David Crean is Vice President & Chief Innovation Officer at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, a not-for-profit health insurer headquartered in Boston. Crean has built a multi-disciplinary team of innovators, launched the Well-B Innovation Center, and developed a pipeline of human-centered solutions.
InnoLead spoke with Crean about his strategies for cultivating strong leadership support, aligning innovation with core business priorities, and staying adaptable amid shifting organizational needs.
This interview is part of our new research initiative, Making Innovation an Enduring Capability.
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Strong Leadership Support and Business Alignment Matters
I’ve found that support comes with some leaders and not with others. …There are going to be some people who just want to be left alone, who aren’t interested in innovating, who are laser focused on accomplishing their quarterly or annual financial targets, and anything that distracts them from that is not all that welcome. But you’re also going to find leaders who understand that they can’t really take big steps forward without collaborating with or bringing innovation resources to the table.
The other thing I find is that leaders aren’t permanent. The best way to get strong leadership support is to be the first person to welcome people to the organization, to be the first person to educate them on what innovation is, to be the first person that sees eye to eye with them on how innovation might work for them.
Also, I find it helpful to focus on the level below the C-Suite — the people who have to make stuff happen. Really understanding what their goals are, really understanding what the problems in their particular world are and helping them see how innovation can or has helped is the place that the magic happens.
There’s not a particular role — like CIO — that’s always supportive of innovation… It’s individual. You have to sell, persuade, build relations across the board.
The Importance of Aligning to Top Priorities
There’s not a particular role — like CIO — that’s always supportive of innovation, or a CFO that’s always not supportive of innovation. It’s individual. You have to sell, persuade, and build relations across the board. You’re going to find, in some cases, that some people aren’t movable. You’re going to find people who are open and willing to challenge the status quo, and people who are not willing. Forcing yourself on people who aren’t willing to challenge the status quo is fruitless, and it usually results in innovation not lasting very long because they’re putting all their eggs in one basket, and that basket isn’t conducive to innovation.
Aligning with business strategy can be very different today in my current organization, based on the industry headwinds and the state of our overall business. There’s an attitude of “all hands-on deck” for a very small set of very important priorities. Those include things like leveraging automation and artificial intelligence to reduce administrative costs and burden for ourselves, our partners, and our customers, and reimagining products and experiences that make healthcare more affordable for our customers and members.
For me this year, it’s especially important to have everything we’re working on in innovation be either directly or indirectly linked to — and described in a way that shows a relationship to — those very important priorities.
Continuing Strategy Through 2025
At least for [2024] and continuing into 2025, it’s less about dreaming up big things around the bend, and more about innovating in the areas that are already determined to be critical priorities in the near term. Now, there have been other times — both with this organization and others I’ve been part of — when we weren’t in “circle the wagons” mode as a company. We were more expansive, and in those moments, the types of initiatives you work on give you more freedom and opportunity to look around the bend. You can do things that might be a little more disruptive, more challenging to the status quo, because people have an appetite and capacity for that.
When your organization is in a certain state, it’s up to you, as an innovation leader, to understand that state.
When you’re in “circle the wagons” mode, if you’re doing those sorts of things, you’re viewed as tone-deaf and a distraction. That’s the thing: being aligned with business strategy becomes more important. When your organization is in a certain state, it’s up to you, as an innovation leader, to understand that state so you can either strongly align with near-term priorities or have some freedom to do more experimentation that has longer-term value propositions versus near-term propositions.
The Role of Software Platforms
I’m a big believer in software in general, but when we make [innovation] about the software, we’re focused on the wrong thing. We can spend time identifying the right software tool and spend time building it out. I’ve spent significant time in the past building tools I thought would be central to everything we do. In the end, we’ve always reverted back to a less structured system, like using Teams instead of Jira to manage a Kanban board or a sprint plan.
We tend to do our ideation more organically. We used to use Spigit extensively for ideation, but there are other ways to do it in a way that a broader portion of the organization can access. We found we were only using [Spigit] for open ideation a few times a year, and then you start asking if it’s worth $60,000 a year for a tool that you could replicate with a simpler Microsoft tool you already have.
That’s how I feel about it. I do think these software platforms bring cool things to the table, but in the end, after a period of time, the standard tools we use catch up by adding similar capabilities, making these specialty software platforms kind of obsolete or unnecessary.
The Challenge of ISO Standards
Judging from the session I led at the Impact conference back in October, there was a little bit of argument from some of the folks in the room about what innovation is. Their organization — and they individually — think innovation is one thing, and someone else thinks it’s another. That’s okay; all of those are valid. But can you get to standards when everybody thinks of it differently? What I do under the banner of innovation is pretty different from what some other organizations do.
When you’re looking at standards, are you thinking of innovation as the venture arm? Are you thinking of innovation as a human-centered design factory? Are you thinking of innovation as an emerging technology experimentation group or lab? I don’t know how you come up with standards for innovation if it means all those different things. You’d almost have to come up with standards for each of those individual things.
Common Reasons for Innovation Shutdown
I think there are a few reasons I’ve seen that innovation fails, or why innovation functions get scaled back, or resources are repurposed or let go. One is less to do with innovation and more to do with the state of the company they’re in. Are their company and their industry in growth and expansion mode, or are they in “circle the wagons” and protect mode? I believe there’s opportunity for innovation to thrive in “circle the wagons” and protect mode, even though most innovation functions get established expecting to be in expansion and growth mode — that’s why they’re pushing the envelope, challenging the status quo, looking beyond the bend, and things like that.
I think one [reason for shutdowns] is sometimes innovation people aren’t willing to flex what innovation means to them, so as soon as [their work] doesn’t align with what the company needs innovation to be at a given time, they’re out. I would say it’s as much on the innovation leader to adapt…to the needs of the organization as anything else.
The needs are going to change, and if you find yourself out of work because you don’t want to — you believe innovation is creating new companies or experimenting with emerging technology — but your company doesn’t need either of those things right now, you might be out of work. Or, should you pivot to be what the company needs? Maybe you don’t feel equipped to be what the company needs if it’s different than what you’re used to or what you like to do.
The other aspect, I would say, is when companies have budget constraints and financial challenges. It’s pretty predictable what they look at first to correct course. Usually it’s administrative cost reduction, and then people tend to protect people, but it might mean layoffs. Usually in that thought process, the question gets asked: What can we stop doing? And when your company’s in that situation, one of the things you could stop doing is investing in stuff like innovation, because it doesn’t really contribute to the near-term financial picture you’re trying to solve for.
How to Adapt Amid Financial Pressures
You could argue as much as you want that you should never stop looking around the bend. You should never stop reimagining the experiences that your company gives to consumers. You should never stop those things, even when financials are going tough. But the bottom line is, if everything shifts into “circle the wagons,” keep the lights on, do the basics, the fundamentals of our business… If everything’s going into that, I find that’s usually the reason that innovation functions get reduced or cut.
For those times when that’s the case, the only saving opportunity is to decentralize your innovation function, [so that] your innovators can become part of the organization that’s going to remain, or join a part of the organization that you’ve become expert in.
Sometimes innovators say, “Well, I’m not doing that. I want to innovate. I want to do the next thing.” I think in both cases, there are opportunities for the innovator to change course and adapt, if they really want to. But I think for many, it’s, “Well, I’m an innovator. I’m going to go do the same thing I’ve done successfully for this organization with another organization that does seem to be in growth mode,” and that’s perfect to move to the next place.
