Executive Summary
New ideas fail for many reasons. The timing may not be right. The research may be flawed. The audience may be mismatched. The marketing, messaging, pricing, or business model may be broken. Most often, however, new ideas fail because the people behind them lose patience, faith, or will.
In credit union innovation we need dreamers. We need doers. We need leaders willing to give new ideas a chance. We need grit.
What is the research about?
In this publication you will find eight new ideas created by credit union executives from all across North America for the Filene Research Institute’s i3 program. Over a six-month period starting in October 2011, i3 teams began looking for ways to responsibly solve pressing consumer and credit union problems. This publication includes the concepts created during that time and presented at Filene’s May 2012 i3 meeting in San Francisco. Some need tweaking. Some are ready for implementation. All are worth considering.
What are the credit union implications?
The implications of these open-source ideas are largely up to the credit union community. Each concept may be scalable, malleable, or disposable, but further testing is needed. This is where you come in. The future of credit unions relies on your willingness to test new ideas and share your associated findings. While much work has already been put into these i3 ideas, the hardest—and most rewarding—work is yet to come.
This report is sponsored by PSCU Financial Services.