Life insurance does not seem like the sexiest of segments. Most of the major players in the industry were founded 150 years ago or more. They often develop such scale and recurring revenue streams that they can develop a bit of strategic laziness, as well. These were among the reasons why entrepreneur, Peter Colis, saw opportunity as he evaluated the life insurance industry.
Colis had a job in advertising prior to attending Stanford Business School. When he arrived in Palo Alto, he met Lingke Wang, a computer scientist who also had an entrepreneurial bent. As they scoured industries that presented opportunities, life insurance checked a lot of boxes suggesting major opportunities. Investors have agreed, as the company has a stable of A-grade venture capital firms have invested in their company, Ethos Life, including Sequoia, (see my interview with Sequoia’s lead investor in Ethos Life here), Accel, and GV, Google’s venture arm. Additionally, Jay-Z and Kevin Durant have also invested in the company.
Life insurance was attractive for two reasons. First, the product is difficult to obtain. It is time intensive, confusing, and it requires many tests to validate coverage. Second, Colis highlights that the incentives for brokers, who are paid on commission, often lead to consumers purchasing coverage that is beyond their needs and their means.
In this interview, Colis describes his entrepreneurial journey, the growth and team composition of Ethos Life, as well as his thoughts on what is next.
Peter High: You are the Co-founder and CEO of Ethos Life, a San Francisco-based company that you founded in September 2016. Your organization has caught quite a bit of momentum, especially in the investor community. Could you talk about the business and the problem that you were looking to solve when you created it?
Peter Colis: My partner Lingke Wang and I started Ethos when we were roommates at Stanford Business School. I came from a background in advertising, and Lingke came from a technical background. Originally, we got interested in a different aspect of life insurance, and we learned a great deal about it. In doing so, we came to understand that life insurance is incredibly important. More than five percent of children in the U.S. are going to lose a parent by the time they turn 18, and 70 percent of families are so unprepared that if they lose a breadwinner, they would be in total financial ruin within three months. This data implies that Americans are vastly unprepared for the loss of a breadwinner. While this is an important industry, we realized that it is executed poorly by the existing players, so we saw an opportunity to dramatically improve how it is executed with technology.
Ethos is a modern and ethical life insurance company. Unlike the traditional life insurance experiences, with Ethos, you go to our website, you fill out an application online in ten minutes, and then you are done. There are no medical exams, no blood tests, no paper applications, and no pushy agents. We launched in early 2018, we are now processing thousands of applications per month, and we look forward to continued growth.
12/5/17
By Chris Davis and Brandon Metzger for CIO.com
Technology is transforming our world at an unprecedented rate. New technologies like virtual assistants and augmented reality are changing consumer expectations faster than ever. The impact of cybersecurity breaches is intensifying. And digital enablers are allowing upstarts to steal market share from incumbents in a matter of months or years, rather than decades.
While it is tempting to believe that these disruptive times will eventually stabilize, our analysis suggests that the rate of technological progress will only accelerate. If this year indeed represents both the fastest rate of change we ever haveexperienced, and the slowest rate of change we ever will experience—as many experts have posited—then this raises a critical question for executives in all industries:
How do I understand the consequences of accelerating technological change, and position my company to capitalize on the opportunities presented by emerging paradigms?
To accomplish this, companies can develop innovation systems that consist of a variety of methods and processes, ranging from strategic foresight to a portfolio of corporate innovation programs. One such program — innovation labs — is gaining steam in corporate America, with some of the biggest and best-known companies opening new outposts focused on developing and scaling breakthrough technologies, processes, and business models.
Through Metis Strategy’s work with Fortune 500 companies and rapidly growing businesses alike, we have identified seven critical factors to consider when creating such a corporate innovation lab.
The charter is a concise description of the innovation lab’s objectives and its method for achieving them. But a charter is not just lofty PR: many of the best innovation labs use their charter as a guiding light that provides a deeper sense of purpose and direction. Subsequently, the charter should also clarify what the lab is not focused on.
Consider the differences between the charters of Lowe’s Innovation Lab and of Bayer’s U.S. Innovation Center and Science Hub:
While Lowe’s focuses on identifying and utilizing new technologies to enhance the retail experience, Bayer’s priority is forming partnerships to accelerate drug discovery. Given their differences, it should be no surprise that these innovation labs utilize different metrics, governance models, funding sources, and innovation ecosystems to accomplish their objectives.
