Nationwide Opens Innovation/Collaboration Space

December 16, 2019

Nationwide’s new center, designed in part to foster innovation and greater collaboration on product development, is open for business.

Named The CoOperative, the center will be based at the former Arena Grand theater in Columbus, Ohio’s Arena district. Initially, Nationwide employees will use the center, but the insurer also wants to use the space for community engagement and to attract innovators from all over the country and the world to Columbus.

A workspace at the CoOperative/Nationwide

Scott Sanchez, Nationwide’s chief innovation officer, said that The CoOperative plays well into the insurer’s broader strategy to adapt quickly to customers’ wants and needs.

“The CoOperative is part of our strategy to rapidly evolve to meet the needs of our customers as we work to find innovations that truly delight and surprise them…and to enable the innovators across Nationwide that make it happen,” Sanchez said in prepared remarks.

Nationwide describes The CoOperative as a “purpose-built space” that’s designed to accelerate collaboration between Nationwide employees of different teams and departments. Nationwide said it used the same approach the company uses to create innovations for its customers in the design of its space. Concepts involved in the center’s creation include “design thinking,” which enables creation of a space ideal for experimenting, talking to customers creating prototypes and other work crucial to the innovative process.

The CoOperative was built to be flexible so that it can change as needed for the work to be done. A key design principle was having the space evolve to the way individuals and teams need to work every hour and every day instead of the other way around. Various Nationwide teams also collaborated on the design process, Nationwide said.

Among the center’s new features:

Source: Nationwide