Building an entrepreneurial spirit through innovation training
BALOISE
The freedom to innovate thanks to the ‘Reflex Machine ‘
The Baloise Group is an insurance company operating in Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, and Switzerland. It operates through over 7,500 employees and has revenues of €11B+.
Developing an entrepreneurial spirit at Baloise
Baloise wanted to give its employees the freedom to develop innovations and build an entrepreneurial spirit, by training them on innovative methods and tooling. Together with Baloise Belgium, we developed the “Reflex Machine”, with the idea that innovation should become a ‘reflex’ for Baloise employees.
Training employee competencies
To train Baloise employees and provide them with the right tooling, we went through a series of workshops. We started with inspiration sessions on key trends within and outside the insurance industry, followed up with a series of ideation workshops covering topics such as a ‘day in the life’, customer journey, challenging the status quo, and ‘what if’ scenarios. Now that the participants were able to form innovative ideas, we deployed concept training days providing tooling on how to build a value proposition (including value creation, value extraction, overcoming hurdles, and pitching a value proposition). Lastly, we trained the Baloise employees on the launch of their innovative ideas to market through several maturation training days, covering topics such as developing a vision on the market, market quantification, fit, business model design, building a roadmap, and lean implementation.
By the end, participants were equipped with a set of tools to go from inspiration to a business case, ready to pitch and receive funding. We started our training in Belgium and expanded to Luxembourg. Over two programs, we trained over 250 Baloise employees, instilling a spirit, a ‘reflex’ of innovation throughout the organization. The ‘Reflex Machine’ was a success!
Action-oriented training
As with all our trainings, we deployed a very action-oriented mindset. Participants were asked to ideate and develop ideas into business cases. As a result, many ideas were brought back and presented to the Business Units and eventually implemented by Baloise. Others continued through validation and customer experimentation to be launched in the market with our support.
Why MTI²?
Baloise brought us on board due to (i) our extensive catalog of methods and tools, (ii) our experience in building innovation competencies and boosting the confidence of people to innovate, and (iii) our action-oriented spirit that focuses not only on training but also on achieving tangible results.
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