Design Thinking as a Scalable Framework for Ideation Management in Large Financial Institutions

In an era marked by rapid digital transformation, evolving customer expectations, and heightened regulatory demands, large financial institutions face mounting pressure to continuously innovate while maintaining operational stability. Traditional approaches to ideation management in these organizations often struggle with fragmentation, rigidity, and a lack of customer-centricity. Design thinking—a human-centered, iterative problem-solving methodology—offers a compelling framework for transforming ideation into a scalable, cross-functional, and agile capability. This explores the application of design thinking as a scalable framework for ideation management within large banks, insurance companies, and financial technology subsidiaries. Anchored in principles such as empathy, problem framing, iterative prototyping, and user feedback, design thinking can help financial institutions democratize innovation, bridge departmental silos, and integrate customer insights into the early stages of product and process development. The research synthesizes theoretical foundations and practical applications of design thinking, and presents a modular framework that includes governance models, digital toolkits, and cultural enablers necessary for enterprise-wide scaling. Case examples from retail banking, compliance innovation, and customer experience redesign are analyzed to demonstrate how design thinking accelerates time-to-market, enhances collaboration, and embeds continuous learning into institutional workflows. This also examines the challenges of implementing design thinking at scale, including resistance to change, skill gaps, and measurement difficulties. This concludes by highlighting the strategic value of embedding design thinking into innovation governance structures, and recommends future research into AI-enhanced ideation systems and metrics for tracking innovation ROI. Ultimately, this research positions design thinking not just as a creative process, but as a strategic innovation infrastructure capable of transforming ideation management in complex, highly regulated financial environments. It underscores the importance of balancing creativity with scalability and aligning user-driven innovation with institutional imperatives.