Essential ingredients for insurance innovation

Many of us had to innovate during the pandemic, whether it was figuring out how to manage a workforce that used to be in person and was now remote, or how to safely execute claims inspections while employing social distancing. Some of us may have innovated successfully, while others realize it could have gone better. Following years of being involved in innovation, I have observed that success requires three things: a clear strategy, a strong team and embracing change along the journey.

A clear strategy for innovation

A clear strategy for innovation requires vision and guiding principles.

Vision is a laser focus on the WHY. What problem do you want to solve? What is your differentiation in the market? Are you building a better mousetrap or creating an entirely new way to catch a mouse? Always keep the desired outcome top of mind.

Guiding principles help define what is important and enable you to make better, faster and more consistent decisions. The creation of guiding principles is a great opportunity to involve your CEO and frontline adjusters to capture a total picture of the project. Use guiding principles and communicate them throughout the lifecycle of a project to ensure continued alignment.

Jony Ive said one of the most important things he learned from working with Steve Jobs at Apple was that focus means “saying no to something that with every bone in your body you think is a phenomenal idea, and you wake up thinking about it, but you end up saying no to it because you’re focusing on something else.” A successful strategy for innovation combines a clear vision with guiding principles to guarantee laser focus on the desired outcome.

A strong team for innovation

A strong team includes diverse perspectives and support infrastructure.

Diverse perspectives are important. If each person on the team has the same background and experiences, you aren’t likely to get a variety of ideas and you are likely to repeat the same things you’ve always done. However, having people with different backgrounds and experiences on the team is not enough. You also need to ensure that team members feel included, feel heard and feel safe sharing their ideas. Give them permission to share those wild ideas. Encourage team members to build upon each other’s ideas because that is where the magic happens.

I took a creativity & innovation class with Dr. Lisa Gundry at DePaul University, where one exercise was to map out all the characteristics of a completely different company or product — not a competitor — to see what new ideas those characteristics generated in our own products.

You also need to set up the support infrastructure for your team. Do whatever it takes to show your employees they are supported by a larger team, and that their ideas — whether practical or idealistic — can favorably impact the organization. Creativity takes time and space to breathe, so make innovation a regular occurrence and include input from your C-suite to your frontline adjusters in these activities.

Embracing change for innovation

Embracing change includes planning iterative change and pivoting when needed.

Iterative change allows you to take calculated risks by making change smaller. You can learn from a prototype that isn’t fully built out and incorporate customer feedback into the iterative design process. Iterative change also allows stakeholders to absorb change slowly with less impact.

It’s also important to embrace change by pivoting as needed. Remove the fear of failure, and instead, focus on what you are learning from things that didn’t work out as expected. Show off the constant learning experiences to demonstrate the added value of innovation. Your guiding principles should make it easy to identify if you are serving your vision or if you have strayed and need to pivot back.

Insurers are constantly adapting and evolving as the market changes. Emerging technologies and AI integrations are recent examples. Insurers are identifying an iterative way to incorporate AI recommendations seamlessly into the claims workflow to benefit frontline adjusters.

You have the tools you need to innovate, so consider: What is your strategy? Once that’s identified, build a strong team to execute and embrace change along the way.

Elaine Rogalla is the product and strategic leader of Duck Creek’s Claims and Insights products. She is responsible for understanding the voice of the customer and defining the R&D initiatives for the success of these products. Opinions expressed are the author’s own.

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