Unleash creativity and ignite innovation

Innovation isn’t possible unless you empower your employees to creatively problem solve, says Stake’s founder and director, Matt Leibowitz. 

Established in 2017, the digital investment brokerage was founded on the simple idea that everyone should have equal access to opportunities to grow their wealth, and now serves over half a million customers across Australia and New Zealand, with over $3 billion in assets under administration.  Matt shares Stake’s key lessons on their innovation journey:

Our simple mission is to break barriers for ambitious investors, which has led us to help hundreds of thousands of people to invest their money seamlessly. However, this has only been made possible through our ability to innovate, finding new ways to solve customer pain points, and fuelling more accessible ways to help people grow their wealth. 

Sometimes innovation can be a cliche, and in some cases, solely focused on new technology. However, even with the best technology, innovation is not possible if your business culture does not support people to propose and capitalise on new ideas - and most importantly be prepared to fail and learn. 

For this reason, we’ve been careful to nurture and grow an attitude of listening, doing and learning. Not just in our tech and the solutions we provide to customers, but it’s an intentional way we empower employees and unleash creativity to solve problems from within. 

Escape the grind: fuel collaboration and creativity

While a philosophy of innovation is possible to implement, ensuring staff have time to strive above and beyond is another thing. We wanted to look at other ways we could encourage innovative thinking.

To foster this, we developed our annual Bull Run, a hackathon-like event that brings together the entire company for one day, to solve a range of customer pain points or problems.

Staff are split into teams of differing skill sets, and tasked to come up with an innovative solution to the problem. This isn’t just about blue sky thinking, with key criteria also being about how possible it is to implement. Since its inception in 2022, we’ve been able to tackle customer problems head on, outside of the day-to-day, and the process has led to some of our biggest innovations for customers to date.

Many of our staff are also customers themselves investing on Stake on a daily basis. This helps strengthen their understanding from a customer perspective, enhancing their delivery of customer focused solutions.  

Build a foundation for innovation by focusing on people

We view innovation as a by-product of the environment, and this means people need to feel valued, supported, and empowered. This requires giving people space to build on their expertise, while having opportunities to combine their skills with different specialties across the business.  By creating the space for trial and error this then translates to great customer & business outcomes.

To address this we created bespoke packages to support each staff member in new and innovative ways. For instance, our family package goes beyond your standard packages offering 10 weeks paid leave for either parent plus six additional weeks for the birth parent, up to $1,000 monthly Childcare Allowance, a flexible return to work plan, and 10 days paid Miscarriage Bereavement Leave.

To help our staff continue to grow professionally we introduced a $2,500 yearly professional development allowance to be used how they like. Whether that be continuing to learn in their areas of expertise, or acquiring a new skill set. These acquired skills are then implemented into the business and foster innovative thinking that may not have been cultivated prior to upskilling.

By implementing these solutions, not only were we able to address work-life balance concerns; but we began to proactively foster an environment where employees feel empowered, energised, and ready to push the boundaries of innovation.

Interact with customers to drive our vision

Customer insights and collaboration also inspire innovation in ways that as a company you might miss if you don’t have a philosophy of having the customer in the room. At the forefront of everything we do we have the customer in mind. We constantly reach out to our community for their feedback through surveys, focus groups and events. This helps drive the direction of product releases.

True innovation should seep into every aspect of your business, shaping how you interact with customers, build products, and navigate the future. Ultimately, innovation isn't a siloed initiative, it's a company-wide mindset. When internal empowerment meets customer understanding, you unlock the true potential to reshape your industry and deliver lasting value for all stakeholders.

by Matt Leibowitz, founder and director, Stake.

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