JPNicols.com

01/02/2019

2019 will be a year of change, whether you're ready or not. Let's work together to build a culture of change, and adoption, and learning and listening.

05/24/2018

FIRE™ Up Your Innovation Team - An empirical approach to value creation is the antidote to "innovation theatre". |

We think of FIRE™ as an “innovation operating system” for teams. Once you install it in your organization, you can use it to create value quickly from everything from small incremental feature improvements to more disruptive or transformative approaches to new products, new markets, and new bu...

06/01/2017

What They Don't Teach You at Banking School

http://jpnicols.com/2017/05/31/what-they-dont-teach-you-at-banking-school/

The financial services industry has a long history of executive education, but it has not always prepared students to deal with more revolutionary changes.

04/28/2017

Disruption is Already Here... It's Just Not Widely Distributed Yet.

http://jpnicols.com/2017/04/28/disruption-is-already-here/

Disruption is already here. It's just not widely distributed, as William Gibson said about the future. How financial institutions are being disrupted in ways

03/01/2017

Success is a Poor Teacher - What got you here probably won't take you to the next level

http://jpnicols.com/2017/03/01/success-poor-teacher/

Bill Gates has said “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose”. The sweet afterglow of success has a way of redefining as brilliant decisions all of the ways you got lucky, and glossing over a lot of little things that never were quite right along the way. It...

02/14/2017

There is No Silver Bullet

http://jpnicols.com/2017/02/14/no-silver-bullet/

Managers have this bad habit of looking for a silver bullet. That magical holy grail that will make all of their problems go away quickly, and preferably painlessly. Those expensive consultants. That fancy new CRM system. This flashy acquisition. That confusing and demoralizing internal reorganizati...

02/01/2017

The Power of One Sigma: The answers are outside the building, not inside the boardroom.

http://jpnicols.com/2017/01/31/power-one-sigma/

Six Sigma is a quality improvement program that gets its name from the concept of 99.9997% quality. In statistics, each sigma represents the statistical measure of 1 standard deviation from the mean in a range of outcomes. Six sigma translates into no more than 3.4 defects per million opportunities....

01/17/2017

Beyond Innovation Theatre - should be about creating value, not chasing shiny objects.

http://jpnicols.com/2017/01/17/beyond-innovation-theatre/

Innovation is all about value creation. Or at least it should be. It’s easy to get caught up in the front end of the process. Brainstorming new ideas, drawing on whiteboards, and moving different colored sticky notes around the wall is fun. But all of that should be a means to an end. That end shoul...

12/29/2016

These are my Top Five Posts from 2016

http://jpnicols.com/2016/12/29/top-five-posts-2016/

Thanks to everyone who read, engaged, commented and shared my posts over the past year. I am proud to be a part of a great and growing global community that is committed to improving financial services for the better. Here’s to a great 2017! Get my latest blog posts in your email: Subscribe for free...

11/11/2016

Excited to co-chair the FinTech track at Seattle Startup Week next week. Join me on Thursday!

View more about this event at Seattle Startup Week 2016

11/09/2016

Banking on Blockchain - Join me with IBM in New York (https://goo.gl/NS6VXs), or follow along on Twitter

http://jpnicols.com/2016/11/09/banking-on-blockchain/

Tonight I’m attending IBM’s Cloud Services Providers’ Blockchain Fireside Chat Event in New York from 6:00-7:00PM  You can register to attend here. The panel will include Brigid McDermott, Vice President of Blockchain Business Development, IBM Research, along with Blockchain expert and founder of Fu...

11/07/2016

Building Better Bank-Fintech Partnerships.

http://jpnicols.com/2016/11/07/building-better-bank-fintech-partnerships/

Talk of banks and fintech companies partnering together has increased dramatically in the past year.  There have definitely been some interesting partnerships announced, particularly with some of the marketplace lenders, various blockchain projects and some artificial intelligence driven bots. Most…