I noticed a new job announcement this morning from JPMorgan Chase seeking a Head of Chase Labs:
The Head of Chase Labs will lead a new team focussed on digital product innovation across banking, credit and consumer payment product groups. This team will operate within the overarching product and business strategies, and will drive new digital product and service development that will enhance the Consumer and Community Banking proposition and drive the P&L.
The responsibilities of the role look pretty interesting:
- Create new payment products in line with the company strategy.
- Do market research, and lead the innovation team through rapid prototyping and validation (customer-centric approach).
- Manage the innovation process and pipeline.
- Collaborate with others in the payments and commerce ecosystem (companies, startups, and VCs).
Chase is a little late to the innovation labs game. In the financial space there are already some great labs up and running:
Capital One Labs
Capital One Labs has sites in Washington DC, New York and San Francisco. They run an API and a developer portal encouraging third-parties to build on their platform. They’re big fans of the Lean Startup philosophy (hosting the Sept DC Lean Startup meetup), and sponsors of the Launch series of hackathons. They’re also hiring (developers, product managers and more).
Mastercard Labs
Mastercard Labs have been running since 2011. They have sites in existing MasterCard facilities in Singapore, Dublin, Purchase (N.Y.), and St. Louis. They don’t seem to have an online presence, but they mention their focus is mobile, e-commerce, and person to person payments. Some of their projects are Simplify Commerce, and QkR.
Intuit Labs
Intuit Labs has been around for a while and really sets the standard for excellence. They have a ton of projects already under their belt:
It also looks like Visa is setting up a lab. Lean Startup has taken over the consumer/financial space!
Brendan Sterne 