“What is defensible about this concept?”

“Are there any opportunities to patent something technical about it and make it defensible?”

This was the rather sad discussion I had recently regarding a concept I’m pitching at Citi. It’s unfortunate that managers at companies are thinking this way about innovative new business ideas (and this guy was young, which made it even more saddo).
The notion that you enter the market with competitive advantage rather than earning it is a complete nonevent in the new consumer space. Investment capital is flowing and accessible. Technology can be matched at breathtaking speed leaving parity on that capability level. This leaves only the thorny arena of execution to differentiate oneself.
Dead set in the center of the execution is customer experience. More products have continued the shift to a service paradigm and consumers are more willing to seek out the quality experiences because can sort through overchoice with ever greater efficiency online. The same connectivity gives consumers the ability to take a superior experience and market it for you with their endorsement. It also gives the opportunity for the most vociferous customers: those who have not been satisfied. They will start blogs, post scathing reviews, hold group Skype chats and generally ruin the reputation of a business.

Brilliant customer experience is your defensibility and competitive advantage.

Seems that innovation in the financial vertical will turn a corner eventually and the first ones to get there will be the more open-minded North American inhabitants of Canada.

This contest is an interesting hybrid of the retro sort of Westinghouse, Intel Science competitions geared towards school-aged, budding scientists and those late-night patent office advertisements suggesting that your idea for a combined garden rake-can opener is intellectual property that requires protection.

This contest solicits college students, so a slightly older bunch, and focuses right on the specific problem of financial services 2.0. In fact the guidelines pages suggests that teams focus on such areas as “trends”, “partnerships” and even “pricing”!

Seems to me like RBC is trying to get some customer insights at a cut rate. The prize for this competition is $20K so the cost is near nothing. Can’t blame them for avoiding the customer insight “specialist” firms that dot the new innovation landscape. They could have made the reward for participation a bit richer than just the moral satisfaction of helping define the next generation of banking services. Throw those kids a few chips RBC!