How we work, perform our roles, and the skills we need are changing rapidly. With complex shifts in workforce objectives, hybrid teams, and digital tools vs legacy systems, building a more agile and curious culture is critical. Creating this culture is essential to keep our organisations in demand, and our people and clients happy.
The industry is facing unprecedented change, with environmental risk, political instability, cost of living crises, hybrid working, and digital acceleration. All of which are impacting not just us, but our clients, the challenges they face, the risks we write and the way we write them.
And that’s where EDII and Digital Minds come in. Over the last six years, we’ve helped hundreds of insurance professionals and their organisations supplement their specialist knowledge with future-focused design thinking and innovation skills. These skills help them be human-centred, customer-centric and agile thinkers. Adding these sought-after generalist skills to industry specialisms is fast becoming a fundamental requirement for enterprising employees and savvy employers.
And who embodies this more than Digital Minds delegates? This week saw our latest incredible Cohort finish their Digital Minds journey as they took to the stage at ACORD, London. Rounding off their 10-month expert-training journey, the delegates used their well-earned design thinking, and innovation skills to spotlight challenges that matter to the insurance sector. Then leveraging their influencing and creative presentation skills to share their suggested solutions to address these challenges.
Focussing on using emerging technology, understanding how to attract and retain talent, sharing innovative ideas across the organisation, and automating repetitive tasks to free up time for more valuable work, Cohort 3 teams Spark!, The Inbetweeners, Innovation Incubators, Market Transformation and All Things Data, showed they had all angles covered.
Coming from all roles and levels within Aviva, Brit Insurance, Canopius, DUAL Group, Howden, Liberty Specialty Markets, London Market Joint Ventures, Nexus, Markel International, Miller, r10, SCOR, The Phoenix Group, and WTW, alongside ‘Next Generation’ delegates via ELBA, the Cohort has built a brilliant community over the past ten months.
Supported by tech firms, Netcall and Eigen Technologies, they’ve also got to grips with low code and intelligent data management, as well as continuous coaching from EDII expert Coaching Directors, Hélène Stanway and Paul Willoughby, who augment the EDII team.
Our delegates leave with a deep-seated knowledge of empathising, reframing problems, creatively ideating, embracing technology, and adapting. They have data appreciation and critical thinking skills to address those challenges and issues in a future where the only thing certain is uncertainty itself.
And the learning and connecting continue. Each delegate departs the programme with a Certificate of Completion for 30 structured hours of Design Thinking and Innovation training, CPD-certified by the CII, and an invitation to EDII’s alumni programme, the EDII Think Factory, to continue their innovative development.
Congratulations to the delegates for their hard work and tenacity and to the organisations who invested in them. Digital Minds delegates are the superstars of now and of the future. We can’t wait to see what they deliver next.
See more about the Delegate’s Showcase and their experience here: