Novarica recently conducted its fifth semi-annual innovation tour of Silicon Valley, which included the opportunity to lead a delegation of senior insurer IT leaders through a series of on-site visits to Bay Area companies. Innovation is the lifeblood of Silicon Valley, and in a fast-moving world that rewards calculated risks, the Valley offers an array of lessons that organizations can apply anywhere, namely:
- The Critical Role of Leadership: Innovation starts at the top, and leaders are responsible for defining vision and setting the tone. Where there is a clear vision and established principles, people will commit and strive to them. Executive leadership must establish this framework and disseminate it through the enterprise.
- Focus on Culture: Peter Drucker famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This observation can help explain why some businesses struggle to change even when they want to—and even in the face of compelling existential threats to their businesses. Innovation can come from anyone and anywhere if a corporate environment enables it.
- Unyielding Customer Centricity: The Amazon product development process in which a company works backwards from the customer experience may appear in stark contrast to what many insurance carriers do today. Even so, the applicability is direct and compelling: customer-centricity empowers employees, and a frictionless customer experience can help make a company’s product “sticky.”
Even for long-tail liability and risk-adverse industries like insurance, the experience of direct exposure to a truly integrated ecosystem like Silicon Valley can be invaluable. For more on lessons that insurers can take away from the Valley, see our latest report, Enabling Innovation, Vol. 5: More Lessons from Silicon Valley.
Novarica is also making plans for its next Silicon Valley Innovation Tour during the week of July 29, 2019. If you’re interested in attending, feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].
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