Creative Intelligence Initiative

Context

In 2018, IAG set a strategy that focused on innovation and growth. Chief Innovation Officer Julie Batch emphasized that creativity would be a key mindset required to achieve this.

While the Design Community system addressed key design capabilities, it became clear that an intelligent application of creativity was essential to grow it: curiosity and confidence to explore new business areas and customers; and context, conflict, and connectedness to constructively collaborate across teams.

The brief was to create a program that suited IAG’s company culture, which could be used on its own, or in conjunction with IAG’s growing use of design to drive more innovation across the company.

Project Kickoff

We kicked off the Creative Intelligence project with the usual kick off session we the working group can align on ways of working, roles and responsibilities, and assign tasks. The first phase was to immerse ourselves in the world of innovation and creativity. The team and I spend several weeks consuming white papers, books and video content on these topics.

By the end of this stage, we had a solid grasp on how great companies drive innovative outcomes and how some people were more creative than others. We learned that creativity is not what someone is inheritably born with, it's a skill that can be built upon and external environmental factors can either encourage or discourage creativity.

Define: Synthesis

Moving into Synthesis, we booked in a room for the week so we could take all our learnings from our interviews and create insights. This was an intensive process, however was extremely valuable.

We had great insights which we could start ideating on and getting into solution mode. A key insight was that if you give a motivated individual / team of motivated individuals a clear problem to solve, with the right setup for them to be empowered and have the permission to explore, make, and break things, they will highly likely achieve an innovative output.

Ideation: Brainstorming

By investigating: How might we enable effective creativity within IAG? The project team yielded insights and solutions that were tested and iterated to create the Creative Intelligence program. It contained:​​

Frameworks: Demonstrating the creativity process
​Principles: Factors required to support participants​
Activities: To introduce and enhance components of participants’ creativity​
Engagement Models: To embed the creative mindset ​
Measurement System: To assess creative capability pre-and post-implementation

The Creative Intelligence program accelerates IAG employees’ ability to apply design techniques or complement their expertise with an adaptable open mindset to grow, be more resilient, and do things differently.

Design: Prototyping

We developed a few low-fi prototypes and tested it with a random sample of IAG staff which helped us refine the solution. We then moved into hi-fi prototype testing and continued the test, learn, iterate loop until we were ready to pilot our solution.

The Creative Intelligence program delivered value for several business units across IAG.CFO Leadership introduced curiosity and exploration into people managing. They enabled their 300+ staff with an environment supporting creativity as they redesign how financial services are provided.The New Zealand Enterprise Delivery Team incorporated creativity into IAG’s delivery approach, affecting all NZ IAG brands. Effectively questioning programs and exploring alternatives has enabled them to achieve more human centred outcomes.The Design Team enhanced their ability to collaborate confidently with diverse stakeholders and subject matter experts.

This uncovered project ambiguities and created better solutions within flagship programs that cater to over 85% of IAG’s customers.

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