Creativity Central [Marty Baker]

Where's the love?  

A few nights ago, the comedian Lewis Black raged against the machine and asked, "does anyone really love their health insurance company?"

Greg Matthews, Director of Innovation at Humana has a true Quixotic mission -- to change people's perception of what a health insurance company means.  As he took the stage at BIF-5, he flashed a slide on the screen that said if you boil it down to the pure essence "insurance companies like Humana are in the 'sickness and death' business."

No spin. Just the facts.  

But the C-suite at Humana asked Matthews and other executives to explore how Humana was perceived in the marketplace and how they could change that dynamic.  Reluctantly, Matthews, who was in Human Resources at the time, presented an alternative vision for the company: Health and Wellness.  He said, reluctantly because it flew in the face of logic for a traditionally conventional industry.

But Humana's reception was positive.  Matthews inherited a new job title and the task of building consumer percpetion of Humana as the health company of the future. His strategy is to leave the premium-claims side of health insurance to the financial gurus and focus instead on the purest side of the business.  “The future,” he says, “is going to be in creating and promoting health.”

The innovation team at Humana has augmented its social media platform to spearhead several programs that get people walking, biking, calorie counting, dancing—and while they’re at it—treating the environment respectfully.  So far, the experiment seems to be paying dividends, even for Matthews.  Since he started at Humana, he has dropped 20 pounds and became a runner.

His new role in leveraging social media has connected him to a growing community outside the company.  At the same time, the face of Humana is changing. Part of this new initiative is Humana’s Freewheelin’ bike-sharing program in Louisville, Kentucky, where the company employs almost 9,000 people. 

Humana’s employees tool around the city on shared bicycles while charting miles covered, calories burned and carbon saved.  The company has created a joint venture company called Sensei, Inc., a mobile wellness enterprise that delivers daily nutrition and exercise tips via cell phone and PC.  Humana is connecting to seniors with an annual Senior Games competition and some lower-key activities like casual dancing at the Humana Guidance Center in Las Vegas.  Seniors come in to the Center with health coverage questions and spend most of their visit fox-trotting to a Dance Town video game.

To attract Generation Z, the Humana team has linked its “Operation Planet Savers” (OPS) online game—a competition that gets kids out in the back yard on weekly “missions”—with the new Disney movie “G-FORCE.”  The company has also placed what Matthews calls “completely goofy” videos on YouTube that invite viewers click onto the Humana web site and take part in a “Healthy Games” idea competition.

Matthews is a rare kind of executive.  He is a practical unrealist.  He knows that health is about the ability to do things in life and that the spectre of illness and incapacitation (as well as the financial burden) is a shadow that clouds a "feel good" mission. But his goal is to plant the seed and deliver on the promise of how a health insurance company can focus more on health and less on the second half of their name.

That's more than innovative, it's healthy change for the better.