Businesses can embrace collaborative tools to encourage innovation, anticipate
market needs, and connect far-flung colleagues who can join together virtually
to solve problems. Insurance giant AXA has been building new collaborative
processes to generate ideas, create products and address everyday business
problems. It asked its employees to create its own knowledge sharing system,
which resulted in a tool called Mind Touch. The program helps employees share
information and collaborate on ideas and solutions to business challenges. A
separate section of the program focuses specifically on solving customer-related
issues. “We have hundreds of successes as a result of this system,” says Chris
Denison, managing partner of the innovation hub at AXA insurance.