How does a company founded in 1853 drive continuous innovation within a long-established and highly complex industry?

In December of 2018, Henry Huang, Director of Business Innovation and Strategic Initiatives for Aetna, was focused on this challenge. How could Aetna build a more innovative culture and get employees across the organization to be more engaged in driving innovation?

The healthcare industry is highly competitive, complex and rapidly changing. Today’s consumers bring high expectations to their healthcare experiences. Together with technology and consumer companies disrupting the industry and the digital transformation wave hitting every industry, healthcare companies are under intense pressure to transform. Yet mature healthcare organizations are heavily siloed, with many legacy businesses and systems in place – big barriers to innovation.

“Fostering a culture of innovation at Aetna means building an organization that’s more resilient, adaptive and entrepreneurial,” says Huang. “It’s important that we engage our people across all our businesses and at all levels. Every one of us must challenge ourselves to think from the member’s perspective and find opportunities to improve the experience of our customers.”

Huang realized that employees closest to customers often had the best ideas for new products and services. Yet coming up with innovative ideas was a long way from seeing a tangible product delivered. Most employees didn’t have the knowledge, experience or platform to take action on their ideas and move through barriers to make them a reality.

Together with his team, Huang set out to build a program that would inspire and encourage innovation across the organization and guide teams to bring new ideas forward.

In June of 2019, Aetna launched its first enterprise-wide innovation tournament. The company invited employees across all business areas and roles to submit ideas that would help improve the member experience. In its first year, the competition inspired great excitement and many strong concepts. In the past, despite successful workshops to help parts of the organization develop innovative ideas, teams had difficulty translating ideas into market-ready offerings. Often when Huang’s Business Consulting Solutions team checked back in 1-2 months later, they found innovators had been pulled back into the day-to-day demands of their roles, and progress on these new promising ideas had stalled.

To transform that experience and build a stronger culture of innovation, Huang drew from his own positive experience participating in an MIT-HMS Healthcare Innovation Bootcamp delivered jointly by MIT and Harvard Medical School. He turned to MIT Bootcamps for help. He believed that the perspectives and increased accountability of an outside program would raise the stakes and visibility for the Challenge, help teams expand their mindsets to think beyond an Aetna-focused lens, and give participants more tools and support to move from idea to execution.

Working closely together, Huang and the MIT Bootcamps team designed an MIT Mini-Bootcamp experience for Aetna, offered as an integrated element of the newly redesigned innovation framework that was the capstone of the Aetna Consumer Experience Innovation Challenge.

Kicked off in June of 2019, the Consumer Experience Innovation Challenge generated more than 1,000 new ideas to better serve members. The ideas came from employees across the organization. All levels and all roles were invited to participate, from interns to vice presidents, from any business area or region, and with any length of service. Many of the individuals involved, some with decades at Aetna, had never had a chance to collaborate with other areas in the organization or to make this kind of strategic impact on the business.

“When our people have an opportunity to express their best ideas, and especially those ideas that may not have found an outlet in the past, our entire organization benefits from that.”

--Erin Hoeflinger, SVP Strategy & Consumer Experience, Aetna, A CVS Health Company

While many Innovation Challenge ideas came from people’s day-to-day roles, others were born from seeing a family member, close friend or loved one struggling with a healthcare challenge. These close personal connections mean participants have extreme passion and commitment around their ideas.

One of those individuals is Michele Dierwechter, who works in Service Operations. “I am a cancer survivor and currently the caregiver for my husband who has stage 4 cancer,” she shared. “As a patient or caregiver, you want to focus on care, overall wellbeing and family. You don’t want to worry about pre-certifications, surprise bills or navigating the healthcare system. My direct experience led to the idea of a personal navigator for members with cancer to help on their path to better health.”

