This document discusses overcoming barriers to innovation within large organizations. It outlines strategies for identifying supporters of new ideas, building evidence to gain approval, and empowering others to advocate on behalf of initiatives. Specific techniques are presented for recruiting "landing zones" to champion concepts, conducting stakeholder feedback sessions, and facilitating execution by removing roadblocks. The goal is to leverage the capabilities of AARP and UnitedHealthcare to create collaborative innovation through a shared vision and accountability framework.

1. Overcoming the Fear Factor
Breaking Down Customer-Facing Organizational Silos
for Product Strategy Excellence

2. Top 3 takeaways for participants
Learn how to identify and recruit potential ‘landing zones’ for your ideas
Build evidence to reduce risk and gain buy-in
Learn best practices for equipping others to promote on your behalf

3. Marla Hetzel
Director of Innovation at AARP Services Inc
“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

4. “Well behaved women rarely make history.”
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Jennifer Draklellis
Director of Innovation at UnitedHealthcare

5. A story of innovation

6. The Problem
• AARP and UnitedHealthcare
• Sought growth through innovative products and services
• Limited market impact

7. Becoming innovative = HARD
Why aren’t
we better at
innovation?

8. Achieve
Impact
Develop
We became the student
and the teacher
Brand trust.
Advocacy.
Expertise and
Knowledge
of 50+ consumer
and issue area.
Data and clinical
expertise and
knowledge.
Health care
delivery.
Technology.
UHG
50+ Consumer
Growth &
retention
Capabilities of
organizations
SHARED
CAPABILITIES
PERSPECTIVE
ACTIONABLE,
SHARED PURPOSE
VISION FOR INNOVATION
VALUE FUND
A COLLABORATIVE
innovation effort
between ASI and UHG
established to make
healthcare better by
leveraging shared
organizational
capabilities and aligning
with strategic objectives
to create actionable
concepts in a limited
number of important
focus areas that
transition to business
owners.
AARP/ASI

9. Operator vs Innovator Mindset

10. Operator
• Is uncomfortable with uncertainty,
ambiguity and risk
• Is able to make data-driven and
analytical decisions
• Works hard to be both accurate
and precise
• Works to avoid failure and reduce
errors to zero
• Wins by reducing variability and
executing to plan

11. Innovator
• Is comfortable with uncertainty,
ambiguity and risk
• Is able to make analytical or intuition-
based decisions (including “blink
responses” based on minimal information
• Settles for order-of-magnitude estimates
and does not let precision exceed
accuracy
• Sees failure as inevitable and even
desirable (as long as it happens fast / at
low
cost and one learns from it)
• Wins by maintaining flexibility / openness,
and preserving options

12. Decision Making Biases

13. Biases Impacting Innovation
Action-Oriented
Overconfidence or Competitor
Neglect
Self Interest
Inappropriate Attachments or
Misaligned Incentives
Pattern Recognition
Confirmation, False Analogies, or
Champion Bias
Stability
Anchoring, Loss Aversion, Sunk Cost
Fallacy, or Status Quo Bias
Social
Groupthink or Sunflower
Management

14. Accountability in Innovation

15. Types of Accountability:
Results, Action and Learning
Predicted
outcome?
Good
execution?
Learning
process?
Source: Govindarajan and Trimble, The Other Side of Innovation

16. Accountability
Serious planning? Clear hypothesis?
Team understanding?Improving predictions?
Reacting fast?Facing facts?
Low spend high learn?Evidence of learning?
Critical unknowns clear?

17. “We now accept the fact that learning is a
lifelong process of keeping abreast of
change. And the most pressing task is to
teach people how to learn.”
Peter F. Drucker

18. An Inherent Tension
the challenge of the performance engine

19. IDEAS
are only the
beginning

20. IBM INNOVATION MAN

21. INNOVATION
=
IDEAS
+
EXECUTION

22. But there is a problem...
Companies are built for efficiency, not innovation...

24. “Landing zones”
Identifying and recruiting

25. “When it comes to embracing a new idea,
most will demur unless you can pack a
parachute that will allow them to jump safely
from their [way of doing things] to yours.”
Source: Whitney Johnson, “Make Your Innovative Idea Seem Less Terrifying”, HBR Blog

26. 7 HINTS FOR
SELLING IDEAS
Source: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “Seven Hints for Selling Ideas”, HBR Blog

27. Seek many inputs
#1

28. Do Your Homework
#2

29. Make the rounds
#3

30. See Critics in Private and Hear Them Out
#4

31. Make the Benefits Clear
#5

32. Be Specific
#6

33. Show That You Can Deliver
#7

34. Advocacy
Equipping others to promote on your behalf

35. Become a champion

36. What
Find 2-3 meetings to present
our work to an audience
When
Between now and
when we next meet

37. Why
It will help us to socialize the
learning and neutralize the critics.
It will help us identify “landing
zones”.
How
We will prepare you with
stories and statistics.
You will let us know the feedback
you are receiving – both good and
bad.

38. Rose, Thorn, Bud experiment
ROSE (beautiful bloom, great smell):
Positive or ‘bright spots’. What are the positive or bright
spots?
THORN (finger prick, ouch!):
Negative or pain points/problematic. What should we be concerned
about?
BUD (new life): Having potential
What are new opportunities, goals, or insights?
A technique used to gather feedback, help us understand and then take
action.

39. Facilitating execution

40. Remove the roadblocks
and create a path for
execution
What When
Throughout the investment
decision-making process
especially
as we approach development
and execution

41. There are deep and
fundamental conflicts
between innovation and
ongoing
operations and execution
needs to be facilitated by
leadership.
Business owners should be
participating in
experimentation and
business case
development to enable
Why How
Serve as a champion...
Understand how decisions
will be made and how
resources
will be made available for the
investment decisions.
Prepare business owner in
both capacity and capability

42. Co-creation exercise
We used prototypes and engaged our steering committee in a co-
creation
to understand their needs and make the materials most effective.

45. Questions?

46. Continue the Conversation
Marla
mhetzel@aarp.org
Marla J Hetzel
(LinkedIn)
@hetzelmj
Jennifer
jennifer_draklellis@uhc.co
m
Jennifer Draklellis
(LinkedIn)
@jdraklellis