After the selection phase, the co-creation phase has begun. The Sella Data Challenge organised by Banca Sella in collaboration with Fintech District and the technological support of Fabrick continues in the name of open innovation. We asked Doris Messina, Chief Digital Transformation Office, to take stock of the situation and tell us about the next steps.

Did you expect such a high level of participation in the Sella Data Challenge from the Italian fintech ecosystem? How do you interpret it?

We are immersed in, and part of, the ecosystem and we appreciate its continuous growth; we have signed important partnerships and have others in the pipeline, and through the continuous dialogue we have with startups it has emerged how data is a fundamental resource for creating products and services that meet the expressed and unexpressed needs of customers.
At Sella we were confident that there would be interest and we are proud of the response, not only in quantitative, but also qualitative terms. The response obtained is a validation that of the choice of openness made together with the recent strategic plan and the first step in a path of creation, co-creation, learning and mutual growth. The large number of applications received allowed the selection teams to bring onboard different companies in terms of maturity, team composition and with heterogeneous use case proposals: from customer behaviors predictive models, to computing ESG scores and many other valuable projects

How is this co-creation phase taking place?

Co-creation for us certainly means doing things together, but also, and above all, making resources available and in common for others. By opening the data sandbox we want to allow participants to use Sella’s wealth of information and know-how to improve a product they already have, to add functionality or to create a specific use case that adds value to customers and at the same time allows them to grow. We are very careful to balance our presence at specific times when we make ourselves available, but without interfering with the specific creative and generative process of each team.
We ourselves are learning a lot from the relationship with the start-ups and this is also the phase in during which we improve and perfect the sandbox.

What is Sella’s role in this phase of the Sella Data Challenge?

We have been working with the teams to help them focus on a specific use case. We are now going through the preparation phase and our role is to support and assist them in giving meaning to and understanding the organisation and structure. In the coming weeks the focus will shift from technology to business with product manager colleagues providing information and feedback to refine what will then be presented.

In the light of the selected realities, what do you expect to see at the end of this phase?

In designing this initiative our focus has been on a mutually beneficial collaboration. We want to give the startups something that will help them grow and as they grow it will have an impact on the Bank and its customers. We therefore expect to see how creativity and collective intelligence can make leaps forward in terms of experience and service model, we expect to learn how to leverage the best of both worlds and build long-term relationships, we expect to build new services and products for our customers and for those of the startups that collaborate with us.

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