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From Innovation Intent to an Enterprise Operating Model

\ CASE STUDY

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Cognizant TriZetto logo

“Our problem is never, ever, ideas. Our problem, like any large corporation, is execution. And they essentially die."

 

— Senior Leader, Cognizant TriZetto, 2026 Intake

Background

TriZetto, a Cognizant company, operates at the center of a healthcare market being reshaped by AI, margin pressure, new commercial models, and rising client expectations. The company has deep customer relationships, strong technical talent, and no shortage of ideas. Its harder problem was converting those opportunities into scalable growth.


From 2024 through 2026, C\R Strategy Partners worked with TriZetto leaders to build the operating conditions for innovation. The engagement began with an organization-wide intake and Innovation Operating Principles (IOP) assessment alongside ISO 56002 and ISO TR 56004, moved into Executive Leadership Team alignment and target operating-model design, and culminated in a cross-business-unit investment interlock grounded in market insight and leadership evidence.

Current state analysis results showing findings from intake and diagnostic phase

The Challenge

Five interlocking problems were standing between TriZetto's growth ambitions and its ability to execute on them:

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  1. No shared frame for growth: Leaders needed a common way to distinguish improvements to the existing business from new and transformational growth and to decide what belonged in each lane.
     

  2. Innovation was “side-of-desk” work: Transformational ideas competed with quarterly delivery and P&L demands. Teams lacked protected capacity and a safe place to test high-risk concepts.
     

  3. Decision rights and ownership were fragmented: Ideas crossed product, service, client, and business-unit boundaries, but no single system connected opportunity selection, funding, end-to-end accountability, and commercialization.
     

  4. Leadership behaviors reinforced the system: The IOP assessment revealed a preference for predictable decisions, inconsistent future vision, slow decision-making, and difficulty scaling ideas.
     

  5. Market evidence did not reliably shape investment: Client signals and growth ideas were abundant, yet roadmap, capital, metrics, and learning loops were disconnected. The AI market was moving faster than the operating model.

Our Approach

C\R Strategy Partners built the engagement in five phases, moving from organizational diagnosis to a fully designed investment interlock:

 

  1. Diagnose – Establish an advisory intake committee, interview leaders across the organization, and apply the IOP framework to translate behavioral patterns into a diagnostic, surfacing Focus, Risk, Speed, and Ideas as the four principles most likely to change execution.
     

  2. Align – Work with the Executive Leadership Team to convert the diagnostic into shared choices, building a business-growth framework spanning Existing, New, and Transformational Business, and drafting a first investment-governance model and incubator thesis.
     

  3. Design – Translate ELT decisions into a target operating model connecting strategy to a Solution Council, Investment Council, dedicated incubator teams, executive sponsors, four evidence-based stage gates, and a path from validated concept to commercialization.
     

  4. Validate – Conduct structured interviews with 13 senior leaders across TriZetto's HCLS business units, synthesizing 17 themes, 21 blockers, and 19 growth bets into a combined innovation maturity assessment, identifying critical gaps.
     

  5. Interlock – Reframe scattered problems as one operating-model mismatch and design a cross-BU investment interlock bridging market signal to strategic choice with protected investment, accountable ownership, and defined measurement.

Learning & Outcomes

The engagement gave TriZetto more than a set of recommendations; it built the evidence, shared structures, and operating tools the organization needed to act:

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  • Diagnostic became an operating-model input: IOP was not used as a stand-alone analysis. Focus, Risk, Speed, and Ideas shaped governance, talent, stage gates, and leadership expectations across the operating model.
     

  • ELT made strategy concrete: Work with the Executive Leadership Team produced three durable artifacts: a shared growth-category framework, a first investment-governance model, and a thesis for the incubator's role in the enterprise.
     

  • Forums connected to decisions: Solution Council prioritization, Investment Council funding, named executive sponsors, evidence gates, and commercialization pathways clarified who decides what and when.
     

  • System diagnosis replaced anecdote: Consensus across 13 leaders confirmed that funding, ownership, roadmap alignment, speed, and incentives were interlocking constraints, not isolated team problems.
     

  • Strengths surfaced and organized: The intake identified capable leaders, deep client insight, strong technical talent, 19 credible growth bets, and comparatively stronger ecosystem and partnership capability. The task was to organize those strengths, not replace them.

The Results

Each result maps directly to one of the five challenges. Together, they gave TriZetto the architecture to move opportunities from market signal to investment decision:

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  1. Shared growth frame established: The Executive Leadership Team aligned on three growth categories: Existing, New, and Transformational, and used them to organize investment priorities across the enterprise.
     

  2. Dedicated innovation capacity created: A target operating model established dedicated incubator teams, executive sponsors, a 12-week incubation cycle, four evidence-based stage gates, and a protected pre-commercial setting for experimentation.
     

  3. Decision rights and ownership clarified: The operating model defined Solution Council prioritization, Investment Council funding decisions, accountable sponsors, and an explicit route from opportunity selection through acceleration and commercialization.
     

  4. Leadership change agenda narrowed: IOP focused the change agenda on four principles: Focus, Risk, Speed, and Ideas, and translated them into concrete leadership and operating-model requirements.
     

  5. Investment interlock designed: The 2026 synthesis converted 13 leader interviews into 17 themes, 21 blockers, 19 growth bets, seven critical gaps, and a prioritized blueprint linking strategy, funding, ownership, metrics, and execution.

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