Large companies thrive when business conditions are certain and their targets are clear. While execution metrics can measure the performance of existing business models, they are less capable of accurately quantifying progress at innovation labs, where the work is sometimes less precise, longer term, or more conceptual. Kyle Nel, Executive Director of Lowe’s Innovation Lab, has noted that “it does not make sense to apply mature metrics to something in its nascent form.”
Innovation labs can develop a portfolio of innovation metrics to measure not only the results of the innovation effort, but also the preconditions and innovation process itself.
With this focus on measuring both process and progress, innovation metrics help labs assess their innovation maturity, but may also bolster the support of their executive sponsors, especially in the early days. For example, Harvard Business Review notes that “revenue generated by new products,” an output metric, is the metric most commonly used by senior innovation executives. By establishing a portfolio of innovation metrics that also includes input and development metrics, the conversation can shift from focusing solely on results to focusing also on the maturing evolution of the innovation capability. This ability to develop unique innovation metrics has helped Nel push back when Lowe’s executives expect significant revenue growth from new and disruptive products.
Innovation is as much a cultural attitude as it is a business process. A generic approach to innovation may begin by defining the customer and uncovering their unmet need, formulating a hypothesis on what product or service the company can offer to meet that need, and validating the hypothesis by using customer feedback to rapidly experiment and iterate. Further, to foster the right mindset, innovation labs should:
That said, many of the best labs develop unique processes influenced by their charter. Consider Lowe’s Innovation Lab (LIL), which uses a narrative-driven approach to identify and articulate opportunities. First, LIL conducts market research, compiles trend data, and collects customer feedback on unmet needs and pain points. Next, LIL shares this information with science fiction writers who create strategic documents in the form of comic books, which follow characters through a narrative arc that illustrates a new solution to the character’s problem. Then Lowe’s executives use the comic books to make prioritization decisions, and, finally, LIL works with its partners to create the solutions introduced in the comics.
Another example of an organization employing a unique process is X, Alphabet’s “moonshot factory,” which is charged with creating world-changing companies that could eventually become the next Google. X adheres to a three-part formulafor identifying opportunities: (1) it must address a huge problem, (2) it must propose a radical solution, and (3) it must employ a relatively feasible technology.
Using this formula, X has spun out numerous subsidiaries under the Alphabet umbrella. One of those companies is Waymo, the autonomous vehicle pioneer that Morgan Stanley recently suggested could be worth $70 billion.
If companies believe an innovation lab will help them more effectively navigate the waters of disruption, it is essential that they recruit for passion and cognitive diversity, rather than just skill. Labs often include a wide range of technical and non-technical roles, from data scientists and designers to experts in anthropology and psychology. Breadth and depth of both skill set and mindset are essential components of a successful innovation lab that creatively explores new technologies and business models.
Ideal job candidates should be innate risk-seekers, strong questioners and connectors, and comfortable with failure and restarts. Deloitte Center for the Edge Co-Chair John Hagel described people who have these traits as personifying the “passion of the explorer.”
Organizations searching for these passionate explorers will find advantages and disadvantages in looking both internally and externally. Internal employees may more deeply understand the customer, but they also may have difficulty looking at problems from a different perspective. External hires may bring new viewpoints and skills, but recruitment may prove challenging.
Companies can use several tactics to attract talent. Buzzfeed’s Open Lab for Journalism, Technology and the Arts, for example, targets specific individuals and groups based on their past projects. Recruitment efforts have been successful, in part, because Buzzfeed offers company resources that support their creative freedoms. Alternatively, companies can be deliberate in how they share their innovation initiatives with the public. For example, Airbus has a blog that reports news from the company’s A3 innovation lab, Airbus Ventures, and from other teams across its innovation ecosystem. This type of focused communication both targets and attracts an audience of individuals who are the most knowledgeable and interested in innovation currently taking place within the industry, and, in so doing, Airbus can create an informal pool of potential new hires.
The process for establishing a funding source will differ depending on the company. For example, Allstate CIO Suren Gupta has described how a formal Innovation Council evaluates ideas and allocates funding. At other companies, if the innovation ties closely to a particular business unit, then funding may come from that group’s budget.
