個案資料

Appointed president and CEO of the Royal Bank of Canada in 2014, McKay is leading Canada’s biggest bank as the Digital Age and fintech revolution force the industry’s old business models into extinction. As a champion of Canada’s innovation ecosystem, McKay spearheads RBC’s support for and partnerships with universities, start-ups, and accelerators, particularly in technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain. McKay sat down with Ivey Business School Professor Gerard Seijts to discuss how his organization is harnessing disruptive forces to reimagine banking. McKay sees two major macro drivers of disruption in our time. First, we’ve entered the platforms era in which people’s lives are interconnected via social media, e-commerce, online entertainment, workplace networks, etc. The second is climate change, which impacts how societies organize and feed themselves. Creating transformational change in response to a crisis, McKay claims, is relatively easy, and yet creating a sense of urgency when business is thriving is difficult. Some of RBC’s most successful products over the past 10 years have come out of employee surveys. RBC’s old way of working was a matrix, with everyone focused on their roles, but it has flattened the organization and created agile teams that are cross-functional and own the entire process, and where everybody has input across a project’s journey. Ultimately, McKay does not see machines and automation as a threat, but cautions that continuous learning must be entrenched in formal education programs.

• Royal Bank of Canada
• David McKay
• Managing Disruption
• Agile corporate cultures