RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. — The CO-OP THINK Prize is getting a makeover this year.
The prize, which is presented by CO-OP and MasterCard in conjunction with the annual CO-OP THINK Conference (scheduled for May 5-8 in Colorado Springs) has traditionally been given to innovative ideas that come out of the credit union community.
But this year's iteration is intended to hit upon the biggest credit union buzz word there is — collaboration.
Samantha Paxson, chief marketing officer at CO-OP Financial Services, told Credit Union Journal in an exclusive interview that after four years of the THINK prize, now is the time to tweak the format.
"We were reaching out to the same audience, our credit union leaders, and getting the same kind of ideas," Paxson said. "The whole inspiration around the THINK mission is to get outside of ourselves and get inspiration from new places.... Also, we found that [the submissions] were getting rather product-focused. The idea is to get people to think in a new way; to enable people to partner together and collaborate and think creatively so that credit unions can survive for the next many hundred years. That's why we reimagined it."
Rather than accepting submissions from individuals and winnowing those down to three finalists for the $10,000 prize furnished by MasterCard, this year's THINK competition will use the OpenIDEO platform for collaborative, crowd-sourced thinking, and is open to the general public as well as CU professionals and members.
"Ideas are improved through collaboration," CO-OP President and CEO Stan Hollen said in a statement. Using OpenIDEO "allows us to tap into a global community of creative participants who will work on issues important to the movement."
The process has five phases:
- Research (underway now through March 31) during which users can share personal perspectives and examples related to the challenge topic
- Ideas (April 1-28), when users can submit and comment on new ideas
- Refinement (May 5-June 2), when the shortlist of finalists will be announced
- The top five finalists will be announced on June 9.
- A final phase, "Impact," will take place after June 9, enabling participants to continue to collaborate and share ideas to advance the topic so that it can have a lifespan beyond just the competition.
CO-OP will also be able to tap into a network of advisers who have worked with OpenIDEO, including representatives from the Clinton Global Imitative, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and more. One benefit of this year's methodology, according to Paxson, is that "the credit union industry gets to collaborate with some of the best minds in the country on how to be better."
No matter where this year's ideas come from, they will be built around the topic of "How might we use the power of communities to financially empower those who need it most?"
Paxson said that the open-source nature of this year's competition allows organizers to get into the heads of consumers that might not be credit union members — or even be aware of credit unions — to get an understanding of what those consumers look for in a financial institution.
"This is really a method for us to gain insights and engage with the type of consumer that we want to engage with as an industry — one that has ideas, is engaged and aligned with our values," she said. "Consumers today are looking for financial services with heart, for companies that do the right thing and are also pretty tech-savvy. So we're hoping in these ideas we'll see what should financial services be today and in five years, and how does that help empower communities."
Innovative Ideas, Not Just New Products
While MasterCard and CO-OP continue to fund the $10,000 Prize, one change from previous years is that the prize money will be split among the top five ideas and their authors, rather than going to just one winner.
Historically the winning idea has been announced at the THINK Conference, but due to the changes in this year's contest structure, a shortlist of finalists will be announced during the May conference, with the top five ideas announced in early June.
"At the conference we're going to discuss our progress and introduce some of the ideas that have come out of IDEO," said Paxson, adding that splitting things up this way enables more time for innovation in the contest, as well as prevents the contest and the conference from overshadowing one another.
As Credit Union Journal has reported in the past,
"Some of these things are pretty complex to implement," she said, adding that the idea is for the prize to spur innovation beyond just a product. "It might be an idea or an initiative.... The impact is not in producing a product; the impact is in creating new thinking that changes the way our business is run."
For more information or to participate in this year's THINK Prize, click
