunities, the team could change their strategy. ING has a strong purpose throughout the whole organisation. This provides a good framework to work within and to develop products around. The external analysis provides new insights on the market around the Startup Squad and ING. The competitor wheel shows the diversity of the saturated market for startups in common. By executing the strategic value curve, it became clear that here was room for improvement on the abilities of providing tailor made advice and face-to-face attention. Adjusting the scope to a niche of the later stage startup created a starting point for the consumer research. Develop Conducting qualitative interviews with both later stage startups and serial entrepreneurs, revealed the struggles later stage startups experience with the professionalisation of their startup. The term professionalisation can be split up in the four problem clusters; human resource management, finance, insurance and legal. An interesting insight is that startups enjoy to work with the unknown, dealing with these struggles is what drives them. In order to create a solution to these discoveries, a design statement was drafted; I will design a tool where the professional network of ING can help later stage startups with one of the four defined problem clusters by bringing together both parties to stimulate synergy. Ideation sessions with both SPD students and ING employees resulted in solutions to the design statement. The main outcome focussed on bringing together experts and startups to share knowledge by creating synergy. Three concepts were drafted and presented to the squad, the different concepts together had several touch points with a possible customer journey. The squad was looking for a more complete product, therefore the strengths of the concepts were combined into the Founders Club. Deliver The Founders Club is a portal which can provide an answer to the customer’s question. Based on the four problem clusters, two channels are exclusively accessible for members; A call service and physique meetups. Real value between ING and a later stage startup can occur by establishing a relationship. In brief, a relationship is an accumulation of touch points with the customer. The different elements will reinforce each other by placing them in line. The key is to have a two way conversation between customer and ING. The design of the service can function as an incentive to start building this relationship for ING. It is of great value to conduct a validation over a longer period to detect what triggers the customer and if ING can provide the requested value. 

In the ever changing world we live in, companies have to constantly adapt to stay relevant. More and more large organizations do this by starting up innovation hubs next to their established business. ING is one such company that has started up an hub which they call their innovation studio. ING sees this as a necessity due to developments of new technologies (e.g. blockchain and artificial intelligence) and the installation of new legislation (e.g. PSDII and MFIDII). ING’s approach to this is by setting up corporate ventures (i.e. internal and external) guided by their own method on innovation: PACE. While the innovation studio has been established, the people working there are still influenced by ING’s corporate conditions. Within the innovation studio the CINO team has observed that these corporate conditions potentially inhibit the ventures coming to disruptive or radical outcomes. The corporate conditions in this involve policies and procedures such as performance management. From this perspective, a research question for this thesis was established;

How can policies and procedures such as performance assessment, career planning and recognition be tailored to stimulate entrepreneurial behavior in corporate project teams at ING so that there is a higher likelihood of disruptive or radical outcomes.

To help structure the research and thesis, a design framework is derived from a model of organizational change called Leavitt’s diamond. This design framework consists of four components (i.e. structure, challenge, people and solution) which all connect to part of the research question. The goal in this thesis was to come to a solution by first analyzing the other three components.

First an analysis is performed to come to a fundamental distinction between two parts (i.e. corporate and innovation) of ING’s organization. This is done based on the theory of ambidexterity which states that for a company to be successful, it needs to be thrive in both exploitation of current business models and the exploration of new ones. A big difference between the two organizational parts is found in the journey an employee goes through. The exploitation part of the organization sees employees going through a linear journey climbing the corporate ladder while those in exploration go through more of a continuous process of joining and rejoining projects.

Following on this the challenge in this thesis ,performance management for innovation (i.e. exploration), is analyzed. To do this, a performance management framework is created.
By combining the performance management framework with the employee innovation journey, a matrix of micro challenges is established. These micro challenges are quantitatively tested to come to a challenge of focus of this thesis which is: “unclarity about what happens if-and when a venture ends”. It is then tested how this challenge affects the people working in ING’s internal ventures. The people working in these ventures mostly influenced are determined to be intrapreneurs. The challenge of unclarity creates an uncertainty regarding their own position with them. This uncertainty leads to them not performing optimally towards the end of their corporate venture’s acceleration and thus is likely to inhibit this process
In order to create a solution for this, a design vision is composed:

To design a solution that allows intrapreneurs working in internal corporate ventures to perform optimally by taking some of their perceived uncertainty away.

Through a synthesis, it is determined that the best way to take some uncertainty away is by providing these intrapreneurs with an opportunity. This opportunity should consist of two perspectives: opportunity to ‘explore’ and to ‘manifest’. Based on this, a framework of three boundary phases is conceived to create a concept on. This concept is developed through multiple brainstorms and eventually tested through validation with experts from five different fields. Key-takeaways from the concept validation are used to iterate the concept towards a solution. This solution, called PRIDE, intends to create a community of intrapreneurs. This community should function as both a poule of capable intrapreneurs for ING as well as a social group of them exchanging knowledge and experiences. PRIDE is established by a program consisting of three elements: onboarding, community building and innovation mobility. Facilitating this program is a digital community of intrapreneurs integrated into ING’s portfolio application. Through this, possible journey of an intrapreneur through this program could be established. PRIDE is to be implemented over a period of more than three years based on ING’s innovation strategy.