Annalie Killian is a change agent at financial services giant AMP.

Her official title is "catalyst for magic", but the scope of her role is really to challenge ways of thinking at AMP - and to shake things up.

"Disruption is probably one of the most hyped words of the last 24 months," Killian said.

"The challenge is how do we run our existing businesses in a way that can manage both the core business today as well as lead for innovation?

"This has been the biggest paradox that I've observed in 15 years of working in a large corporation: How do we satisfy the expectations of the market for predictability in returns and at the same time unleash the innovation spirit in our organisation?"

The first step, according to Killian, is to set a grand vision or challenge "that everyone can buy into". AMP's vision was formed over a period of four years as a result of a then-fledgling internal initiative that had been given the name Amplify.

"We started with a one-day experiment in 2005 where we circled out to our immediate suppliers and partners [for their participation]," Killian said.

Learnings from these early iterations of Amplify fed into the creation of AMP's overarching vision for innovation and ushering in disruptive change. Once the vision was laid out, Amplify was repositioned as the vehicle to achieve it.

"By 2009 Amplify, we started to embrace our customers into the Amplify fold and also members of the public," Killian said.

"Today Amplify is a truly porous event and an open exchange for ideas, where a whole company opens its doors and asks people to come inside and learn with us, and in the process we learn with them and that informs our strategy."

It now runs for a week, with regular smaller events - some open to the public, others for the benefit of AMP employees only.

"During Amplify week we turn the whole business inside out and we disrupt what it means to work in a traditional conservative financial services company," Killian said.

"We scour the earth for the smartest people who are the architects of tomorrow's businesses and then we give every single employee in the company - whoever wants to turn up - the opportunity to learn directly from these people."

Internally, she said, Amplify had become known as a safe space for the exploration of "scary, radical, disruptive and threatening" ideas.

"But in the process of exploring them, when you start engaging with ideas, you have a mindset flip because suddenly you start looking at disruptive and threatening ideas from the perspective of, 'How can we use this? How can we put these ideas in the service of our strategy?'," she added.