very glad to be here at the early bird breakfast of the michigan west coast chamber of commerce tell us a few other times toys to get to start the day early and see familiar faces start out by saying we're grateful to both of our sponsors  agency we also celebrate or twenty third year of operation here in holland being just as one of the largest agencies in the state and we continue to be ranked in the top forty in the nation by outside accreditation company called reagan associates our hundred thirty five associates work with over three thousand west michigan companies and twelve thousand families we serve them from five west michigan locations our agency supports organizations with risk management osha property casualty insurance employee benefits human resource report compliance payroll for one k technology bonding and much more we continue to invest heavily into position with technology and with the best people valuable to be offer services much beyond the typical agency or proprietary product or program which you have in your table called results plus walks companies through a process of identifying the risk and controlling it our goal working with clients is that they do not have claims at all once we wrap our results plus programmer on companies we've presented best in class submission to many up to fifty we touch depending on the industry they're in our process creates great interest in the marketplace in alternately lowers their cost of insurance and protect their employees and property and keeps them productive on the benefits side we use our results plus program to fully identify companies objectives and match that with employee expectations we understand the significant cost and challenges associated with employee benefits these days we then build a customized platform that provides h r expertise benefit knowledge alternative benefits platforms data analysis compliance including formal care act compliance employee education technology and ultimately the result fos process lowers the overall cost of employee benefits it makes companies much more compliant in alleviates much of the work that they were doing before they engage with us we very much to do greg now it's time for the door prize door prizes provided by our friends that i do with kent insurance the price of these fifty three dollars sixty five cents in west coast cash you'll have to ask them why it's that amount please get out your now i'd like to introduce gene clark of the west coast chamber morning everyone so happy to have you with us today first i want to draw attention to our new newsletter that we're publishing once a month now patrick even in your company instead of happy to be in the over there see patrick if you're interested in being it after kaiser or have any questions about this magazine we're so excited to have a look for in your real mail your mailbox every single month and we're proud to share this information with you also want to tell you about a few of the best are coming up yet in february thursday february eighteenth or next mar percent of credit savings and premium access to our work save our money work save two ok greg said earlier we all hope that our policyholders don't have any accidents we view as well but we understand that they do happen and so are talking kluges things such as slip and fall of a nation program driver safety information and other tools to help reduce those risks in addition to members are eligible for dividend return based on the overall group's loss ratio last year we gave two percent back to the chamber and this year if these to announce that we're turning sixteen percent fact she remembers so with that being sad i would like to present this chalk to jane for two hundred eighty one thousand nine hundred sixty three dollar government we want the role of tauruses as a and the worst thing to think about if you don't like change you're really not going to like you're all say and so this idea of how do we stay relevant is really what we focus on so what does that mean so we've been engaging companies over the last two years and these are the things that keep coming up innovation is number one as a company how do we innovate how do we stay relevant to our customers and ideally to new customers how do we manage change how do we manage complexity the marketplace is getting so much more complex than it used to we're just as striker yesterday talking about culture here's a company as we grow as a company and i think that's something we hear over and over again as we grow are we going to lose the culture and are we going to continue to be in a leading from the middle so a lot of folks you've got your workers grassroots have a lot of ideas you have folks at the top of those those middle managers who are stuck how do we help them be innovative and keep the company growing because they're the ones that actually connect everything and create that growth strategy and then data the insight and those two are very related how i take all of this information that i'm bombarded with on a daily basis and make sense of it and how do i then while that was strategy i had a a mentor growing up who said to me you know seth there are no mature problems there is only mature thinking and that is something that we work very hard to help our students aren't clients get past the true thinking and find thinking who would've thought the very mundine disney taxis would now be one of the highest value companies in the world who were something as boring as picking people up and dropping them off has been totally revolutionized into a huge and very valuable company so anything can be innovative so just briefly to north what are what we are nonprofit we seen in the press it's the new buzzword while it's make sense of a little more sense of it today and how we connect that with the tools business and so we do that through the innovation engine certificate we do that through it's all to basically any way actually develop testing them and then driving the best ones to fruition while you manage risk resources and all the other parts that come to actually make business happen so we've been since two thousand and ten we have about one hundred five i m c graduates alumni over two thousand people have gone through our short format workshops and over one hundred seventy companies have engaged us we were getting out there and we're really trying to make a difference and in the west machine so here's a quick definition of innovation and just this is going to set the stage for our awesome panel innovation is the creation of a new and viable business offering pretty straightforward so what we do is give the tools for innovation for that to happen so design thinking it is the discipline of creating solutions intended to cause improvement a new business a new idea take something  actually provide value and we do that by focusing on the needs desires in the context of the people that we are trying to serve and we do that by creating and balancing desirability feasibility  if you can do these three things while so vile can i create a business model that actually is profitable and provides about my customers by creating a technology or something that's feasible with as a product offering a service and by golly i hope it's desirable so our focus is making sure that you as a company can do all three of those to create something and there's a lot of conversation this is one myth and i would really like to blow our innovation is not about product folks it's about our whole business model you can innovate anywhere and you're going to see that in our house today it is not our coming up necessarily of the new product it could be innovating on your value model value capture so that would a different way of capturing value your customer experience creating something that's not new i don't know if you've ever bought shoes from samples a very different experience seventy percent of their volume comes from repeat customers that create such an amazing experience you just want you buying shoes shoes of all things how you network and how you build your network your supply chain how you organize your people people that was interesting is i have hierarchy there are value elsewhere in your business and i think that's the key thing i'm trying to unlock for companies start out what i would like to do i can talk about this all day but i'd rather have you hear from our lon and what i'm going to do is have them give just a brief introduction who they are so you've got do is pick a broad range of alumni so we have business focus we have city government but we also have nonprofit or foundations are just to show that innovation can happen anywhere and i think that's really crucial not to get fixated again it's not about the product is about anywhere there's an opportunity to create value with that i want to talk to randy or start with randy on being one of the first  sent many other executives through how has the team with this kind of new language of innovation how to your company manage i know the opportunities but also the challenges you faced over the last three four years yeah well we've got a couple minutes left i know the topic of innovation is is a huge one for a lot of people i'd be curious what are some of the questions that you have are some of the things the challenges that you deal with that you'd be interested in and talking about and he questions challenge for innovation isn't coming up with a new idea isn't creating a concept it's actually getting people to buy and in fact i hate the word bae and i want to create all them right everyone's all into this idea of buying this kind of  that and so a lot of it is how do i understand my audience what are their ambitions do i have empathy for the people around me it isn't about me it isn't about my idea how do i create empathy how do i understand what drives them and then how do i implant this idea to say wow i actually needing something and ambition and yours or i'm alleviating a fear of yours it's really having not only empathy for your and customer but really understanding everyone around you and that takes a lot of self awareness and i think that a lot of the conversations we have a whole world of you can do that you're going to have to approach it this way guess what you have to go step wise and take your time you can't just launch into the idea how do you then this idea of you can't do that up to the i have the great idea i've gotten all through and it's mine the greatest thing that i'm innovator will succeed with his humility wow that idea wasn't i just took it and made it a little better and it's things here it was really your idea that ability to step away and not have ownership people want to know that they needed things so how do you bring them into the process i think the you know what i think one of the key things that we really focus on is every product is an experience and if you're not if you're not thinking about our experience it's called an offering so the