Fostering a culture of innovation

Innovation is a key enabler of sustainable growth, social development and economic prosperity. For thousands of years, it has been improving people’s lives and accelerating humankind’s journey towards new milestones. With its rapid technological advancements, the digital age has supercharged innovation and amplified its transformative impact.

In today’s ever-changing landscape, businesses must embrace innovation to remain competitive and relevant to their customers. Even the best product or service becomes outdated one day, which is why companies must continuously leverage innovation to evolve their offerings and seek solutions that can disrupt the status quo.

Collaboration is a driving force of innovation. That’s why at Mastercard, we make it our mission to engage all employees in this process, fostering a culture of innovation across our organization. To advance our objectives, we launched Innovation Week, which aims to transform the way we think, collaborate and innovate. The event provides a platform for everyone to share their out-of-the-box ideas, many of which have the potential to be translated into groundbreaking solutions to real problems. It also offers us the opportunity to hone valuable skills that will shape the future of our industry, forge connections across business units and showcase the power of what’s possible.

This June, we were excited to host the second edition of Innovation Week across seven offices in the EEMEA region, with other locations joining virtually. We kicked off the event with Discovery Day – a fun interactive showcase of Mastercard Foundry’s latest and greatest innovations that offered us a glimpse into the future of payments. We continued with AI Skill-up Day that provided the participants with the opportunity to boost their product development skills in a virtual masterclass on emerging AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Dall-E. The highlight of the event was Take Initiative – a two-day innovation competition where our colleagues formed teams to get creative and solve a real EEMEA business challenge addressing one of four themes provided by our executive sponsors. At the end of the week, the consensus was clear: We are now better equipped with the knowledge and tools essential for our success.

Being at the forefront of innovation, we believe that innovation can happen anywhere, and with the collective support of our team, we can spread it everywhere. Only this way can we succeed in harnessing its power to build an inclusive and sustainable future where everyone can thrive.