As an executive director for consumer and community banking at JPMorgan Chase, Jahanzeb Khan is responsible for new product development in digital banking. Charged with creating emerging payment solutions, Khan understands the challenges and opportunities presented by today's innovation-intensive marketplace—and he knows that sound strategy is essential for his firm's growth and success. That is why he attended the Disruptive Innovation: Strategies for a Successful Enterprise program at Harvard Business School (HBS) to fine-tune his strategic capabilities in an environment of highly accomplished peers from around the globe and a faculty team led by Professor Clayton Christensen, a world-renowned strategist recognized for his work on disruptive innovation. Khan shares some highlights from his experience.
I thought the Disruptive Innovation program would provide an opportunity to learn and share experiences with a diverse group of global leaders who have excelled in their respective fields. There would also be an opportunity to spend quality time with world-renowned professors like Clay Christensen, which was an experience of a lifetime.
Yes. With the emergence of technologies such as cloud computing, entry barriers have been lowered tremendously. Incumbents in every industry including financial services are challenged in the emerging landscape to provide modular products and services geared toward millennials. They are actively positioning to leverage growth opportunities being created by consumer demand. In financial services there is also a great opportunity to leverage innovations to increase global financial inclusiveness for the roughly 2.5 billion unbanked individuals and 200 million small businesses around the world. With all this in mind, my objective was to learn how to most effectively formulate a strategy to tackle the emerging challenges and position my company for growth.
As leaders, we practice theories in our daily professional lives. Some of us have learned the hard way by stumbling and gaining wisdom from our experiences. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the application of time-tested theories was so relevant to our everyday decisions.
Strategy is dynamic. The resources, processes, and priorities that have worked for incumbents in the past may not work in the future, so they need to keep scanning the marketplace for potential disruptors and challenges. Recognizing the difference between sustaining and disruptive innovation can help leaders avoid pitfalls and promote growth. In the program, I learned how to avoid predictable blind spots and help position my firm to get from good to great. I can now crystallize the decision-making process, and I am equipped to be a better leader.
The program will help you recognize the forces of change and equip you with theories that apply to each situation. You will role-play as an incumbent or a new entrant, and then go through the process of creating an emergent or deliberate strategy that can position your organization for growth. Along the way, you will learn the importance of culture, understand the jobs to be done, evaluate innovations through discovery-driven planning, determine the right architecture for your organization and business models, and streamline your decision-making process.