Good morning,
Innovation in business is the ability to conceive, develop, deliver, and scale new products, services, processes, and business models, according to McKinsey.
America’s Most Innovative Companies list for 2023, released yesterday by Fortune, in partnership with Statista, recognizes 300 companies transforming industries from the inside out in a variety of ways. The research found that innovation isn’t just a nice-to-have. In the last three years, almost every company on this list posted revenue growth.
Most of the top 10 companies on the list come from the tech sector, with Alphabet taking the No. 1 spot. However, a financial services company made the top 10—Capital One Financial. Richard D. Fairbank, founder, chairman, and CEO of Capital One, grew the McLean, Va.-based company to one of the 10 largest banks in America and 100 largest companies in the country with $38 billion in annual revenue.
Digital transformation in financial services has been accelerating, in general. But Capital One ranked in the top 10% for process innovation among the companies on Fortune's list. Fairbank has led the transformation of the company’s business capabilities, including technology.
"Beginning in 2012, we sought to completely redefine who we are as a company—to operate like a bank that a technology company would build," Rob Alexander, CIO at Capital One, told me. "You could say that we have been focused on data and technology ever since our founding days as a company." Fairbank started Capital One with "the idea that an information-based strategy could enable us to build a better financial services business," Alexander says. "This early vision has scaled as we’ve grown our company, and we’ve seen that technology and data can enable even large companies to be innovative and personalized."
Some examples? The company "solved a lot of technology challenges faced by America’s largest enterprises, and last year announced Capital One Software, our enterprise B2B software business, to bring some of these solutions to market," Alexander explains. "Machine learning, A.I., and real-time data are central to how we build our products and services for customers and to how we run our company. Through machine learning, we can proactively serve contextually relevant, personalized information and insights for customers through our mobile app—helping them to get the most out of their money."
He continues, "We’ve also built a fraud platform to make complex real-time machine learning decisions, with more data, in the time it takes our customers to swipe their credit cards."
"Our tech organization is actively recruiting for a range of positions, including engineering roles focused on cloud, data, machine learning, and cybersecurity, as well as product managers and technical program managers," Alexander says.
Fairbank continues his support for a digitally forward company. “As a result of our investments to transform our technology and to drive resilient growth, we're in a strong position to deliver compelling long-term shareholder value and thrive in a broad range of possible economic scenarios,” he said during the company’s earnings call in January.
Tech's future in financial services is bright.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
