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X-Factor: Developing a New Innovation Process to Foster Intrapreneurship in the Insurance Sector
A leading insurance company recognized the opportunity to further strengthen its innovation capabilities. Existing innovation processes were partially decentralized, and targeted, coordinated support was lacking. Conversations with idea contributors and product teams revealed that even promising ideas were often difficult to implement due to internal hurdles.
About the company AXA
AXA is a globally operating insurance and asset management company. The company offers solutions in the areas of life and property insurance, health protection, and asset management for private individuals, businesses, and institutional clients. With around 145,000 employees in over 50 countries, AXA is one of the world’s largest insurers and is committed to financially protecting and supporting people throughout all stages of life.
Key Challenges
The company identified several barriers that were limiting its full innovation potential – including limited capacity within product teams, a degree of risk aversion, and a lack of clarity regarding processes, roles, and responsibilities. Moreover, central support structures, standardized tools, and access to relevant innovation knowledge were missing, making it difficult to implement new ideas efficiently and effectively.
Full product backlogs, limited capacity in product teams and prioritization conflicts with daily business operations made it nearly impossible to pursue new ideas.
A perfectionist mindset, risk aversion, and a “not invented here” culture stifled experimentation. Innovation was seen as optional rather than essential.
Lack of clarity around what constitutes a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), overly complex rules and missing sponsorship created high entry barriers for innovation.
Innovation was often a one-person effort, without the necessary technical or business know-how, infrastructure or defined KPIs.
Teams lacked access to critical innovation knowledge, both technical and business-oriented, and had no unified approach or guidance for implementation.
Operational Overload
Full product backlogs, limited capacity in product teams, and prioritization conflicts with daily business operations made it nearly impossible to pursue new ideas.
Cultural and Mindset Barriers
A perfectionist mindset, risk aversion, and a “not invented here” culture stifled experimentation. Innovation was seen as optional rather than essential.
Unclear Requirements and Governance
Lack of clarity around what constitutes a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), overly complex rules, and missing sponsorship created high entry barriers for innovation.
Fragmented Support Structures
Innovation was often a one-person effort, without the necessary technical or business know-how, infrastructure, or defined KPIs.
Missing Skills and Tools
Teams lacked access to critical innovation knowledge, both technical and business-oriented, and had no unified approach or guidance for implementation.
To address these challenges, a structured innovation framework was required — with clearly defined innovation processes, roles, governance mechanisms, and supporting tools. The goal was to foster a sustainable innovation culture and to strengthen the ability of the Technology Innovation & Platform team to rapidly and effectively develop and scale new ideas.
Our Services at a Glance
The “X-Factor” project was developed in close collaboration with valantic to systematically support internal innovation ideas. The X-Factor model helps employees develop their ideas through a clearly defined innovation process — from the initial idea to a market-ready product. Inspired by a TV format, teams present their concepts in regular pitch sessions to internal investors, who decide on the next development phase. In four stages (Scouting, Bootcamp, MVP, Superstar), ideas are evaluated, tested, and — if successful — transitioned into production.
As part of the project, valantic provided support through:
- Analysis and evaluation of the existing innovation process, pain points, and decision-making structures
- Development of a phase-based innovation process
- Definition of clear go/no-go decision points to transparently assess innovation ideas
- Tools for guiding selected use cases through the entire innovation journey
- Provision of templates, coaching formats, and methodological support in all phases
Read more about our service portfolio for the financial services sector here.
Results and Customer Benefits
With valantic’s support, a scalable and practical innovation process was successfully established and fully integrated into the company’s agile development organization.
Key outcomes include:
- Clearly defined roles and responsibilities: Innovation Heroes bring improvement ideas from daily work, internal investors evaluate and fund promising concepts, and X-Factor Coaches support the teams with subject-matter expertise
- Direct access to investors: All relevant decision-makers are integrated into the process
- Increased employee engagement and intrapreneurship through active participation and visibility in the X-Factor process
- Transparent and repeatable decision-making through defined pitch sessions and evaluation events
- A growing portfolio of validated MVPs with clear paths to scaling through agile product teams
- A modular innovation toolkit (assets, templates, playbooks) to support every phase of the innovation cycle
The result
A future-ready innovation engine that enables the company to continuously identify, test, and scale new business ideas across the organization.
Your Contact
Mareile Eckart
Managing Director
valantic