So most of us, probably, as you said, have interacted with the Red Cross in some fashion over the years. To an objective outside observer, it may not be obvious how the Red Cross is innovated. What's changed and what are you doing to not only define innovation at Red Cross, but help stimulate it?

We are a 142-year-old organization. We've been doing things in a certain way for many, many years. And six years ago, our CEO realized that there is a need for change in the way we look at how we deliver our mission, particularly on how we can use technology and data. That's how this whole function got created. Since then, we've been looking at how technology could be used as a tip of the sphere to drive large-scale transformation and help us deliver the mission more effectively.

If we think about the different services that you offer, where would we see the most innovation happening? What is it that you were trying to solve for and where would it appear in the array of things that you

do? So we've been looking at it across the broad spectrum. And that's the interesting thing about the American Red Cross is we have so many different type of businesses or ways by which we go to market to serve the community. And we've been looking at how technology could be used in all those different dimensions. We all operate differently. Regulatory constraints are different in all those areas. We started off with doing a lot of work in our blood services area. It's the largest part of the American Red Cross. And we've been particularly using AI for changing the way we delivered blood and collect blood and the whole end-to-end lifecycle. So that's one area where we had done a lot of transformation work, but we're continuing to do transformation in other areas in the Red Cross as

well. What's the definition of innovation for the Red

Cross? The way we have sliced it is using technology and data to be able to deliver our mission more effectively. It's a very interesting question because for an organization like the American Red Cross, we're in the business of helping people. At the end of the day, our vision is to help people who are affected by emergencies. There are no constraints on how innovation could be used. And that's the way we've been looking at it is how can we, in changing times, how do we deliver help to people and how can we use technology to do that more effectively?

So in an organization that's over 140 years old, where technology may not be at the centerpiece because of its mission-driven purpose, how do you educate people what technologies are relevant and what's the process by which you start to embed them, the new ones, the different ones, the AI's,

etc. It's a great question. We actually did not start with the technology at all. At the end of the day, we are using technology to solve a mission problem or a business problem. So we start with a problem. Incidentally, we spend a lot of time with problem definition and trying to go deeper into what problem are we trying to solve, all dimensions of that problem. And then we look at what is the right technology to solving that problem. So things become a little bit more easier when you'll start looking at it from that lens. And that's how we go about

it. So I love the way you say that because one thing we talk a lot about is innovation at the end of the day is a valuable problem to solve, a solution enabled by a technology and effectively a business model allows it to scale. So what you're talking about is you actually spend a lot more time on that first bucket, which is what are these problems. And when we talk to other organizations, one of the challenges they have is at what level do you define a problem? So for the American Red Cross, if you think about maybe an example of a problem you're working on or you have worked on in the past, what is the right altitude for a valuable problem to solve within your context?

I've found that it's all levels because every time we go into a problem, we try to get a perspective from all audiences that includes the sea level executives. It includes senior leadership, but most importantly, people in the field. So we talk to users of that particular problem. And what we have found is that when you have that 360 degree view of a problem, it gives us better insights into all the nuances of an issue and how best to solve it.

How many problems are you working on at any given time, roughly?

So we're looking at around 12 problems, which will be actually solving. And there'll be another bunch of things which we're identifying and exploring. Since we are sort of like a cross-grid between a management consulting firm and a tech startup within the organization, the tech startup hat, which is doing 12 projects at any given point of time and the management consulting hat, which is looking at opportunities and having conversations all the time.

How do you choose which problems to solve and which to put aside? So if you've got your 12 and perhaps a broader set of considerations, what's the decision making process that gets you down to the 12? So many organizations struggle with is the problem too big? Is it too small? Is it too hard, too easy? What's the heuristic or the process you use to the

side? It's purely based on impact. So we try to figure out a way to quantify impact and we make sure that we are working on problems which have the highest impact. So that's the way we've been looking at it. If it's a problem which has a financial impact, then it'll be an ROI based impact. But in many projects, which we look at, it is not an ROI based impact, but it will be something what we have coined as return on mission. And so we look at what is that impact and to be candid, we have these same known more often than yes, because we are very in particular that we are working on projects which have the most impact for the organization.

What would be the ample of a return on mission type project if you're able to share?

Yeah, absolutely. The American Red Cross provides help for people who are affected by disasters. Now we do that by providing shelters for people who have lost their homes, who need a place to stay, we provide food and all those things associated with that. Now to manage all those shelters in the past, we used to do all of that manually. There was paperwork, so we used to register clients manually, tracking all of that became a nightmare. Having a good shelter client experience was also not efficient. What we did was we automated that whole process. So last year we launched a new solution which we call shelter client management tools, which allows us to be able to easily use digital tools to onboard a client, to be able to manage the shelter more effectively, get a lot of insight into how to manage it. And our operations have become a lot more smoother as part of that. We've been able to scale up more effectively. Our experience of our shelter clients have become a lot more effective as well. And we've been able to partner with government agencies and other partners to be able to provide better services to our shelter clients. So here's an example of a solution which we put in place which helps us improve our mission more effectively, but not necessarily affect any

ROI. First of all, that's amazing that you can offer a service like that to help improve people in need in these shelters. Do you find that part of the innovation mission or your team's mission is also just to increasingly innovate the Red Cross's mission itself. So one question I can imagine is what's the differentiation between the Red Cross and what it provides and other charities that might be operating in the same disaster area or other aspects of the mission.

