Building an Innovation Engine from Within
\ CASE STUDY
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
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“The program has been very valuable—we’ll build on peer relationships and apply the learnings as we shape our own path forward.”
— Deborah Gleeson, Vice President, Information Technology, Community Health Plan
Background
TriZetto, a Cognizant company, provides core healthcare technology platforms that power health plans and care delivery organizations, focusing on claims processing, benefits administration, and workflow optimization. Within the broader healthcare ecosystem, TriZetto serves as a foundational enabler of efficiency and scalability, while Cognizant extends its reach by layering consulting, digital innovation, and enterprise integration services on top of these platforms.
The healthcare market, however, is transforming at an unprecedented pace. Federal regulations, rising costs, value-based care models, and consumer expectations are reshaping payer and provider demands. At the same time, new technologies are disrupting traditional workflows. Health technology companies like TriZetto must adapt quickly, develop new products, and capitalize on emerging opportunities to remain competitive.
As Chief Product Officer Diana Benli explained, TriZetto’s challenge was to expand beyond their current portfolio to define and develop the next generation of breakthrough solutions in healthcare. Incremental improvements would not be enough. TriZetto partnered with C\R Strategy Partners to embed a lasting innovation capability into its culture and systems – one that would enable bold, transformative solutions and create sustainable business impact.
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The Challenge
TriZetto faced expected obstacles in embedding innovation into its core capabilities:
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Competing priorities: Regulatory requirements and operational demands consumed leadership focus, crowding out investment in long-term innovation.
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Siloed expertise: Fragmented decision-making and unclear ownership slowed progress and limited cross-functional collaboration.
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Risk aversion: Leaders favored safe, incremental improvements over bold bets with higher potential reward.
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Cultural blockers: Innovation often happened on the side, without dedicated resources, proper governance, or protected space for experimentation.
The risks of continuing this way were significant. TriZetto could fall behind, miss new market opportunities, and fail to adapt quickly enough to regulatory and industry shifts. Without a scalable innovation capability, the company would remain reactive, leaving growth and transformation out of reach.
Our Approach
C\R partnered with TriZetto to uncover hidden barriers, align leadership, and co-create a structured corporate incubator that would serve as both a launchpad for new ideas and a capability-building engine for long-term innovation.
The Innovation Navigation Styles Inventory (INSI) assessment revealed misaligned priorities, unclear decision-making authority, and uneven readiness among leaders. Some were eager to experiment, while others were more cautious. These insights shaped the design of a greenfield incubator, focused not only on generating ideas but also on strengthening leadership dynamics, building confidence, and embedding repeatable processes.​
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Intake, Assessment – INSI assessments and leadership evaluations revealed hidden blockers and readiness gaps
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Strategic Alignment – Created alignment around an innovation thesis, investment vision, and growth category framework.
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Model Design & Development – C\R and TriZetto co-created a scalable incubator curriculum with stage gates, governance, and processes to take ideas from hypothesis to prototype.
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Implementation and Launch – Established a hybrid team model with tools, templates, and training, built to integrate innovative behaviors into daily operations and leadership expectations.
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Along the way, C\R balanced near-term priorities with long-range goals, adapting the program to deliver early tangible outcomes while keeping the focus on embedding sustainable capabilities.
Learning & Outcomes
Soon, TriZetto began to show signs of momentum and cultural change.​
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Leadership behaviors: Executives prioritized innovation as one of the company’s top three initiatives, creating safe spaces for experimentation.
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Cultural shifts: A dedicated incubator team was resourced to guide participants through structured, evidence-based validation cycles.
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New habits: Incubator cohort teams adopted rapid experimentation practices – framing hypotheses, testing assumptions, gathering customer insights, and pivoting based on data. They learned to consistently document insights, iterate quickly, and align concepts with validated market needs.
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Confidence and skills: Both leaders and teams built confidence in their ability to pursue bold ideas, supported by structured processes and tools that reduced risk and increased organizational alignment.
The Results
Although the accelerator is ongoing, early results demonstrate meaningful impact:
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A bespoke, structured incubator model and curriculum, ready to take bold projects through validated problem statements, early prototypes, and actionable market insights.
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Dedicated incubator staff selected and trained to lead hypothesis-driven experimentation and rapid iteration.
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The first Alpha cohort launched, with concepts progressing from validated problem statements to early prototypes and actionable market insights.
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Ongoing INSI assessments and personal coaching, creating shared language and visibility into innovation capabilities and gaps.
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Increased innovation capacity, and dedicated avenues for BIG transformation across TriZetto.
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The biggest breakthroughs have been cultural and strategic: shifting from ad hoc, incremental projects to systematic, capability-driven innovation; aligning leadership around a holistic innovation thesis; and creating space for bold, experimental ideas to thrive.
With these foundations, TriZetto is now positioned to sustain innovation as a core capability. By embedding repeatable frameworks, cultivating innovation leadership behaviors, and resourcing dedicated programs, the company is building the capacity to generate transformative ideas, validate and scale them into market-ready solutions.