CUSTOM PROGRAM CASE STUDY
DRIVING INNOVATION BY PRECEDENT (AND PRACTICE) Read below to see how Chubb Insurance and Vanderbilt’s Executive Education paired up to tackle industry changes and help their employees innovate, the Music City way. Background
According to an extensive PwC 2014 survey involving CEOs in a variety of fields, insurance executives expect that changes in customer behavior, distribution channels and the competitive landscape will be more disruptive to their business than leaders in any other major industry. Their reasons for concern are easy to understand. Millennials, who represent the next generation of insurers’ clients, are less loyal than their parents and grandparents, much harder to engage through traditional sales channels, and different in their expectations for products and services. At the same time, changing demographics among their own workforce are also creating new challenges for insurers. “In the next two years, 25 percent of our employees are eligible to retire,” says Kathleen Overlin, Agency Education Manager at Chubb Insurance. As aging employees leave—in the insurance field, the average age of the workforce is over 55—their experience and institutional knowledge leave, too, creating a void that is difficult to fill. Attracting millennials to work in the industry has proven to be a challenge. “Everything is changing,” says Overlin, whose job involves working closely with agents and brokers. “And it’s changing at a more rapid pace than I can ever remember.”
Problem
Chubb, like other companies in the insurance industry, recognized the need for innovation. But how to go about it? How to go beyond imposing solutions from the top down to create a culture of change within the organization? And how could Chubb help spread new approaches to the agents, brokers and partners who sell its products—and whose efforts would be critical to the success of the company’s responses to change?
Solution
Chubb engaged Vanderbilt to deliver a customized version of the Executive Education’s new Music City Innovation program for a group of the company’s employees and partners. The (2-day) program uses, as its starting point, the original story of the Grand Ole Opry, which was created not to sell country music but rather to sell insurance—a revolutionary idea that piggybacked on a disruptive new technology, radio. Continued on back.
The Client Partner With more than 10,000 employees and offices in 25 countries, Chubb Insurance is a Fortune 500 company and the eighth largest property and casualty insurer in the United States. While all industries continually change, “Our industry is changing at a more rapid pace than I can ever remember,” notes Kathleen Overlin, Agency Education Manager. Like their insurance peers, Chubb Corp. faces a coming retirement-related demographic shift in their workforce, while also courting a uniquely challenging new generation of clients, the Millenials.
The Professor Vanderbilt Professor David Owens led the interactive classroom portions on strategic innovation throughout the (two-day) course. Professor Owens serves on the faculty at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management in the area of management, specializing in innovation and new product development. He is known as a dynamic speaker and is the recipient of numerous teaching awards. He provides consulting services for a wide range of clients around the world, and his work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, London Guardian, and on NPR.
Contact David Goodridge | Director david.goodridge@owen.vanderbilt.edu | owen.vanderbilt.edu