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(Bruno Sardinha on stage at Insurance Innovators in Nashville, Tenn., on May 20, 2025. Photo credit: Sarah Bogan.)
Bruno Sardinha, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer, Travelers (Hartford, Conn.), presented a structured and scalable approach to enterprise innovation at Insurance Innovators USA in Nashville, Tenn., emphasizing that innovation succeeds only when it is embedded within the business, not executed in isolation.
Bruno Sardinha, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer, Travelers.
“We work in partnership with the business and the functions,” Sardinha said. “Their priorities guide our objectives. Innovation isn’t a lab—it’s part of our culture.”
Sardinha described an innovation framework grounded in collaboration, foresight, and operational discipline. Rather than “owning” innovation, his team enables it across the enterprise by aligning with business units and functional leaders to ensure strategic relevance and adoption.
At the center of the model is a six-year-old enterprise innovation group supported by a multi-layered internal network: embedded “innovation evangelists” who act as change agents within their business units, a broader community of engaged employees passionate about innovation, and key stakeholders who sponsor and sustain initiatives. This distributed structure keeps innovation connected to execution while ensuring input flows from across the organization.
“Innovation fails in silos,” said Bobbie Shrivastav, Co-Founder and CEO, Solvrays, commenting on Sardinha’s presentation. “It’s not a lab project—it’s a force multiplier. Real change happens when every department, every partner, and every voice is in the room. Acceleration demands integration. Collaboration isn’t optional—it’s the catalyst.”
Internal Analysis, External Partnerships
To ensure innovation efforts are forward-looking, Sardinha’s team develops structured points of view on future industry trends and their implications for Travelers. These perspectives are built through internal analysis and external partnerships and are used to help business units prepare for market shifts three to five years ahead.
Bobbie Shrivastav, Co-Founder & CEO, Solvrays.
“Even if we’re just building up hunches,” Sardinha said, “we need to understand what’s driving change, what the risks and opportunities are, and what we need to do about them.”
That foresight drives external partnerships. Sardinha explained that his team sources solutions from across the vendor and startup landscape, guided by both senior leadership strategy and frontline business needs. This top-down and bottom-up model helps the innovation group identify the right capabilities and use cases for experimentation.
To accelerate those ideas, Travelers developed a shared methodology for running pilots and proofs of concept. By bringing together design, strategy, and technology teams in cross-functional sprints, the company is able to test ideas rapidly but with clear purpose.
Speed with Direction
“We talk about velocity,” Sardinha said. “But it’s not just speed—it’s speed with direction.”
The results, he said, include new capabilities brought into production and a growing repository of institutional learning. “Innovation isn’t just about success,” Sardinha added. “It’s also about knowing what to do differently next time—and sharing that knowledge.”
Sardinha concluded with a call to cultivate an innovation mindset across all levels of the organization. “Tools and partners matter, but what’s really going to support us long term is building that mindset,” he said.
Travelers’ model of innovation—collaborative, integrated, and built for scale—offers a disciplined alternative to the traditional innovation lab. As Sardinha emphasized, innovation at Travelers is conceived not as a parallel initiative, but rather as a fully embedded capability designed to evolve with the business.
[Editor’s note: Anthony O’Donnell collaborated with Sarah Bogan in the drafting of this article.]
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