Bitesize InsurTech: Enswarm

November 12, 2016 Chris Sandilands

Enswarm is a platform to help teams collaborate better.  It is the brainchild of Joe Kay, a former Apache helicopter pilot.

Joe has been working on the idea since he was in the Army. The Army’s challenge was that it was fighting an “asymmetric” enemy in Afghanistan – a rabble of rebels who had no organisational structure and could, therefore, move very quickly and unpredictably. The British Army was too slow and needed to find a way to channel the collective intelligence of “crowds” to make quick decisions.

But surely this is what social networks are for? Well, no, explains Joe. Social networks encourage both herding and trolling and so are bad decision-making tools. A good crowd intelligence platform needs to encourage people to add ideas and to allow them to be independently reviewed. Quickly.

So how is this relevant for insurers? Enswarm currently has two tools, an innovation tool and a decision-making tool.  The innovation tool is a “safe space” for teams to come up with ideas which can be evaluated by their colleagues.  Ideas are anonymous but credit is attributed in the system. This could be a helpful “ideation” platform for companies trying to get more ideas into the innovation funnel from the workforce.

The decision-making tool helps teams run processes such as recruiting feedback – get people’s objective opinions on candidates rather than the “herd opinion”.

Enswarm is the sort of platform we think innovation professionals will find useful – it’s worth a try.