The Innovation Project 2013 ThinkAThonTM to Tackle Payments Industry’s Five Most Difficult Problems and Drive “Collective Innovation”

Industry First Fields Cross-Functional Teams from Leading Payments Firms to Collectively Innovate and Compete for Top Honors in Front of an Expert Panel of Judges

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Much innovation is about the lone venture pursuing the dreams of its entrepreneurs, creating a successful product, and reaping vast rewards. But sometimes society faces problems that could benefit from “collective innovation” by bringing together participants from across industry, academia, government and other parts of society. Innovating payments – a global network of consumers and merchants – is a complex undertaking, in part because the system works well today, and in part because of the vast number of players that have to be coordinated in order to affect global change. The Innovation Project 2013 ThinkAThon^TM has identified five of the most difficult problems in advancing payments innovation and is fielding fifteen teams to collectively and creatively design solution frameworks for overcoming these problems in a process that is both collaborative and competitive.

“Some of these challenges entail seizing new opportunities for helping society while others involve lowering the risk of emerging practices that could ultimately harm society. The ThinkAThonTM is about working across the payments industry to solve some of the difficult problems we face in serving society at large.”

Teams will assemble on the afternoon of Day One of The Innovation Project to outline their approach to the problem they have been asked to solve, and solutions will be presented on the morning of Day Two. A panel of expert judges will decide which team within each problem set has created the most plausible approach for solving their problem. Winners will receive The Innovation Project 2013 Collective Innovation Award, with an overall “Master Payments Guru 2013” designation that will be awarded to the team across all five problems that the judges believe have the best solution overall. Team captains are drawn from across the payments ecosystem and include senior executives from PayPal, Discover, Western Union, Vantiv, Elavon, Loomis, ROAM, NetSpend, MasterCard, TSYS and RushCard. Team captains will select team members from The Innovation Project 2013 delegate roster.

The Innovation Project 2013 will assemble the most senior executives and elite innovators from just about every established payments company worldwide, and CEOs of the most innovative startups to change the conversation about how to create, ignite and scale innovation. It is being held on March 20-21 at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. The Innovation Project 2013 is hosted by PYMNTS.com, the leading online property for news and content on “what’s next” in innovation in payments and the broader commerce ecosystem.

“As we embrace the possibilities offered by the technological revolution that is leading to the reinvention — and creative destruction — of payments, we face numerous challenges in creating an industry that serves society,” says David Evans, Founder of Market Platform Dynamics and ThinkAThon^TM chairman. “Some of these challenges entail seizing new opportunities for helping society while others involve lowering the risk of emerging practices that could ultimately harm society. The ThinkAThon^TM is about working across the payments industry to solve some of the difficult problems we face in serving society at large.”

The five problems that ThinkAThon^TM teams will address are:

• Consumer Privacy and Mobile Commerce - How should we deal with real and imagined privacy concerns to maximize the potential of mobile commerce for consumers and strike the balance between consumer interests and innovator interests?
• Catastrophic Failure and Systemic Risk - How can society best insure against the catastrophic failure of the electronic payments system and minimize the consequences of such a failure were it to occur?
• Financial Inclusion and the Other 2 Billion People - How can innovators, governments, and incumbents work together, or by themselves, to best use the disruptive innovation occurring in payments to deploy, at large scale, banking services to the underserved?
• The New Point of Sale – How can merchants, issuers, acquirers, networks, and perhaps even consumers work together to reach the best solution most efficiently?
• Making Mobile Simple for Consumers - How can the global payments industry converge most quickly to the mobile payments solution that delights the consumer?

ThinkAThon^TM judges are:

• Beverly Anderson, EVP Consumer Services, Wells Fargo
• Tim Attinger, Head of Strategy and Development, Blackhawk
• Bryan Johnson, Founder/Chairman, Braintree
• Liza Landsman, Managing Director, Blackrock
• Richard Schmalensee, Dean Emeritus, MIT Sloan School of Management
• Brian Smith, Managing Director, Market Platform Dynamics
• Scott Thompson, CEO, Shoprunner

To download the ThinkAThon^TM Issue Brief, please click here. For more information on The Innovation Project, please visit theinnovationproject2013.com or contact Doug Wilber at [e-mail].

About The Innovation Project

Over 2 days, 100 speakers and 500 senior members of the payments industry will change the way that the payments and its broader commerce ecosystem thinks, talks, delivers and ignites innovation. On March 20^th and 21^st the greatest minds in commerce and payments will assemble at Harvard University near Boston to kick the conversation about innovation up to an entirely different level at a program called The Innovation Project. Speakers and delegates are among the most senior executives and elite innovators from literally every established payments company worldwide, along with the CEOs of the most innovative start-ups in the space. One of its five modules includes pairing industry CEOs with external thought leaders such as Al Gore (former US VP), Steve Levitt (Freakonomics), Eric Reis (The Lean Start Up), Rosie Rios (US Treasurer), Russell Simmons (Rush Card), Raj Date (CFPB), and Josh Lerner (Architecture of Innovation) to challenge the conventional wisdom around what it will take to get merchants and consumers to adopt new ways to shop and pay. Warren Buffett is the program’s keynote. The Innovation Project also hosts the industry’s 2013 PYMNTS.com Innovator Awards, given to 15 of the industry’s top innovators over dinner, which this year will be emceed by B.J. Novak of The Office and will introduce delegates to 40 of the hottest “next generation” payments innovators.

About PYMNTS.com

PYMNTS.com is reinventing the way in which companies in payments share relevant information about the initiatives that shape the future of commerce and make news. This powerful B2B platform is the #1 site for the payments industry by traffic and the premier source of information about “what’s next” in payments. C-suite and VP level executives read it daily for these insights, making the PYMNTS.com audience the most valuable in the industry. It provides an interactive platform for companies to demonstrate thought It provides an interactive platform for companies to demonstrate thought leadership, popularize products and, most importantly, capture the mindshare of global decision-makers. It’s where the best minds and best content meet on the web.