NEW YORK,

June 21, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ernst & Young LLP today announced the launch of its Union Square Innovation Center. The Center, which will focus on financial services, is a flagship location for EY wavespace™, the EY organization's global growth and innovation network. The lab will serve as a hub for the Suits+Jeans™ approach to innovation, which combines deep business experience with specialists in disruptive trends such as FinTech, blockchain, artificial intelligence, robotics and data analytics. "When suits and jeans functions come together, they can unlock an institution's ability to innovate and fundamentally change the way organizations do business," said

Roger Park

, Innovation & Strategy Lead for the Financial Services Organization, Ernst & Young LLP. "We are excited to serve as a nexus for these encounters. Our Union Square Innovation Center is a place for experimenting with new ideas, pushing boundaries and truly industrializing innovation."
Focused on helping financial services organizations achieve breakthroughs at speed and scale, the Center also illustrates EY's commitment to building a better working world, starting locally. The US firm plans to work with a local ecosystem of clients, government organizations, the startup community and academic institutions to bring New York City innovation into the global wavespace™ network. "Disruption is a daily reality for organizations today, and it requires a new way of thinking about innovation – one that we are enabling by bringing together our diverse talent and sector knowledge at Union Square and throughout our network," Anthony Caterino, Vice Chair and Regional Managing Partner for the Financial Services Organization, Ernst & Young LLP. "Our ability to collaborate closely with clients on their most complex innovation challenges, marshaling resources from across our organization, is what will allow us to continue to win and maintain our position of leadership in an era of digital enterprise-driven transformation." Michael Versace, IDC's Director of Digital Strategy Consulting research, commented: "EY's new Union Square Financial Services Innovation Center is an example of its innovative investment in clients and a new way of delivering purpose-led digital consulting. In times like now when innovation is so critical to business growth, the EY wavespace™ environment itself should be viewed as a client engagement platform, providing a physical environment, technology, and the talent to actually 'experience,' not just plan and design, new disruptive thinking, business capabilities, technologies. This is a strategic investment by EY for advising clients – in a hands-on way – and helping them tease out the technical, organizational, data and business process options and complexities tied to scaling and de-risking innovation across the enterprise."