Welcome to the Ameritas Innovation Challenge!

The Challenge: Generate the best ideas for growth

No one knows Ameritas better than you, no one’s in better position to see how we can boost sales or grow the company in other ways. Define your best idea by writing a few sentences describing it. When you’re ready, click the Accept Challenge button and follow the instructions to enter the challenge.

Entries must be submitted by Feb. 22, 2019. Ideas will be scored on predefined factors. Qualifying ideas will be advanced to the Ameritas Innovation Lab for help creating a business case and a presentation to the Ameritas Innovation Growth Board.

Bright ideas will light our path into the future

Spurring innovation at Ameritas

Sustaining our growth momentum requires outside-the-box thinking that will lead to novel ideas and solutions. The Ameritas Innovation Challenge, the new Ameritas Innovation Lab and Ameritas Innovation Growth Board are all part of the plan to identify, develop and activate ideas that can accelerate growth.

Crowdsourcing: Attracting ideas from a large group

Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining services, ideas or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people. The Ameritas Innovation Challenge is designed to attract ideas from our 2,400-plus associates. Since we call ourselves a herd, maybe we should call this “herdsourcing.”

HeroX will help us focus on our ideas

Everything you need to know about the Ameritas Innovation Challenge can be found here on the HeroX platform. It's also where you will enter your idea into the competition. As our innovation partner, HeroX will help manage the challenge so we can focus on identifying and developing our best ideas.

Judging Criteria

All ideas will be ranked using these criteria:

• Impact | 50 points
  • What is the idea's total value to the company?
  • What impact will it have on the business?
  • Measured in revenue or sales growth.
• Efficiency | 25 points
  • How much will the idea increase business efficiency or effectiveness?
  • Measured in dollars or hours.
• Sustainability | 15 points
  • Does the idea apply to only one year, or does it provide ongoing, long-term growth?
  • Measured in time until benefits are achieved and duration of benefits received.
    
• Implementation Complexity | 25 points
  • Will implementation of the idea be easy or complicated?
  • What dollars, technology, resources or timeline is needed to deploy the idea?
  • Measured in internal labor hours, external cost and duration of implementation.
• Novelty | 10 points
  • How original or unique is the idea?

Judging Process and Implementation

• To qualify, you must submit a three- to five-sentence description of the idea by Feb. 22, 2019.
• The idea should focus on boosting sales or finding new ways to grow.
• The Ameritas Innovation Lab and members of Ameritas Leadership Academy's Blue Sky Team will review and score all ideas using the judging criteria, advancing the best ideas to the next round.
• If your idea advances, you'll be asked to create a two- to four-page executive overview to further define the concept, problem, cause, solution and success.
• After scoring the executive summaries, the Ameritas judging team will advance up to five ideas to the final round, which is a presentation to the Innovation Growth Board.
• If your idea makes the finals, the Ameritas Innovation Lab will help you develop a pitch deck for your presentation.
• The Innovation Growth Board will select the grand prize winner and runners-up.
• A key executive will be assigned to work with you and the Ameritas Innovation Lab to develop, test and implement your winning idea.

Prizes

The grand prize winner will receive $5,000.

Runner-up prize winners will receive $1,000.

Note: The number of runner-up prizes will depend on the number of entries qualifying for the final round. Up to four runner-up prizes will be awarded.

Ameritas Innovation Lab

The Ameritas Innovation Lab works with the Innovation Growth Board and experts across the company to generate, evaluate and fund ideas through an innovation engine.  This process can help business divisions support our enterprise growth objectives:

• Customer Focus: Measured by number of customers.
• Distribution Excellence: Measured by sales volume generated through growth ideas.
• Financial Health: Measured by the return on equity (ROE).

Think of the Ameritas Innovation Lab as both a place and a process that helps the company identify, filter, test, validate and implement opportunities to achieve enterprise goals and accelerate transformation.

Ameritas Innovation Growth Board

Comprised of associates from all business lines and shared services areas, the Ameritas Innovation Growth Board evaluates ideas and collaborates with "intrapreneurs" to align opportunities and fund viable growth ideas. The board is part of a sustainable process for rapidly resourcing, learning from and experimenting with ideas.