IIBF Strategic Management & Innovations key terms

A structured way to assess an organisation's internal strengths and weaknesses alongside external opportunities and threats. Banks use it to match capabilities to market conditions before committing to a strategic plan.

A scanning tool that reviews political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental forces affecting a business. In banking, regulatory and technological factors usually dominate the assessment of market attractiveness.

A framework rating industry attractiveness through five pressures: rivalry among existing competitors, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and the bargaining power of buyers and of suppliers.

Breaking a firm's activities into primary and support steps to see where cost is incurred and value added. It helps banks decide which activities to keep in-house and which to outsource or automate.

A perspective holding that sustained advantage comes from resources that are valuable, rare, hard to imitate and supported by the organisation. The VRIO test screens internal resources against these four conditions.

A bundle of skills and technologies that a firm performs better than rivals and that customers value, such as risk modelling or rural distribution. Competences are hard to copy and underpin several products at once.

A two-by-two grid of growth options crossing existing or new products with existing or new markets: market penetration, product development, market development and diversification. It frames the risk attached to each growth route.

A portfolio tool plotting business units on market growth and relative market share, producing stars, cash cows, question marks and dogs. It guides where to invest, hold, harvest or divest capital.

The pursuit of uncontested market space by creating new demand rather than fighting competitors in crowded markets. Value innovation, raising buyer value while cutting cost, is its central idea.

An ambitious long-term goal that stretches an organisation well beyond its current resources and focuses effort over a decade or more. It gives direction when detailed plans are still unclear.

A process where a simpler, cheaper offering first serves overlooked customers, then improves until it displaces established competitors. Incumbents often ignore the threat because early versions look unprofitable.

A one-page template describing nine building blocks of how a business creates, delivers and captures value: customer segments, value propositions, channels, relationships, revenue, resources, activities, partners and costs.

The specific bundle of benefits a product promises a chosen customer segment, and the reason that segment picks it over alternatives. It must be distinct, measurable and defensible against rivals.

Deliberately using ideas and routes to market from outside the firm as well as inside it. Banks apply this through fintech partnerships, hackathons, innovation labs and co-creation with customers.

A human-centred approach that moves through empathising with users, defining the problem, ideating, prototyping and testing. It suits service and process problems where user behaviour matters more than technical specification.

The smallest version of a product that lets a team test core assumptions with real users and learn quickly. It reduces the cost of being wrong before large investment is committed.

A staged innovation workflow where projects pass through defined review gates before receiving further funding. Gates kill weak ideas early and keep resourcing aligned with strategic priorities.

Redesigning how value is created, delivered and captured rather than only improving the product itself. Examples include subscription pricing, platform intermediation and embedded finance at the point of sale.

The ability to run today's business efficiently while separately exploring new opportunities. Structural separation, flexible resource allocation and supportive leadership help firms do both at once.

Deep redesign of processes, products and culture around digital technology, not just the installation of new systems. For banks it means data-driven decisions, straight-through processing and digital-only customer journeys.

A model where banks expose account and payment data through secure application programming interfaces, usually with customer consent. It lets third parties build services on the bank's underlying rails.

India's real-time, interoperable retail payment system that links bank accounts to a virtual handle and lets users pay through any participating app. It has become the backbone of digital payments.

A digital-only bank or financial app with no branch network, acquiring customers and delivering services through mobile and cloud infrastructure. Some hold their own licence; others partner with licensed banks.

Technology that helps financial institutions meet regulatory obligations more cheaply and reliably, covering areas such as KYC, transaction monitoring, regulatory reporting and compliance risk analytics.

Software bots that replicate routine, rule-based human tasks across systems, such as data entry, reconciliation and form processing. It cuts handling time and error rates on high-volume back-office work.

A shared, replicated record of transactions maintained by multiple parties without a central authority. Banks explore it for trade finance, cross-border payments and post-trade settlement.

India's consent-based system in which licensed aggregators let individuals share financial data across institutions through standard APIs. Data flows only with explicit, purpose-limited and revocable customer consent.

Use of machine learning and related techniques for credit scoring, fraud detection, chatbots, pricing and collections. Models must be explainable and fair to satisfy regulators and retain customer trust.

A digital form of sovereign currency issued by a central bank. Pilot work, including India's e-rupee, tests uses in retail and wholesale payments and in settlement between institutions.

A performance framework that tracks financial results together with customer, internal process and learning perspectives. It links day-to-day measures to the strategic objectives they are meant to deliver.

A diagram showing cause-and-effect links between strategic objectives across the four balanced scorecard perspectives. It makes the logic of the strategy visible, communicable and testable.

Objectives and key results: a goal-setting method pairing a qualitative objective with a few measurable key results per cycle. It focuses teams on outcomes rather than on activity.

A sequence for leading change: create urgency, build a coalition, form a vision, communicate it, remove barriers, secure short-term wins, consolidate gains and anchor changes in culture.

A simple view of change as unfreezing existing behaviour, moving to a new state, then refreezing so the new way becomes normal. It stresses that change needs preparation and reinforcement.

A change model describing five individual milestones: awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. Change succeeds only when enough people move through all five in sequence.

Identifying everyone affected by or able to influence a strategy, then mapping their interest and power. It guides communication and engagement plans for those who can block or accelerate implementation.

A style that motivates people through a compelling vision, intellectual challenge and personal consideration, so followers commit beyond simple compliance. It is often linked to successful large-scale change.

The capacity to sense market shifts and reconfigure resources quickly, supported by cross-functional teams, short decision cycles and empowered front-line staff. It complements rather than replaces formal planning.