Axa Equitable Life Insurance Co. has jumped on a management bandwagon that also includes companies like Citigroup, Coca-Cola, and the health insurer Humana.
The New York company, which distributes insurance products through banks and other channels, announced July 17 that it had named Barbara Goodstein its chief innovation officer.
"This is about having enough distance from the day-to-day business to be able to see opportunities to help the business evolve into the future," said Ms. Goodstein, who is also the company's executive vice president of marketing and is on its executive management committee.
Ms. Goodstein leads a new "marketing and innovation" group that the Axa Financial Inc. unit calls "an incubator for new business ideas, where concepts are explored, tested, and brought to market quickly." She reports directly to Christopher M. "Kip" Condron, Axa Equitable's chairman and chief executive.
The key to fast-tracking promising ideas is fostering them outside of existing business lines, Ms. Goodstein said.
"Our business is moving at a rapid pace now," she said. "I think now more than ever we need someone who is focused on innovation, working on the future versus keeping the trains running day to day."
Axa Equitable has come out with 29 new products in the past 12 months, versus 13 the prior 12 months, she said.
Ms. Goodstein said the first innovation under her leadership is scheduled to hit the market Aug. 22. She gave no details.
The position of chief innovation officer does not have a long enough of a corporate track record for a sense of its effectiveness to have emerged, said Dr. Batia Wiesenfeld, a professor of management at New York University's Stern School of Business.
Still, other companies would do well to follow Axa Equitable's lead by putting high-level executives in charge of such a forward-looking enterprise, Ms. Wiesenfeld said.
"I see financial services and banking in particular as being a very rapidly changing industry," she said. "What the chief innovation officer represents is crucial to banking."
The recent dismantling of laws governing which businesses commercial banks may participate in has created opportunity and ambiguity in terms of services and markets, Ms. Wiesenfeld said.
Ms. Goodstein's group plans to interview customers and to bring in outside experts to get a better grasp of what customers want.
"We have to do enough research among professionals and experts to understand what people are looking for and how they want it delivered," she said.
Some of that perspective may come from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Axa uses the school to train advisers in serving retirees, Ms. Goodstein said.
One way Axa hopes to get suggestions to the innovation group is through a YouTube-type tool it is designing to let employees communicate their ideas to the group and one another.
"Everybody is very anxious to provide input into this," Ms. Goodstein said. "We want to build the most efficient mechanism to gather that input."
Once ideas are gathered, the innovation unit's 12 employees will prioritize them and create execution plans.
"Our goal is to come up with the most creative solutions for the customers they serve," she said. "If banks have recommendations and ideas, we would be happy to get them."
There is no formal process, she said. Ideas would most likely work their way up through Axa's team of bank wholesalers.
Ms. Goodstein also oversees the At Retirement platform, which focuses on providing retirement advice, education, and products.
Asked which product areas or markets are ripe for innovation, Ms. Goodstein said, "Honestly, all of them."
