Comfort zone is against innovation
It is said that "Necessity is the mother of invention". Today I found the real meaning for this in one of my real-world tasks. If we are paid very well and if we have no necessity to do great things, we wouldn't even think out of the box and we might travel on the same path with just a simple life. Imagine the life of people who will have to work hard and otherwise their family will sleep hungry. Those are the painful necessities and the push for the people is to make sure their family is not sleeping with hunger.
This example might be an extreme situation but in general, when there is a need, people love to innovate things. If there is no need for innovation, people keep going as it is with their lives. I had to interact with the bank for one of the statement-related activities. I was able to see some banks in India offering some modern features, which have digitalized everything to a greater extent. There are also additional innovations where they can bring integrations with blockchain and digital currencies.
On the other hand, there are a few banks that are going very slowly. Only if RBI sends them a notice they would plan on doing some innovations. That too may not be an innovation. It would be something other banks would have already implemented and this bank would pick it up only now. If there is no pressure on them, they are okay to do most of the activities manually. This is one of the strongest reasons why banks are not operating with a greater speed when it comes to technology and innovation.
I'm glad many banks are now having great features and they are spending their money wisely on technology and innovations. Ultimately the output is also amazing. With the help of blockchain technology, some banks have also made cross-border payments seamless and faster. Earlier it used to take more than 3 days for payments to move from one country to another country through swift transfers. Today there are options available that can make things faster and money move faster than expected.
Let's say if you have so many happy customers and they are happy with the features already provided, the business would just be usual and there would be no need for any innovation. Both the customers and the business will be in the comfort zone and there will be no need for innovations at all. If there are customers who request new features and if there are challenges that the business will have to address, the business will have to get out of their comfort zone and make innovations accordingly. Even if they are unable to do innovations, they have to at least provide some solution.
Getting out of your comfort zone can be difficult during the earlier days but once we get out of it, we will start wondering how good that is and how many innovations we can try. The real inner strength will be visible only after coming out of the comfort zone.