Abstract:
These are unprecedented times for the financial services sector in South Africa. This is
a time when financial technology companies or fintech’s have aggressively penetrated
the financial services sector in South Africa with attractive innovative propositions for
customers from a product and service perspective. Traditional financial services
organisations are not responding commensurately to the innovative value propositions
taken to market by their new entrant competitors. This is the business problem.
The business community is turning to strategic leaders in traditional financial services
organisations to understand the sluggish response to fintech innovations entering the
market. This research study brought strategic leaders in traditional financial services
organisations to the fore with the objective of understanding how innovation
implementation is influenced within their organisations. The purpose of this research
study was to explore industry knowledge on challenges confronting strategic leaders in
influencing innovation implementation collate insights, methods, techniques and
strategies on how leaders can influence innovation implementation and be used a guide
for leaders battling to break barriers underpinned by non-progressive cultures and norms
within their organizations.
The research was a qualitative study that deployed semi-structured interviews to a
sample of 13 strategic leaders across a spread of executive positions that were
purposefully sampled according to qualitative research methods. An additional two
industry experts formed part of the research participants, bringing the total to 15
interviews. An extensive desktop literature review formed part of the research process
including a thematic analysis to arrive to research findings and outcomes.It was found
that strategic leaders influence innovation implementation mainly through persuasion,
negotiation and through building resilience in their approaches to influence, coupled with
two key mechanisms which include effective engagements and positive enabling
behaviours.
Based on the analysis of the findings and the outcomes from the research, five key
recommendations were provided in the study for management. The recommendations
focused on strengthening current approaches to influencing innovation implementation
and suggestions on strategic considerations and tactics they can utilize. One of the aims
of this study was to position a research report that documents a comprehensive strategic
guideline based on theoretical principles of how strategic leaders in financial services
can practically influence and drive the innovation implementation agenda successfully.
