This op/ed piece in todays NY Times (hat tip Stowe) typifies how I am thinking these days about all of North America, including Canada, and certainly about Banks in North America.

First the Friedman piece – he reasons that upon re-entering US after a trip to Asia that the differences in technology and infrastructure are dramatic, and signal America is in a state of disrepair, that and that GM is merely symptomatic.

Time to reboot America | Friedman

It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.

Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.

The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.

He happens to use HK as his reference, but it could equally be Tokyo.  Take Narita Airport – the most pristine, clean organized place you could imagine, despite the volume of traffic.  Throughout Tokyo the use of modern phones, smart cards, and integration of technologies with offline, (QR code) is so pervasive as to be the new normal.  The Jetsons/ Flinstones metaphor is exactly feeling that is produced.

Canada is not excused from this comparison either.  We have highway ramps falling apart, people killed in parking lots when concrete falls on them, sinkholes appearing in roads as 100 year old drains collapse, and a general lack of infrastructure renewal for 40 years. And Canada gets busier, with a 38% increase in population over the last 30 years, a 5 or 6 fold increase in number of vehicles on the road, yet the roads are not consequently different over that period – the same streets carrying 500% more volume.  Another example is that we still see gigantic buses and trucks that were designed for open empty highways.  Why is it that Europe and Japan have trucks, buses, cars and vans that are designed for narrow streets?  My point here is not to further bash the enormously mistaken auto-bailout again – the point is that there is no plan.  North America in particular is wandering aimlessly while the rest of the world is trying to adapt.

This view is exemplified by the non-plussed & speechless Loic le Meur when confronted by Mike Arrington and others on the stage at the recent Le Web in Paris.  This 20 minute video  debates the approach to business and conferences in Europe vs America.  Words to consider while watching – arrogance vs pragmatism.

Relevance to Bankwatch:

The word innovation is in danger of overuse, and people are beginning to become immune to that word.

Innovation | wikipedia

The term innovation means a new way of doing something. It may refer to incremental, radical, and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations.

Wikipedia goes on to point out that this is defferent than invention of something new.  Innovation is just doing similar things better and smarter – innovation is actually easier than invention.

That door remains open.  Banks are not going to solve the problems listed by Friedman above, but they certainly do not have to be part of the problem, and they are large enough to influence peoples thinking and to help create the desire to break out of the logjam.  There is an innate desire for renewal, as reflected in the majority of people who are against the auto-bailout for example.  I suspect a majority are against the bank bailout too, following the AP revelation that Banks will not account for how they used that public money.

There are enormous opportunities for banks to develop new efficiencies in product and service delivery that are reflective of the new generations’ expectations.  The argument of building for the lowest common denominator, “the little old lady customer” syndrome, no longer works.  There are some key principles that need to be applied in new designs, and by using those to drive design will reap rewards.

For 2009 budgets will be even more constrained than ever.  This is the ideal time to consider different as opposed to less.  Usually at this time of year bloggers make predictions.  Not this year.  Instead how can we better?

Here is my draft of three principles to re-invent the annual development plan process.  With thought and innovation there are opportunities here to move the agenda ahead constructively.

• Design principle #1:  make Internet* the centre of your design
• Design principle #2: make self service the over-riding choice – all else is secondary
• Design principle #3:  customers are smarter, faster and more knowledgeable than you (purchase patterns do not follow the traditional “funnel”)

* Internet = NOT (just) online banking – Internet is where your customers exist online.

As always thoughts welcome.  Note the Comments link is at the top of each post now in the new design.