The Invincible Company of the Month: Ping An

It is important for leaders to understand the difference between effective innovation management and true innovation theater. Because many of the practices associated with lean startup and design thinking can create real value when applied properly. They only become innovation theater when they’re applied in a way that creates no value for companies and society.

Using the Ping An case study, we showcase how one of the world’s top 10 largest insurance companies built its innovation capabilities in order to continuously create value for the organization.

In our latest webinar Demystify Innovation Theater, Alex Osterwalder, Tendayi Viki and Nick Himo conducted an interactive quiz to help participants assess just how seriously their organization takes innovation. Whether it is deeply ingrained in the organization’s structure and culture or whether it is more akin to innovation theater.

To make the assessment, we asked a few simple questions:

How much time does your CEO spend on innovation?
How much legitimacy and power is given to innovation in your organization?
How fast does your organization kill innovation projects that have no traction?
What is the percentage of employees involved full-time in innovation (not R&D and beyond incremental innovation) in your organization?

Using the same assessment questions, we analyzed Ping An’s organizational structure and culture to understand just how innovative they really are.

Update: Since July 2020, Peter Ma has transitioned to President of the Board. Ping An now has 3 Co-CEOs, Jessica Tan, Yonglin Xie, and Jason Yao.