Empowering employees to become innovative and forward-thinking future leaders
MIT Bootcamps Innovation Workshop was customized for Banco do Brasil’s core strategy of value creation, innovation and analytical maturity
This past fall, MIT Bootcamps ran an Innovation Workshop with 40 executives spanning 36 departments across Banco do Brasil, one of the largest financial services institutions in Latin America. It was the first in-person Bootcamps program in three years, since the Covid-19 pandemic forced a rapid shift to an all-virtual environment.
For the Banco do Brasil cohort, the Workshop offered a unique opportunity to gather, network, and to collaborate and learn from one another over an intensive two-day program. For the MIT Bootcamps team, the event was a chance to return to their roots of rigorous, team-based, in-person experiences while incorporating lessons and ideas from the virtual programs.
“The online bootcamps are more accessible and provide more flexibility for participants,” says Hanna Adeyema (MBA 2013), Director of MIT Bootcamps, noting that the team worked to incorporate as much of this agility as possible into the Workshop. But, she adds, “a group like that does not get to be in the same room for two days very often. The bankers really benefited from talking to and learning from their peers.”
In addition to Adeyema, the Bootcamps team who ran the program in Brazil included Ana Luisa Santos, (Media Lab SM ‘09), Head of Digital Learning and Operations; Ingrid Toppelberg (MBA ‘10), head coach at Bootcamps and Chief Digital Transformation Officer at ThriveDX Enterprise; and Yuri Ramos (Sloan Fellow ‘10), Bootcamps coach and Program Director at MIT Industrial Liaison Program.
Innovation leadership in a collaborative environment
The MIT Bootcamps Innovation Workshop was designed for intrapreneurial team leaders whose ambition is to advance positive change to their organizations and the world through technology and innovation. As such, the program is an environment for participants to learn the foundations of systematic intrapreneurial exploration and decision-making under conditions of uncertainty and resource scarcity. Bootcamps calls this foundation the Innovation Leadership Toolkit.
The key learning goal for the Banco do Brasil workshop was to enable analytical leaders to discover and define business problems, and communicate value creation opportunities, while collaborating cross-functionally within the organization. In a 2-day, full-time program, selected Banco do Brasil executives worked in cross-functional, cross-unit teams of 5–6 to scope problems, understand the customer, and outline a solution. Bootcamps instructors and facilitators guided this process, offering feedback in real time and at specific key points. Teams completed sequential courses focused on deliberate practice of the key skills in the toolkit, demonstrating their results through regular deliverables and through the tangible end-product of the program — the Innovation Presentation or Final Pitch.
As key learning outcomes, by the end of this program, participants were able to:
- Define the anatomy of a problem
- Understand the end customer
- Specify a high level solution
- Develop an environment of trust, where teamwork can succeed to collaborate on cross-unit, cross-function problems
Nurturing an ecosystem of learning
Banco do Brasil initially established a relationship with MIT xPRO, another education offering from MIT Open Learning. In 2019 the xPRO team ran a small private online course (SPOC) — Data Science and Big Data Analytics: Making Data Driven Decisions — for 60 data scientists at the bank.
The program was a success and Banco do Brasil decided to expand their investment in corporate learning with MIT, so the xPRO team connected the bank with MIT Horizon and with Bootcamps. Their objective was to spur on more learning initiatives to encourage employees to become more innovative and forward-thinking. The target participants were carefully selected to reflect the Bank’s goals for its future leaders. The learning and development leaders aim to transform the organization with more technical skills and revamp leadership approaches to maintain their edge in the finance industry.
Banco do Brasil’s Analytical Intelligence Unit strategy is based on three pillars: value creation, innovation and analytical maturity. The Bootcamps team tailored the Innovation Workshop and Toolkit to suit the bank’s specific needs. Originally designed as a 3-day online workshop, the Bootcamps team worked with Banco do Brasil’s Analytical Intelligence Unit to identify their core needs and goals for the course. As pandemic conditions improved they re-envisioned it as the more intensive 2-day, in-person experience.
“We had an impeccable job on tailoring the training program to our needs, so that the knowledge became tangible and with real possibility of application in the daily lives of the participants,” says Amanda Fontes de Oliveira Franco, former Advisor at Banco do Brasil. “It is an enriching experience from the point of view of all the knowledge acquired by the participants, which were personalized and really focused on learning by doing!”
Tapping into the energy of in-person teams
When delivering an in-person Bootcamp, the team is always prepared to be more flexible with the schedule and can rapidly adjust to participants’ needs and feedback.
“There is a lot more room for creative improvisation in coaching an in-person Bootcamp,” says Adeyema. “There are more opportunities to notice if the team is struggling, just by observing their body language as they work together through another deliverable.”
For example, some teams went ahead with their work at a high speed and were very successful. The Bootcamps team realized that those teams had the bandwidth to benefit from additional, usually optional, deliverables and were able to introduce some more in-depth concepts to them. At the same time, some teams struggled with advancing. This usually means that their underlying assumptions were not correct and is a signal for them (and for the coaches) to review all the steps again. These teams pivoted, and it was easier for the Bootcamps coaches to support them by being there in-person.
“We learned a lot from the process of mapping the pain points and creating a solution with the advice/collaboration of the Bank’s experts,” says André Ernani Lohnefink de Barros, Head of IT / BI / Analytics — Full Stack Development/UX at Banco do Brasil, speaking of fellow Workshop participants who had expertise or experience in the areas that the other teams were working on. “In fact, it was one of the highlights for me in my career. An intense experience for its content, format, and for challenging us in the English language. Everyone’s engagement was evident from the beginning, with cohesive and enthusiastic teams, all leading up to the final pitch — also a great moment. I left fulfilled and proud!”
The value of the Innovation Workshop was also evident to Banco do Brasil leadership. In addition to direct feedback from the teams about how enriching the experience was, leadership soon saw the same enthusiasm and innovation applied in practice. “The workshop surprised us by the dynamism and the method it applied,” says João Marsiglia Quaranta, Executive Portfolio Manager, Data Governance and Analytics. “We could already see the philosophy in a challenge proposed by the unit to all vice presidencies — a challenge that earned several compliments from the Bank’s President and members of the Board of Directors.”
MIT Bootcamps offers several types of programs, including the private, customized B2B programs like this one, and the larger global Innovation Leadership Bootcamps that are open to anyone to apply. Having run only in-person Bootcamps and all-online programs, now the team is navigating a shift into the best of both worlds — offering both in-person and online Bootcamps, for different audiences. As always, MIT Bootcamps strives to craft transformative learning experiences that best fit their audiences’ needs.
Are you ready to take your venture to the next level? MIT Bootcamps’ Venture Advancement Program is a growth program for emerging and scaling entrepreneurs. This will be a 5-day in-person program at the MIT campus, where you will “drink from the firehose” of innovation at MIT. Learn more on the Bootcamps website and apply today.
Empowering employees to become innovative and forward-thinking future leaders was originally published in MIT Open Learning on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.