Keys to Innovation at Long-Running Associations

Being an association that’s lasted for decades is proof of endurance. It can also mean it’s an association that’s set in its ways. Board and volunteer structures remain static; membership creeps older; projects stick around well past their sell-by date.

Avoiding those problems requires having a culture that recognizes its deep history while staying committed to looking forward. 

That doesn’t necessarily require rejecting the structures an association has in place. But it does mean ensuring they run efficiently. The IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS), which turns 80 this year, uses a mix of established groups and task forces to surface areas where members need programming. “When new ideas are coming up or things are emerging, there’s already a structure in place to help individuals find outlets in an existing community, event, or publication,” says IEEE-CS Executive Director Rebekah Stacha. “We also have task forces that can spin up with less structure for those very new emerging topics that need a group to work on them.”

But while IEEE-CS is designed to make sure new ideas are disseminated, it’s also careful not to pile on program after program. It takes its time to study emerging topics and looks for ways to add them to its current certifications, rather than adding new ones.

“That higher bar of certification is one we’re very careful of,” Stacha says. “We only have a few certification exams, and we want the topics to be more established before we look at certification. We don’t want to move into certification topics that are already covered or maybe changing on a monthly basis, or even yearly. We’re looking for something much more established before we put that into a more formal structure.”

At the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), which was founded in 1930, the challenge is providing cutting-edge technical information to members that tend to have fewer resources than larger banks. To address this, in 2018 ICBA launched its ThinkTECH Accelerator, which provides support for early-stage companies looking to serve the community-banking market. After a council of ICBA members sorts through submissions, six are selected to participate in a program that connects companies to member banks.

According to ICBA Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer Wayne Miller, the Accelerator process stays fresh by focusing on members’ immediate concerns..

“We begin with a set of themes that we solicit as issues that our banks are having to contend with, like AI, fraud, data, customer experience,” he says. “It’s driven by about 30 to 40 bankers who participate as part of our selection and advisory council. They are the ones that say, ‘Hey, this is what’s keeping me up at night.’”

ICBA helps educate the Accelerator’s participating companies on the specific needs of the community-banking world, Miller says helps the program better serve the banks, and also assists the companies in honing their value proposition. “Part of our objective is to shape, sculpt, and mold these solutions so that they ultimately serve community banks very well,” Miller says. “Particularly if they’re coming from serving another part of the industry or bigger banks.”

The insights that come out of the Accelerator, Miller says, helps smaller banks access tools beyond their core banking systems, allowing them to better compete with banks that have deeper pockets.

“These programs have helped us attract members,” he says. “If you’re a smaller bank today, where do you begin to source innovation? There are 25,000 active fintechs in this country—how do you sift through that and make relevant choices? That’s why so many of them rely on their core, but they’re harder to work with than a lot of these early and growth-stage companies. Making those connections—those are the KPIs we try to focus on.”