Innovation Through E2.0

Moderator – Aaron Fulkerson, CEO, MindTouch

Panelist – Snehith Peddiraju, AXA Insurance

Panelist – Lisa Underkoffler, Principal Product Manager, Adobe

Panelist – John Benfield, Program & Portfolio Management, Metlife

Background:

[These are my quick notes, complete with  (what I hope is no more than) the occasional typo and grammatical error.  Please excuse those. Thanks!

From time to time, I’ll insert my own editorial comments – exercising the prerogatives of the blogger.  I’ll show those in brackets. ]

Notes:

• AXA looked at several products, but found many were too complex in relation to the needs of their company.  They were looking for flexibility, ease of use, speed of deployment.  They liked MindTouch because it allows them to do more than just identify new ideas. They can also use it to help colleagues better understand the competitive environment.  This helped employees offer better ideas that had greater impact on AXA’s ability to compete.
• AXA noticed through their innovation tool that one of their call centers was getting a very high volume of calls from an external partner. As a result a participant in the innovation program recommended that AXA deploy the system in question to the external partner. As a result the end-user calls went directly to the partner and were handled even more quickly than before.  They estimate that this eliminated hundreds of calls to the AXA center every mohnth.
• AXA also has a wiki-based portal, which seem to be large-scale game changing ideas (rather than micro-changes).  They estimate that about 20% of the ideas show great promise.
• Adobe put up an external Portal (using BrightIdeas) to increase their rate of innovation. However, initially, the site seemed to collect customer support requests.
• Take aways from Adobe’s experience:
  • Be part of the conversation – users want to hear from the company, not just provide an idea and leave; asl for clarification; get use cases and success stories; experiment
  • Monitor the comments – you’ll learn surprising things.
  • Start small – the key is to experiment, update, adapt to what’s going on
• Metlife: Innovate ITG
  • Their innovation initiative isabout 18 months old.
  • They deployed Spiggot for the intformation Technology Group (about 10% of the workforce), which is a globally distributed group with diverse skills and experience.
  • They implemented a formalized process, however, they are beginning to move away from the formal process
  • The formal process tended to herd people along a particular path, which led to similar ROI discussions.
  • Employees at all points on the line are participating.
  • There is no anonymity. As a result, there has been real accountability and no worries about inappropriate behavior.
  • Their system allows idea suggestion, commenting and voting on ideas.  They also allow participants to earn adn redeem rewards (e.g., various products).  However, most people participate because they are passionate about their ideas, not just because they want a reward.
  • They have generated a significant number of ideas that are patentable.  What’s remarkable is that through their innovation process/tool, members of the technology group have for the first time an opportunity to share their ideas with employees in other parts of the business.  In this case, technologists have suggested new insurance products.
  • MetLife had to integrate their innovation tool with their legacy systems (e.g., KM and SharePoint platform) to ensure easy access and full participation.
  • They had to focus on cultural issues
  • Helping people provide and receive constructive criticism
  • Keeping all the communications regarding innovation within the Tool
  • Learning the importance of Feedback – it doesn’t eliminate risk, but it does help mitigate it.
  • They started by just gathering ideas.  Now they use the tool for problem-solving