Last night I attended a lecture by Jason Fried of 37 Signals at Purdue University. He was speaking to an entrepreneur class 
my bosses Paroon and Chris teach. If you haven't heard of Jason Fried, he is a relatively famous guy in software development and start up circles. He is known for innovative ideas in the realms of product design and management. Most of his talk was geared towards future entrepreneurs, but here are three ideas that I think are applicable to Credit Unions, and at least interesting enough to share with you. I think these ideas, and probably a lot of other ones are available in his book Rework.
1. You Can't Build a Brand- you have to build a business, and the brand flows naturally from the business. This is an interesting point, and I think it is partially true. If you try and build your Credit Unions brand on "Member Service" or "Convenience" you need to actually be an organization that values (spends time, energy and money on) Member Service and Convenience.
This makes sense, and in many cases should be true, but I also see examples of companies that build brands, that don't really align with their product. The domestic beer industry is a great example: Miller Lite proclaims that their product is "Triple Hops Brewed", while delivery a light fizzy product in which a hop like flavor can barely be detected.
2. Interruptions are the Enemy of Productivity- Jason said that his company works in different locations, and have very few meetings throughout the day. He proclaimed that Americans are working longer hours today, because they are working less at work. He suggested limiting the number of meetings, and turning off email and IM while trying to get work done.
I agree that it is hard to get work done in 45 min spurts between meetings and conference calls. Our concentration is diffracted by things like email, twitter, IM, Meetings, people coming over and saying Hi, and a thousand other things that keep us from getting work done. Minimizing distractions are an important thing, and allow us to get actual work done.
3. Useful is more important than Innovative- Jason claimed that innovation means nothing if it is not useful. Paperclips, pens, pencils are not innovative, but they are useful and are put to use every day. Don't do something innovative just to be innovative, ensure that your innovations are useful, otherwise they may end up looking like some of these products: http://www.vagabondish.com/top-20-useless-travel-gadgets-2007/
When considering new products, technologies, and services that you are offering to your members, think about how useful they are, not just how innovative they are.