Originally presented at Community 2.0 in May of 2010 ... focused on articulating how social media can impact innovation in the enterprise, supported by examples from Humana's Consumer Innovation team
11. New demands Control Reality1 Bottom up groundswell and top down control colliding Information Security2 Malware attacks rise with social media use at work Workforce Culture3 Labor Intensive, Highly Involved, Non-Standardized Intellectual Property4 Who owns ideas and contacts, employer or employee? 1 Douglas Pollei, VP of Internet Strategy and Corporate Development for IKANO Communications Inc. 2 MarketWatch 3 Jim Cuene, Director, Interactive, General Mills 4 Warwick Ashford, Computer Weekly 11
The insurance business is changing. We believe that it’s impossible to really change the health system without that change being engaged – if not driven – by health consumers. And in order to engage consumers, we have to thing differently about health. It can’t be just about managing, treating, or even preventing sickness. It has to be about looking at health the way that consumers do – as an enabler of life and happiness.
The most important part of any journey is getting started … like many others, our social media journey started with a PR campaign.We wanted to let 10s of thousands experience bikesharing – so we created a social media campaignWe used all kinds of toolsAnd brought them all together on one page
This young woman posted this video to YouTubeIt exemplifies, on a microscopic scale, what we want to do with our business.By the way, she works for one of our competitors.
Transforming a business takes time, thought and hard workEspecially a big, traditional oneThere are some techniques we’re trying at HumanaThey are ALL about thinking differently about the business
Be the change you want to see – that means if you want to think different, start acting differentStart doing everything differentlyShare freely and learn We built our own web site to do that – and its pretty differentSEO guys will hate itBut it gets the point across
The goal of the model is simpleTo have a common place and common wayTo understand, explore and utilize social media
Be ready for tensionWhen you want your business to think and act different, it raises a LOT of important questionsGet ready to deal with them
In order to effectively enact these changes, we need to make some of our own. Certain sites must become accessible to key stakeholders. Resources have to be made available for training. Directives must be given to infrastructure developers to focus on these important issues. Relationships should be formed with qualified vendors. The company should be notified of our vision by an authority and encouraged to integrate our plan with theirs. HRHR can start augmenting their talent acquisition strategy to reflect our new goals. They should start to reward behavior that is concordant with these goals and implement these ideas in new training programs.MarketingOur marketing department is the master of outside communication. A culture of sharing and social media can enhance existing processes and communication. In the future entire initiatives can be focused on social media. ITOur IT department is the gatekeeper for much of this infrastructure. An understanding must be struck to reinforce the importance of this initiative to the future success of the company. Our IT department can use their considerable talent and creativity to help us explore new avenues of open source collaboration and communication.LawOur Law department will be concerned about intellectual property rights and privacy issues. This department will need to be well versed in media law and understand how other companies are dealing with these concerns. Information about this type of law is readily available and constantly evolving.
We operate under these fundamentalsThey’re not new or radicalOnce you’ve hoovered up information and consulted expertsJust sift through and find the ones that make sense for your business
We had to create a platform for Humana to understand social mediaWe think in stories and pictures, so we created a Metaphor for how we’ll use social mediaThe Town SquareEvery department has a “lot” on the town squareThey can build whatever kind of “social media building” is going to best serve their needs (and their stakeholders)We have a library and a commons area where we share everything
This has gotten us some nice noticeHumana is beginning to be seen as a cool, transparent health companyStill have a long way to go, but this is a taste of our goal
We’re using twitter to address customer service needs for those members and suppliers who talk about us@humanahelp
Every Innovation Center employee has a fish in the virtual tankThey’re powered by our stepsWhen we exercise together, our fish school together and do cool stuffDon’t know what we’ll do with it yet, but it’s a fun experiment
We launched a social network for pre-retirees in December (realforme.com)We launched a series of videos to help people understand the health system (staysmartstayhealthy.com) The vids have well over 2M views on Youtube. Great for anyone; MASSIVE for a health insurance company!
We connect with our innovation partners using LinkedIn groups
We’ve connected with communities who share a common interest through our blogs
Images are one of the best ways to connect emotionally – our freewheelinFlickr group had over 1,500 photos shared from the 8 days of the national conventions
Going where they are, writ large … facebook doesn’t have to be in the toolset for every product or every brand, but when it makes sense … there is no better way to connect with the global public
Humana’s business is about health and well-being – so naturally we’re interested in using the power of social networks to try and improve people’s health.
We took an online amateur fitness communityAnd embedded an elite athlete to blog, vlog and tweet alongThe community grew 10% in a month – but engagement increased over 300%
People often forget about games when they’re thinking about social applications. Not only do games provide a way into things that people already care about and like doing, they’re enhanced when they can be played with others.Humana has a games for health practice that is leading the health industry (http://humanagames.com). Our first custom-built game is called the Horsepower Challenge (http://horsepowergame.com). It’s an activity-based game for kids in which the steps schoolkids take are uploaded wirelessly to the web to power a game – in this case, a race around the world.It’s been fantastic; over 2,500 kids have played it across the US and the UK, and we’ve found that their activity increases 15-35% while playing the game.
By now everyone knows that mobile capabilities are tremendously important to drive all kinds of behavior change … It is, by its nature, context-relevant and real-timeWe’ve created a mini-game for the iPhone that tests a theory about passing happiness and well-being socially
We have storefronts all over the country to serve our membersCommunities have formed organically around these storefronts for classes, games and bikesharingWe’re looking to grow and enrich these communities to test their impact on healthy lifestyles; ANDTo build relationships that we hope will lead to sales