The Red Cross mission at a macro level is not going to be influenced by what the innovation function does because that's a macro mission on the Red Cross. What we would do is figure out effective ways to be able to deliver that mission. So let me give an example. We provide relief for people who are affected by disasters, but because of climate change, we are seeing that there are increasing amount of disasters and the time between two disasters are also short. So now here's a situation where we need to help those people. We need to figure out a way by which we can help make the communities more resilient as part of that. So while we are still in that dimension of providing the mission capabilities, there are lots of other things which we could do to effectively deliver that mission. So that's the way we've been looking at innovation is it's still in the Red Cross mission area.

So it's really supporting and making more effective the delivery of the mission. Is that a fair way to do that? That's right. Yep. And in that regard, when you do problem definition, do you look at where the mission is failing and say this is a frustration point that we need to address or is it really a presumption that American Red Cross is delivering in every way it can and it's just strengthening it or is it a bit of a

mix? It's a bit of a mix. And what we would do is talk to a lot of people, the do end to end journey mapping and as part of that, the problems are evident. Some of them are issues which we have in the current processes. Some of them are opportunities which we could not have leveraged by using technology and things like that. So it's a combination of those

things. Technology projects are very expensive. How do you think about funding and resource allocation when it comes to some of these projects? Is it just your team and a bit of a ring fenced budget associated with it? Or do you really embrace and work with the organization in different kinds of ways to deliver these

things? Since we are a nonprofit, we have the opportunity to work with volunteers with a lot of corporate organizations, tech startups who are willing to help us on a pro bono basis. That allows us to expand the way we look at problem solving. The other thing is we also have a team which helps in problem solving internally and a combination of all of that helps us scale and look at solutions which might be resource intensive in some

cases. And when you do fund a project, what's the process by which you develop it to ensure that funding has its optimal outcome or impact?

We've tried to make sure that we are focused on the most values. So the way we look at these things is that we've tried to find out what is the core essence of the opportunity which matters the most. They found that that 80% if you can laser focus on it and get that delivered, that gives us a good way to launch a product, get feedback, try to see if you're hitting the right areas and then expand from there. So we always start small and then iterate. That gives us an opportunity to test an idea and then scale effectively once it's successful.

How do you manage the portfolio? Is it all individual projects or do you look across the portfolio and consider what's working, what's not working? Or is it once a project is set up, it's dedicated to reach its conclusion

regardless? The way we've been looking at this is since our function is very much focused on newer projects, once a problem is solved, once we've seen that we started getting the business benefits out of it, we would transition into a run and maintain mode which is supported by our business organizations and our IT partners which take on the solution from an ongoing iteration perspective and we go into the next problem. So we're focused on that. The only exception is we've also taken large-scale transformation efforts which we have chunked into smaller pieces and in those cases we would just keep moving up the value chain after we have delivered one chunk and kind of delivered the next chunk. But in those cases we've always kept each of those discrete projects with discrete business cases, it just ties up together to solve a bigger objective.

How has the innovation agenda been going? Would you say it's successful? It's got challenges and where are you seeing progress and where are you seeing some headwind or challenges?

In the last six years I think we have evolved at least six times to adapt to what works best and so I think a journey for innovation is always going to be a mixed bag. Some things work, some things don't work and will continue to evolve. If I look back at what worked and what didn't work, our velocity was something which worked really well, we've been able to move really quickly and deliver value to the organization in a short period of time. Change management has been tough and that's something which we continue to work on. We are much better at it than we were before but we continue to figure out a way to be able to deploy changes faster, deploy new solutions faster and reduce the time it takes from ideation to

launch. The Red Cross is not a typical organization. As you said, it's a non-profit. Does innovation change in that kind of a context relative to the corporate world which is perhaps more structured and financially ROI focused as opposed to ROM or turn on mission?

It does, on one hand, people are extremely passionate and they are really committed to the mission so it really helps a lot. On the other hand, we've had folks who have been doing things in a certain way for many years so change management tends to be tougher and so that whole process of buy-in has been something that you have been working on and once you get buy-in, it's really been amplified and the support we get from the field has been

amazing. What is the approach to buy-in? Many of the folks who are innovating and that's many who listen to this are struggling to innovate themselves. How do you actually motivate a stakeholder to get behind a project, particularly in a non-profit context?

They found that a few things work. One is visually communicating an idea has helped a lot. We moved along from power points to visual concepts of things. We also even did a show and tell once which worked really well where we were pitching about 11 projects which would transform the organization's process and we did a show and tell in the room for that. The other thing which has worked is finding change agents. There are change agents within the organization and it could be across all levels. We latch on to change agents and work with them, get changed on. The other thing is having a governance process also helps because Cine execs want to help. In general, everybody is bought into the concept of driving change using innovation. Having some structure also helps in driving that process.