Designing the innovation process: Anthem
Is visual communication the key to building a culture of innovation?
Anthem decided it was time to change part of its enterprise strategy by creating a new focus on innovation. But, it needed both executive and enterprise buy-in for its new culture of innovation to be successful and long lasting.
ThoughtForm helped Anthem develop and communicate its innovation vision and give its employees the tools to translate that vision into action. Communicating the innovation vision gave Anthem employees what they needed to understand the big picture, connect the dots to other efforts, participate in the process, and build momentum.
Who did we help?
Anthem Inc. is one of the nation’s leading health insurance and health benefits companies. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, Anthem is a Fortune 500 publicly traded company. Its national health plans and specialty companies provide coverage to tens of millions of members across the United States.
What did we do?
Created an illustration style and nomenclature that reinforced Anthem’s inclusive and innovative culture.
ThoughtForm and Anthem collaborated to create a written and visual framework for categorizing and describing how all areas of the enterprise fit within the Anthem innovation ecosystem. During the development of this content strategy and visual toolkit, ThoughtForm worked to ensure that Anthem employees could easily visualize themselves in the Innovation ecosystem. This goal was achieved by modeling the actors in the visual toolkit after real Anthem employees and ensuring that the toolkit was inclusive, illustrating women and minorities in diverse positions across the enterprise.
Positioned two new
innovation-focused areas
within Anthem’s corporate
infrastructure.
As a new enterprise-wide discipline, innovation needed to be centralized so ideas from all areas of Anthem could be embraced. ThoughtForm worked with Anthem to define two innovation organizations. ThoughtForm then illustrated how the enterprise collaborated with these organizations to create and develop innovative ideas. The first organization, the Innovation Center of Excellence, needed to define and communicate Anthem’s strategic priorities for the year so that Anthem employees could understand where they should look for ideas. The second organization, the Innovation Studio, needed to explain its process and funding model as an internal innovation accelerator. Once these organizations were defined, ThoughtForm created a series of presentations and visualizations that were used to communicate the changes to Anthem’s C-suite and Board of Executives.
Visualized innovation
funding and
acceleration processes
to give employees the
big picture.
Anthem and ThoughtForm illustrated Anthem’s innovation processes to show how they work at a high level and a detailed level. These visual explanations, or Foglifters®, help Anthem’s employees understand how innovation should fit into the greater enterprise and their everyday work experiences.
This context helped employees know what to expect, set them up for success, and gave them the tools to be evangelists for Anthem’s new innovation approach.
What did we create?
Innovation Ecosystem
Foglifter®
The Innovation Ecosystem Foglifter® is the foundation of Anthem’s innovation strategy. This visual explanation illustrates how different business areas of the Anthem enterprise work with the Innovation Center of Excellence and Innovation Studio to cultivate a culture of innovation and develop innovation projects.
Innovation Process
Foglifter®
The Innovation Process Foglifter® focuses on explaining the process of the Innovation Studio, Anthem’s centralized innovation incubator and accelerator.
Innovation Playbook and
Communication Plan
The Innovation Playbook provides detailed step-by-step instructions for how to take an idea through the Anthem Innovation Studio. This Playbook, along with the Innovation Ecosystem Foglifter® and other materials, was released to Anthem employees through a communication plan that helped Anthem to keep its innovation priorities top-of-mind.
The Results
Through the course of this visual innovation communication process, Thoughtform:
Brought clarity and context to the future state innovation process
Developed nomenclature and visual toolkit to unify the innovation brand at Anthem
Documented the operating model and approach for the new Innovation Center of Excellence and Innovation Studio
Created rapid-prototypes of visual models to speed innovation and development
Facilitated reviews to help speed leadership’s consensus around the innovation approach
Supported the development of communication for the Innovation Studio’s launch
Created a communication plan to help Anthem keep innovation top-of-mind for its employees