QUICK SUMMARY
Progressive Insurance transformed their crowdsourcing approach by partnering with Mind Sumo, moving from a frustrating, time-consuming process to an efficient, flexible system that saved over 150 hours across five challenges. The partnership enabled Progressive to conduct both internal and external challenges, gathering over 800 ideas while providing valuable outside perspectives that complemented their internal insurance lens. Mind Sumo’s collaborative platform, responsive team, and superior reporting capabilities helped Progressive meet their goals of creating a self-service model, reducing administrative time, and improving the overall crowdsourcing experience.
KEY QUOTES
- “What we found is we had no pressure from Mind Sumo… we basically found an amazing team that was very flexible… custom changes were turned around same day, sometimes the next day.”
- “The biggest thing that we found was an outside perspective… when they were rating things and highlighting things and prioritizing, we got a perspective we never realized, which was absolutely awesome.”
- “I feel like every time we work with one of our vendors or partners, there’s at least one problem. Everything that Mind Sumo said they were gonna do, they did.”
FULL SESSION SUMMARY
The Challenge with Traditional Crowdsourcing
Ray Mack, an Innovation Enablement Consultant with 26 years at Progressive Insurance, opened by describing the frustrations they faced with their previous crowdsourcing platform. The team encountered significant challenges including complex reporting, an inflexible vendor, and excessive administrative time. Each challenge required 20-50 hours of setup, prompting, filtering, and reporting, preventing the innovation team from focusing on their core competencies. Additionally, their previous approach limited them to internal challenges only, missing valuable external perspectives.
After consulting with Gartner, Forrester, and other companies, Progressive discovered that many organizations faced similar challenges with crowdsourcing platforms. Based on a recommendation from a team member who had previous experience with Mind Sumo, they decided to test this alternative solution.
The Mind Sumo Partnership Approach
Progressive took an incremental approach to testing Mind Sumo, starting with two small challenges (one internal, one external) before expanding to three more. What impressed the Progressive team was Mind Sumo’s flexibility, responsiveness, and lack of sales pressure. The Mind Sumo team made custom changes quickly, sometimes on the same day requests were made.
Ally Rossi from Mind Sumo explained their company’s approach, noting that they don’t have traditional salespeople but rather project managers who focus on understanding client objectives and building relationships. This structure allowed Mind Sumo to function as an extension of Progressive’s team rather than just another vendor.
One particularly valuable aspect was Mind Sumo’s outside perspective. While Progressive evaluated ideas through an insurance industry lens, Mind Sumo provided customer-centric viewpoints that offered fresh insights Progressive hadn’t considered.
Measurable Results and Value
Over five months and five challenges, Progressive achieved impressive results:
- Generated over 800 ideas (both internal and external)
- Saved approximately 150 hours of team time
- Freed the innovation team to focus on their strengths
- Successfully implemented a self-service model
- Conducted their first global external challenges
- Improved reporting capabilities significantly
The external Smart Home challenge yielded particularly valuable results, bringing in perspectives from Europe that differed significantly from US viewpoints. For internal challenges, Progressive engaged frontline workers who submitted over 300 ideas for improving their work environment and processes, which then expanded to include supervisor perspectives as well.
Platform Capabilities and Differentiators
Mind Sumo’s platform offers several key advantages:
- A global solver community of 1.5 million problem solvers (primarily Gen Z and millennials)
- Capability to run both internal and external challenges
- Collaborative dashboard allowing stakeholders to comment, rate, and tag ideas
- Significantly faster implementation (less than two weeks versus two months with the previous vendor)
- Cash rewards to incentivize participation
- Complete IP ownership for the client company
- Comprehensive reporting tools
The platform’s flexibility allows it to address diverse challenge types across industries, from product development (like chip flavors) to future banking trends to COVID’s impact on shopping behaviors.
Customer Satisfaction
Progressive’s team and stakeholders expressed exceptional satisfaction with Mind Sumo. Customer feedback included statements like “We want Mind Sumo for all our projects” and praise for their follow-through, ease of use, and reporting capabilities. The partnership was described as uniquely problem-free compared to typical vendor relationships.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Effective crowdsourcing requires the right platform and partner – Progressive’s experience demonstrates how the right technology and collaborative relationship can transform crowdsourcing from a burdensome process to a valuable innovation tool.
- Outside perspectives enhance innovation – Mind Sumo’s ability to provide customer-centric viewpoints complemented Progressive’s industry expertise, revealing insights they wouldn’t have discovered independently.
- Self-service capabilities and responsive support save significant time – The combination of an easy-to-use platform and responsive support reduced Progressive’s administrative time from 20-50 hours per challenge to a fraction of that, freeing their innovation team to focus on core competencies.
Delivery on Event Focus:
Innovation and Business Strategy
This session directly addresses how Progressive aligned innovation with business strategy by implementing a more efficient crowdsourcing solution. By partnering with Mind Sumo, Progressive was able to gather more diverse ideas (both internal and external) while reducing administrative burden, allowing their innovation team to focus on strategic work. The platform’s reporting capabilities also helped them identify and prioritize the most valuable ideas, ensuring innovation efforts aligned with business needs.
Delivery on Event Theme:
Harvesting Innovation and Future Growth
The Progressive-Mind Sumo partnership exemplifies both harvesting innovation and sowing seeds for future growth. Progressive harvested innovation by collecting over 800 ideas across five challenges, tapping into both internal expertise and external perspectives. They sowed seeds for future growth by establishing a sustainable, scalable crowdsourcing process that can be deployed quickly (under two weeks) and efficiently across the organization, creating a foundation for ongoing innovation.
Action Steps for Innovation Experts and Corporate Changemakers
- Evaluate your current crowdsourcing approach – Assess the time spent on administration versus idea evaluation, the diversity of perspectives you’re capturing, and whether your current platform enables or hinders innovation.
- Consider a pilot approach with new platforms – Follow Progressive’s example of starting small with 1-2 challenges before expanding, allowing you to test capabilities and partnership fit with minimal risk.
- Look beyond internal perspectives – Explore platforms that can tap into external communities, particularly demographics that might be difficult to reach through traditional methods.
- Prioritize flexibility and responsiveness in vendor selection – Choose partners who can adapt quickly to your needs and who approach the relationship as collaborative rather than transactional.
- Implement self-service capabilities – Empower teams across your organization to run their own challenges with innovation teams serving as guides rather than administrators.