Chief Innovation Officer of the Year 2016

When people in the worlds of venturing and finance talk about Citi’s Deborah Hopkins, they of course mention her pioneering status both as the bank’s first chief innovation officer and as the founder of its corporate venturing unit Citi Ventures.

But equally as important as the trail she has blazed in the world of corporate innovation is the tangible progress Citi has made as a direct result of the strategies Hopkins has introduced.

With the world of finance coming under the same competitive and technological pressures that have disrupted everything from entertainment and media to transport and leisure over the past two decades, Hopkins’ role in shaping Citi’s future has become increasingly vital. In the years ahead, it is certain that her work in developing new financial technology and opening up new markets will come to be seen as crucial in ensuring that one of the world’s biggest banks can maintain its market-leading role.

Since it was set up in 2010, Citi Ventures has established a global network of innovation labs, with offices in Dublin, Tel Aviv and Singapore among others helping the bank keep up to date with the latest advancements in fintech. Its Internal Acceleration Fund, launched in 2013, is designed to promote rapid experimentation and discovery, particularly around the most disruptive business models – these include the likes of blockchain technology, the internet of things, and next-generation commerce and authentication.

Citi Ventures’ investment portfolio has recently grown to 23 active startups. These include Chain, a US-based firm developing blockchain technology, and Square, a point-of-sale software company. Partnerships such as these give Citi insight into emerging trends as well as access to the latest fintech innovations.

Hopkins said: “At Citi Ventures, we are relentless about seeking new ideas, finding effective ways to collaborate across Citi, and ensuring constant learning. We aren’t afraid to look beyond our current roles, company, or even industry to learn from others and discover new ways to solve problems.”

But just as important and as challenging is Hopkins’ wider role as Citi’s chief innovation officer – not least of all in establishing a “culture of innovation”, as she has described it, in an organisation of more than 200,000 employees. “It’s not just doing cool things,” Hopkins said. “It’s also helping the business to be ready to accept them.

“Fostering a culture of innovation starts with sharing and embracing the right mindset—recognising that adaptability is the new stability and that change and discovery are thus both necessary and inevitable.”

Hopkins added that, over the past 18 months, Citi Ventures had focused on providing the “right set of lenses” through which to view potential customer opportunities.

“Often in large corporations, the lens is focused on obtaining more market share, which can keep an organisation narrowly focused on incremental opportunities. If we look for larger customer problems, we can find opportunities that we’re well positioned to solve for and that can drive real growth.”

Heidi Mason, co-founder of corporate venturing consultancy Bell Mason Group, which advises Citi Ventures, said Hopkins’ most significant challenge was always likely to be “integrating the new with the old at Citi.

“I think her personal goal is to make the ability to adapt and innovate a fundamental part of Citi’s corporate DNA.

“Deborah knows how bring broad innovation concepts and their potential for corporate impact to life — how to take the ideas, tools and philosophies of what’s now called ‘lean start-up’ models and turn them into an effective ‘lean enterprise’ model. This is what she is doing at Citi right now.”

As Hopkins said: “Today’s accelerating pace of disruption requires new skills and new ways of working. By embracing the entrepreneurial mindset of discovery, we can uncover new possibilities for our customers, our businesses and our industry.”

That Hopkins has managed to ensure Citi retain and even increase its focus on innovation during a period when the corporation has replaced its CEO and reduced headcount from around 370,000 staff in 2007 to nearer 225,000 today is all the more impressive.

Hopkins joined Citi in 2003 as head of strategy, becoming chief operations and technology officer two years later. In 2008, she was given the new role of chief innovation officer (CIO) – one of the first with the title globally – and Hopkins has served as Citi Ventures’ CEO since it was launched in Palo Alto, California, at the start of the decade as a way to connect Citi to the entrepreneurial and high-tech ecosystem in Silicon Valley. This pioneering combination of CIO and head of ventures has become a model peers across industry sectors and beyond the US have looked to for inspiration.

Hopkins’ experience prior to joining Citi has much to do with her success over the past decade, Mason said. She has previously worked in the automotive, aerospace and telecoms industries with stints at companies from General Motors and Boeing to Lucent and Unisys.

“Her unique operating background reads like a preparatory roadmap for this new kind of role and especially at this time,” Mason explained. “Her leadership is enabled by the unique and diverse nature of her background and skills accumulation, and how they all come together with a natural instinct for innovation strategy and vision of implementation that are so integral to the chief innovation officer role.”

Naturally, Hopkins’ achievements have resonated far beyond the walls of Citi.

Fortune has twice named her among the most powerful women in American business, while in both 2011 and 2012 she was named in the Top Tech 50 list compiled by business-to-business publisher Institutional Investor.