Following an online peer voting process to narrow the field, the Consumer Experience Innovation Leadership Council reviewed proposals from the top 30 ideas. Eleven project teams were selected as semi-finalists and brought to Hartford in late July to develop their ideas, create compelling value propositions and business cases and present to senior leadership. From there, seven finalists were matched with executive sponsors and tasked with further developing their business models and identifying impacts on revenue and membership. They delivered another round of presentations in late August. Ultimately, four teams were tapped as winners and along with two teams from Aetna’s Summer Intern Capstone projects were given the opportunity to go to the MIT campus in Cambridge and participate in the Innovation Mini-Bootcamp to develop an implementation strategy, identify milestones, people and resources needed to execute the project.

MIT Innovation & Entrepreneurship Bootcamps equip learners with a comprehensive toolkit to identify opportunities for innovation, build & lead teams, design a sustainable business model, and persuasively communicate that venture and its impact to key stakeholders. Delivered in just two and a half days, the MIT Mini-Bootcamp for Aetna was an intensive experience that brought all the finalist teams to MIT to learn more about their industry and develop critical skills needed to execute their innovations.

The teams joined discussions with leading faculty in corporate innovation, communications, and technology who shared research and frameworks to help them examine their idea from different angles and test their logic around their offering. Did it address a critical problem? How would it measure up in the broader competitive landscape? How could it be improved? What technologies could be used?

According to Jeff MacFarlane, Sr. Director, Commercial Service Operations, “The MIT Bootcamp instructors were so engaging I could have listened to them for hours. Their stories and perspectives on innovation and entrepreneurship were inspiring.”

They also developed skills to better manage the challenges they would face with turning their ideas into real products or services. For example, the teams would need to effectively pitch the value and potential of their ideas. They would need to secure additional resources and funding outside their teams. And they would need to manage ongoing communication with other teams around resources and staffing. The MIT team helped teams assemble the most critical skills, frameworks and resources, such as how to present the ideas to senior leadership, skills for negotiating resources, and approaches to project management.

"The main thing I learned was to focus on the details that matter to executives," commented Angela Bell, Aetna Resources for Living Communications Manager. "You can put a lot of work into your presentation, but if you are missing details critical for the decision process you won't get far."

"We learned to be "bold and smart" as entrepreneurs," continued MacFarlane. "For example, Professor Bill Aulet talked with us about the "land and expand" as a way to get ideas to market more quickly. As a result, we've selected two small markets to pilot our idea. We'll show success in those markets first, then use those results to expand to others."

Perhaps the most valuable learning for the Aetna teams was the external, global perspective shared by the MIT faculty and the MIT Bootcamp team. As the Innovation Challenge ideas came from inside the business, a broader, external perspective helped surface opportunities and challenges they may have missed, which helped them strengthen their business plans.

"If you have passion and conviction around an idea and can relay it in a way that translates to value for the business and our members, it doesn't matter where you are in the organization–anyone can drive innovation."
– Angela Bell, Aetna Resources for Living Communications Manager

As part of the process, each team pitched their ideas and got feedback from the faculty and their peers. Every participating Aetna team member earned a certificate of completion from MIT Bootcamps and left the program with a plan to pilot their solution and pitch to senior leaders for funding and resource support. They had also gained the chance to work directly with employees from all areas of Aetna, sharing ideas and forming friendships.

"It's not only about creating new ideas. It's also about networking and collaborating, said Bell. “The experience we had meeting all these new people was such a fabulous experience, it’s irreplaceable.

Following the MIT Bootcamp experience and intensive work building out their business plans, each team presented in-person to a group of Aetna senior leaders. All those teams expect to launch a pilot within six months of the MIT Mini-Bootcamp.

The first idea to launch is a “Contact me” feature in Aetna’s Cancer Support Center on the Aetna member web and mobile platforms. Envisioned by team members in Service Operations including Michele Dierwechter and Jeffrey MacFarlane, the feature will help guide members with complex diagnoses through their care journey. The team hopes to take some of the worries off the plates of some of Aetna’s most vulnerable members—so they can keep their energy focus on getting well.

