Steve Suarez is Global Head of Innovation, Finance & Risk at HSBC, where he brings more than 27 years of consulting, telecommunications, and financial services expertise to his role. As leader of the Global Risk Innovation team, he works to foster and embed a culture of innovation, equipping the bank with the skills to face the future in a rapidly changing landscape. As any great innovator does, he looks both inside and outside his place of work for transformative ideas that can be scaled, and MIT is one of his sources of inspiration.
Steve’s journey with MIT began with the Industrial Liaison Program (ILP), a membership program in which leading companies partner with MIT researchers to monitor potentially disruptive technologies, leverage innovation from MIT-connected startups, solve technical problems, and more.
“We joined ILP in 2017 and have since collaborated on several joint projects,” Steve explains. “Most recently we have been invited to participate in MIT Sloan professor David Simchi-Levi's Data Science Lab. This is how my relationship with MIT and the MIT Sloan network began.”
As Steve got to know many of the professors through this corporate collaboration, he decided to enroll in several online MIT Sloan Executive Education courses including Corporate Innovation: Strategies for Leveraging Ecosystems and Mastering Design Thinking in 2019.
“When I started taking courses, I was blown away by the quality of the content,” Steve says. “I especially appreciated how quickly we got to the value. These professors focus on the big, impactful insights and leave out the unnecessary fluff that I don’t need to relearn over and over again. And they stretch me to think differently about topics I thought I already understood. They expanded my approach in ways that I could bring back to the bank.”
Mastering Design Thinking supplied Steve with takeaways and best practices he was able to immediately put to work in the context of his Global Risk Innovation team. The Corporate Innovation course not only validated innovation work being done at the bank but helped Steve widen their open innovation approach. “The professors encourage reaching beyond your department and your company, including inviting customers into the ideation process, which is an approach we actively pursue now.”
Steve began to double down on his Executive Education courses, enrolling in courses that would help make a difference in his role. He took a deep dive into transformative technologies, taking courses related to blockchain, IoT, and AI. When it came time to fly to the campus for the two-day course Innovator’s DNA, the COVID-19 pandemic had hit, and the course became the first program offered in a live online format.
“The live online courses are excellent,” says Steve, who was able to compare the experience to the many self-paced online courses he had completed. “While the asynchronous courses offer more materials and downloads that you can refer back to, I love the real-time interactions and the quick pace of the live online courses.” He recently completed the new Digital Learning Strategy course, which is designed to help organizations create their own digital learning strategy that makes the best possible use of transformative technologies.
Through his many interactions with MIT as part of ILP and Executive Education, Steve has developed a great understanding of MIT’s approach to teaching and collaboration, both on campus and off. So, when it came time for MIT Sloan professor Phil Budden to convert his on-campus version of the Innovation Ecosystems course to a live online offering, he enlisted Steve to help him think through how that conversion could work.
“Phil taught in both the Corporate Innovation and Innovator’s DNA courses, so we had gotten to know one another,” Steve says. “I sent him my ideas on how to make the content appropriate for that new format. It was a great conversation.”
Of the many courses he has taken at MIT and elsewhere, Steve enjoyed Digital Business Strategy: Harnessing Our Digital Future perhaps most of all. “I was really impressed with the professors’ insights on platforms and their ability to articulate multi-network effects—people assume they understand it, but it’s not as easy as they think. They really changed my perspective. And of course they—Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee—literally wrote the book on this, which I’ve had on my shelf since it came out.”
Steve is now on his way to completing the requirements for an Advanced Certificate for Executives (ACE), when he looks forward to becoming an MIT Sloan Affiliate Alumni and all of the benefits it will bring. He and his company are also continuing to partner with MIT thought leaders in innovative ways, including climate change.
“While I have been to the MIT campus many times previously, since COVID-19 I have been earning my ACE entirely online, and I’ll complete it in September. Throughout this virtual learning journey I have been able to interact with really amazing people—imagine, someone who wrote the book you are reading is now interacting with you and asking for your opinion. And I’m not only referring to professors but participants as well. These are well accomplished leaders in the industry. I was even in a program with a presidential candidate. Because MIT puts amazing people in front of us, I am able to bring equally amazing ideas back to my work.”
Steve Suarez on his MIT experience
Steve is now on his way to completing the requirements for an Advanced Certificate for Executives (ACE), entirely online.
Steve Suarez on his MIT experience
Steve is now on his way to completing the requirements for an Advanced Certificate for Executives (ACE), entirely online.