A few months ago, my Filene colleague Ryan Foss wrote about disruptive innovation and technology impacting credit unions and their members. Some of these "moonshot" ideas in and out of the credit union space have the potential to fundamentally shape the way we live. These innovations typically draw all the attention, excitement and sometimes credit union investment. Should they? Filene's report "Structures for Innovation" correctly says "no." Credit unions should balance investments in both disruptive and incremental innovation. That is, in addition to incredible breakthroughs, small improvements to existing concepts can also make a drastic improvement in the lives of consumers and solve ongoing challenges.

Inspiring Incremental Innovation Outside of CUs

To frame the necessity of incremental innovation for credit unions to solve old problems, let me share my favorite example from outside the industry. Manu Prakash and his colleagues at Stanford University took on a disease that contributes to one million deaths per year and puts one billion people at risk. If you haven't guessed it by now, Bill Gates pledged an additional $1 billion in April to fund research and development efforts to end the disease, according to Fortune.