Though the specifics will vary, a generic process for establishing funding may include
The actual size of the budget depends on whether a lab is building the technology itself, partnering with other organizations, or acquiring a company, product or talent. Amazon and Google have spent millions of dollars developing parcel delivery drones. Meanwhile, companies like UPS and Daimler AG have opted to partner with—and make strategic investments in—established drone makers. This lowers both the risk and the cost of innovation while still allowing the company to develop new capabilities.
Regardless of how funding is established—or the size of the budget itself—it is critical to measure how much money was spent at each stage of the process: preparation (i.e. percentage of capital budget allocated to innovation projects), development (i.e. R&D spending at each phase of development the innovation process), and results (i.e. percentage of sales from innovation projects). As with the portfolio approach to general innovation metrics, the use of financial metrics across the innovation lifecycle reduces the focus on ROI, which can cripple innovative projects in the early stages.
Silicon Valley is the quintessential innovation ecosystem. The region’s unique characteristics undoubtedly make Silicon Valley the right innovation ecosystem for many labs—particularly those charged with discovering and/or acquiring startups, or gaining business and technical intelligence about emerging technologies.
Other locations should not be overlooked, however. Cities such as New York City, Austin, and Chicago in the U.S.; London, Paris and Berlin in Europe; Tel Aviv in the Middle East; and Singapore, Shanghai and Tokyo in Asia all offer rapidly maturing innovation ecosystems, each with their own unique advantages and disadvantages.
To determine the ideal location for an innovation lab, consider which ecosystem characteristics (such as those highlighted in the adjacent visual) best support the objectives defined in the charter.
For example, former ADP CTO Keith Fulton (now CIO of Bank Systems with Fiserv) has described how ADP’s innovation lab is focused on creating “best-in-class user experiences.” Accordingly, ADP opened its second lab in Midtown Manhattan, since the proximity to top visual design and creative firms provide high concentrations of the right skill sets.
There is one final challenge, even for innovation labs that successfully deliver results in accordance with their charter: integrating the innovation with the core organization. From Kodak’s invention of the digital camera to Xerox pioneering the GUI, there is no shortage of companies that failed to capitalize on their innovations.
To be sure, innovation integration is the culmination of an innovation lab successfully delivering on its charter, so the way in which the company captures the value of the innovation very much depends on decisions that were made along the way. We recommend that executive sponsors and innovation leaders discuss early and often what successful innovation integration looks like. Here are a few key questions to consider:
While there is no set template for innovation integration, a definable, well-articulated vision of what the desired success will look like should be a primary priority, not an afterthought.
More than ever before, established companies are struggling to keep up with both the deployment of new technology by their competitors and consumers’ rapidly changing expectations. Careful consideration of these seven factors can empower companies to build an innovation lab that fosters energetic challenges to preconceived notions, creative experimentation with new technologies and business models, and thorough exploration of potential products and services that will enable it to survive—and thrive—amidst the accelerating forces of disruption.
12/03/2018
By Peter High. Published on Forbes.
In 2017, John Chambers retired from Cisco Systems, a company he had run for more than two decades. During his time with the company, it had grown from $70 million in annual revenue to $47 billion. Once he retired, he had a chance to reflect on his career, as well as to plot his next move. The former led to his authoring a new book Connecting The Dots: Lessons For Leadership In A Startup World. The latter would have him starting his own venture capital firm, JC2 Ventures.
Chambers now offers capital and advice for start-ups who wish to follow the path toward the scale and the success that he achieved. He also has become an advisor to heads of states, as he consults to both India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and to France’s President Emmanuel Macron.
As Chambers contemplates where his success comes from, he returns to his roots in West Virginia. Born the son of two physicians, he was taught to value education from a young age. Chambers is a dyslexic, a detail that he kept hidden until well after he had ascended the CEO role at Cisco Systems. Through help from caring educators in his youth, he learned to turn his weakness into a strength. He now tells everyone about his dyslexia to inspire other dyslexics, but also to inspire anyone who feels they have an impediment that is holding them back. His refusal to let a weakness define him was, itself, a key to his success. He notes, “We all have setbacks, and your character is more of a product of how you handle these setbacks than your successes are.”
Chambers’ aims to help his home state and others learn the key lessons of Silicon Valley, and imitate the dramatic change that has transpired in France, a country he once vowed not to do business in due to its antiquated and often bureaucratic business practices. He hopes that the same combination of good government and ambitious entrepreneurs may lead to positive change in West Virginia and beyond. We cover all of this and more in this interview.
