Lisha Davis Leads The Vanguard Innovation Studio

The Vanguard Innovation Studio is officially open for business at their Philadelphia location on 2300 Chestnut Street. Leading the studio is Lisha Davis, a longtime entrepreneur and innovator at Vanguard. The team is tapping into Philadelphia’s ecosystem of startups, tech entrepreneurs, educational institutions, and everything that the city has to offer in order to develop new ideas to better serve their clients. Vanguard Innovation Studio is focusing on human centered design while working cross functionally to develop creative approaches to a 42 year old business.

The studio itself is a brightly colored space with eclectic furniture and an open kitchen, mimicking the “startup life” feel. The facility is able to house 100 employees and partners to work solely on projects to move Vanguard in a more innovative direction. Unlike their conservative home office, the Vanguard Innovation Studio encourages a relaxed atmosphere, down to the attire. Their fishbowl styled conference rooms and open seating promotes open communication throughout the office. Although they are only a month into their grand opening, the Vanguard Innovation Studio is already bustling with activity. The conference room walls and windows are covered in post-it notes and the room is filled with eager spirits as they listened to the guidance of consultants, successful entrepreneurs, and advisors.

When asked about Lisha’s opinion on the path to entrepreneurship, she responds, “Often times they come from very diverse and different backgrounds. There’s no tried and true path to get to innovation, so to speak.” By building a collaborative space, Vanguard’s team hopes to produce innovative ideas that will help expand what they can offer their clients. A financial services company like Vanguard needs an Innovation Studio so they can work outside of the conservative atmosphere of their home office in the suburbs. Competition in the financial services industry is stiffening, and Vanguard is noticing. “Focusing on brand name and products alone was not going to keep us in our spot forever.”, says Lisha. “Innovation was the next thing.” The Vanguard Innovation Studio has received support from surrounding institutions like the University of Pennsylvania and sponsorship from executives like Bill McNabb. They hope to collaborate with students to help find and solve the problems that Vanguard may be facing. Not only that, but the Vanguard Innovation Studio will also be reaching out to startups from various industries in the Philadelphia area.

Lisha’s mindset is to stay connected with customers. Lisha’s career was heavily invested in business strategy and operating general management. She worked as a financial advisor and even ran her own practice for a number of years before entering Vanguard. Her different roles at Vanguard included a position as Business GM, where she rotated across different businesses and worked within the high net worth division. She began running service design and strategy 5 years ago, thinking about differentiation and sustainability in a way that Vanguard has not done before. The end goal is to help think through services and ecosystems they want to provide to financial advisors, and create the roadmaps to lead Vanguard in the right direction.

Through the efforts of the Innovation Studio, Vanguard is becoming more human centric. Together with the innovators and entrepreneurial leaders in Philadelphia, they hope to build a collaborative experience for those in the financial space. The Innovation Studio’s goals are outcome based, has a cultured mindset, and focuses on organization and coordination. By the end of this year, they hope to be able to experiment with the operating model that they are putting into place.