Other winning projects from the Innovation Challenge are:

• A focus on women’s health, starting by addressing painful endocrine and uterine conditions that women typically aren’t comfortable discussing. A product resulting from this team’s work will be the first Aetna product in a CVS store.
• A crisis advocacy service with a single point of contact that proactively reaches out to members and their families who experience a sudden medical crisis. The goal is to decrease levels of stress, fear, and anxiety for the patient and their care circle.
• An initiative to humanize the language in healthcare insurance, simplifying complex health care terminology and creating graphics so that all members can understand and be better informed.
• An integrated financial platform to help customers manage their financial health.

“I think for people to understand at all levels of the company how they can make such an important difference in our consumers’ lives and the way our company faces out in the market is critically important.”

Sheryl Burke, SVP, Cross-Enterprise Strategic Innovation

Coming out of the Innovation Challenge, Aetna has seen participants demonstrate stronger problem solving and collaboration skills and a mindset that’s more open to experimentation and new ideas. Participants say they feel more inspired to come to work and that they are more directly engaged with Aetna’s mission to build a healthier world.

“Working on projects is my job, and I love it,” says MacFarlane. “But before I was executing someone else’s vision. Now I’m implementing my own vision. This work aligns with the values of Aetna/CVS but it’s also my vision. It’s made my job more personal and even more enjoyable.”

Managers have observed that people are working above and beyond their job description, putting in extra time to advance their “passion projects.” Since the Consumer Experience Innovation Challenge in 2019, different parts of the business have reached out to see how they can get involved. And leaders across the company are quick to support their employees’ involvement in these project teams.

This initiative has also helped identify promising, entrepreneurial talent that may not have been visible in the CVS Health talent pipeline previously. Huang believes that “talent will be the most important resource as organizations look to build a culture of innovation that addresses the evolving socio-economic challenges that are transforming business.” He wants to attract and retain the best talent by creating the best place to work and allowing colleagues across the organization the opportunity to work on issues they are most passionate about, especially those that build the foundation for a healthier world. “It is our responsibility as a leader in healthcare to harness the talent in the organization that will help our communities with not only their physical health but with their mental health, financial security, social connectedness and sense of purpose.”

The team plans to continue the program in future years, sending emerging talent to MIT’s Healthcare Innovation Bootcamp as well as participating in future Mini-Bootcamps for Aetna-CVS Health teams.

Huang offers these 3 tips on launching a successful innovation challenge.

1) Engage senior leadership. Executive sponsors offer teams insights into initiatives in other parts of the business and make sure projects fit with the overall strategy. Aetna leaders were active coaches and guided teams through the process.

2) Work in tandem with Communications. Our internal communications team did a great job of highlighting the event, teams and the different phases of the Innovation Challenge. Our President even highlighted teams at a company-wide Town Hall. This visibility got more people interested and is helping us foster our culture of innovation.

3) Find the right outside partner. For us, the external expertise and perspective were critical. Make sure your partner is one that your people will trust and be excited about.

“Building a strong culture of innovation will help us better serve members and help us attract top talent to Aetna/CVS Health. The MIT Mini-Bootcamp experience was a big factor in the success of our Innovation Challenge. Our teams gained a broader perspective and greater insight into what others in our industry are doing and a deeper understanding of the challenges and obstacles we face as a business. The credibility of the MIT faculty and the expert MIT network we gained access to were fantastic."

--Henry Huang, Director of Business Innovation and Strategic Initiatives for Aetna

CHALLENGE

Build a more innovative culture across Aetna and inspire employees to develop and deliver new products and services to improve customer experience.

SOLUTION

Aetna teams generated new ideas that were showcased through Aetna’s Innovation Challenge. Selected finalists participated in a 2.5-day Mini-Bootcamp program at MIT.

RESULTS

• All six finalist teams expect to launch pilots within 6 months of MIT Mini-Bootcamp
• The experience has unlocked enthusiasm and passion for innovation across the company
• Aetna has been able to identify new entrepreneurial talent in their pipeline