(To listen to an unabridged podcast version of this interview, please click this link. This is the 29th interview in the IT Influencers series. To listen to past interviews with the likes of former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Sal Khan, Sebastian Thrun, Steve Case, Craig Newmark, Stewart Butterfield, and Meg Whitman, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: You began your terrific book, Connecting The Dots: Lessons For Leadership In A Startup World, by discussing your roots in West Virginia. Could you reflect on the lessons you learned from your youth?
To read the full article, please visit Forbes.
11/26/2018
By Peter High. Published on Forbes
Reinsurance Group of America (RGA) is a $13 billion dollar global life and health reinsurance entity based in St Louis, Missouri. A few years ago, the company developed a subsidiary called RGAX that is part innovation lab and part venture arm, focused on transformative initiatives. On its own site, RGAX is noted as “embracing the talent, resources, and more than 40 years of insight and innovation experience. RGAX partners with carriers and entrepreneurs to fuse industry expertise and outside capabilities.”
Two years ago, when RGA sought a leader of this function, they elected to elevate the chief information officer of the company, Mark Showers. He led RGA’s IT team for more than seven years, and, as such, knew the business inside and out. As RGAX would require defining areas ripe for transformation and build an ecosystem in the start-up and venture world to help deliver that. In this interview, he shares insights from his current role, how his time as CIO helped provide him the wherewithal to take it on, and as well as a variety of other topics.
(This is the 41st article in the “Beyond CIO” series. To read through past interviews with executives from companies like Waste Management, Biogen, Allstate, Aetna, Marsh & McLennan, and BMO Financial Group, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: You work for a group called RGAX, a wholly owned subsidiary and a transformation engine of Reinsurance Group of America. Could you describe the mission of RGAX?
Mark Showers: RGAX was established roughly three and a half years ago. At a core business level, the fundamental driver was to create a new and diversified set of earning streams for RGA. Specifically, it was designed to create earning streams within the health and life sectors that are outside of our core reinsurance business. We see ourselves as a mission-driven organization, and the mission we established at RGAX is to help people live longer, healthier, and more financially secure lives. While this broadens our base beyond the typical business of RGA, it is still targeted at the areas of life and health.
High: How do you think about the topic of innovation, and how do you direct the team to focus on the various areas in which it is involved?
Showers: RGA is built on innovation so we want to make it clear that RGAX is not the only place where innovation occurs. Because of this, we use the term ‘transformation’ to describe the work of RGAX. There are four pillars or lines of business where we focus our efforts: data analytics, digital distribution of life insurance, consumer engagement, and insurance services. We pursue each of these in three different ways:
10/23/2018
By Peter High. Published on Fobres.
Schneider National’s CEO Chris Lofgren describes the company’s relationship with innovation in the following way: “Innovation and technology are in our DNA. Our success and long-term success are dependent on aligning the flow of information through technology and making it available to people so they understand the implications of the decisions they make. That’s at the heart of operational excellence and who we really are.” Lofgren is a former chief information officer of the company. The current member of the team with that title is Shaleen Devgun. He and his team focus not only on ways to drive efficiency through the operation, but, importantly, they also focus on revenue-driving innovation, as well.
Case in point is the company’s In-Cab Telematics toolset. This is an area that has been core, largely driven through a partnership with Qualcomm that goes back multiple decades. Dependence on a single vendor was deemed too risky to be a sustainable model. Devgun and his team got to work on a a multivendor transportation marketplace with consumer grade tablets, Internet-of-Things devices, and apps. The results are noted below, and they are the basis for Devgun to be named a Forbes CIO Innovation Award winner.
Peter High: Please describe the innovative idea that you and your team in IT pursued. Please be specific, including the steps you undertook to implement the idea(s).
Shaleen Devgun: Schneider is a pioneer in telematics innovation, beginning in 1989, with its partnership with Qualcomm to create the first in-cab two-way satellite communication system. This innovation was a strategic differentiator for Schneider, but it eventually led to a critical operational risk: Dependence on one vendor. This monolithic, single purpose-built system was installed in tens of thousands of tractors and trailers, any transition would be difficult.
Schneider’s TECH team stepped in and mitigated this risk and simultaneously created a multivendor transportation marketplace. We replaced the purpose-built system with consumer grade tablets, Internet-of-Things devices and apps. Our transportation marketplace is filled with custom Schneider apps and apps from third-party providers.
10/08/2018
Kimberly Johnson joined Fannie Mae in 2006. As such, she was with the company when it went through its most trying time in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis. She was part of the team that led the company back from the brink in roles of increasing responsibility from Vice President of Capital Markets to Senior Vice President of the company’s Multifamily business unit to Chief Credit Officer to Chief Risk Officer.
In March of this year, she ascended to the role of Chief Operating Officer of Fannie Mae in March of this year. In that role, she is responsible for leading technology, data, enterprise models, operations, the enterprise program management office, and resiliency. Her varied and diverse experiences have aided her rise, and now that she has such a broad set of responsibilities, she has a broad ability to impact innovation within the company. She describes her journey and the path to innovation in this interview.
(To listen to an unabridged podcast version of this interview, please click this link. To read future articles like this one, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: Could you talk about your role as the Chief Operating Officer of Fannie Mae and the responsibilities the position entails?
Kimberly Johnson: The COO role that Tim Mayopoulos put together for me includes an interesting combination of responsibilities, such as overseeing Fannie Mae’s technology, operations, innovation, data, and strategic execution. This mix serves as a nice way to string together the full array of the functionality that we need to enable the business.
High: Was there a predecessor with this same job description, or were these a set of responsibilities that was brought together for the first time in the role created for you?
To read the full article, please visit Forbes
9/12/2018
Global interconnection and data center company, Equinix, Inc. today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Charles Meyers to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Meyers will also join Equinix’s Board of Directors. He succeeds Peter Van Camp, who has served as interim CEO since January 2018. Van Camp will resume his role as Executive Chairman of the Equinix Board of Directors.
Regarding Meyers’ new role, Van Camp noted, “Charles is an outstanding leader who has been a major contributor to Equinix’s success over the past eight years, playing critical roles in the company as we have quadrupled in size, growing from $1.2 billion in revenue to the $5 billion plus we expect to generate this year. Charles brings that rare combination of a world-class operator combined with a passion and drive for strategic innovation. These characteristics, and his proven track record of delivering value for our customers and our shareholders, make him an excellent choice to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead.”
8/28/2018
Farmers Insurance has named Paul Wilson as its new chief information officer effective August 30, 2018. He comes to his new role with nearly 30 years of insurance knowledge and leadership experience.
In his role at Farmers, Wilson will serve as a member of the insurer group’s senior leadership team and oversee the development and application of all strategic IT initiatives.
“We are proud to welcome Paul to Farmers at an important time in the organization’s history as efforts continue in the area of technology innovation to better serve our customers,” said Jeff Dailey, CEO of Farmers Insurance. “With his extensive background in the insurance industry and IT leading transformational, digital and data-driven initiatives, we are confident Paul will be a strong asset to the Farmers team.”
8/7/2018
Greg Meyers has joined $13 billion revenue Syngenta, as chief information officer (CIO) in Basel, Switzerland. Greg will now focus on leading information technology for a global agricultural innovator that is helping improve worldwide food security by enabling millions of farmers to make better use of available resources. The company aims to “to transform how crops are grown. We are committed to rescuing land from degradation, enhancing biodiversity and revitalizing rural communities.” Syngenta has over 28,000 employees in over 90 countries.
Meyers also led a digital transformation that reshaped how the company works with direct customers and channel partners to drive growth via eCommerce, enable customer-self-service, and enable the future of our smart public safety software and services portfolio.
“I’m thrilled to be joining Syngenta,” said Meyers, “Agriculture innovation and farm productivity is increasingly enabled by IT systems and the ability to manage Big Data. In fact, IT has been transforming both farm operations and companies, like Syngenta, that support them. I look forward to contributing in this exciting environment that is ultimately helping feed people around the world and making our planet more sustainable.”
Mark Patrick, CFO of Syngenta said, “We are in the midst of a new era of innovation in agriculture – in breeding seeds, developing crop protection products and delivering digital solutions – for farmers around the world. Harnessing the power of IT is important to our success and we are looking to Greg to lead us into the future of IT. Greg has a strong IT track record in multiple industries – both technically and as a leader; he will help us better manage our business and serve our customers.”
Previously, Meyers served as CIO of Motorola Solutions for the past four years. In that role, he successfully led the largest technology transformation in Motorola’s history (and the largest ERP project in the world in years 2015-2017) by consolidating seven ERP instances and more than 600 supporting applications to one ERP instance and less than 250 applications across Finance, Supply Chain and the go-to-market functions.
