The Decentralisation of Innovation: How to Keep Strategy Coherent

We’re watching innovation spread.

What started as a single team in the corner of the business – tasked with scanning startups and exploring the “future of insurance” – has become something much bigger, and far less contained.

Underwriting teams now test new risk models.
Claims leads run pilots with automation vendors.
Distribution and marketing build their own customer partnerships.

Innovation is happening everywhere.

And that’s a good thing. Mostly.

The upside of decentralisation

For years, insurers fought to make innovation feel relevant to the core business.

Now it’s embedded. 

Teams closer to customers and operations are identifying problems and testing solutions directly. The ownership is real, and so is the pace.

We’ve seen product teams source new technologies faster and more strategically aligned than any central unit could. We’ve seen claims operations build automation strategies on their own initiative.

But all this brings complexity.
These teams aren’t always experienced innovators. They don’t have access to the same tools and networks, nor do they have the time to develop them. Plus, when innovation becomes everyone’s job, it risks becoming no one’s responsibility.

The new challenge: coherence

The problem isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s a lack of connection.

Across many insurers, each team is doing great work – but often in parallel, with limited visibility of what others are learning.

A partner explored in one region is unknown to another.
A pilot that didn’t scale quietly disappears from memory.
And leadership ends up looking at multiple versions of the same strategy, all slightly out of sync.

It’s not that decentralisation has gone wrong.
It’s that the intelligence around it hasn’t caught up.

Connecting a decentralised world

This is where we see Sønr 2.0 making the biggest difference.
It doesn’t centralise innovation.
And it’s not another CRM or workflow tracker.

Sønr 2.0 connects intelligence – not activity.

Each team still explores and experiments in its own way, but everything they discover (whether originating through Sønr or other) – the research, the vendors, the outcomes – feeds into a shared layer of understanding.

So when a claims team evaluates digital human tech, that knowledge is instantly visible to others.

When the Product team tests a new Agentic AI solution, Sønr 2.0 links it to similar initiatives happening elsewhere in the business.

Over time, the organisation builds a collective intelligence that’s richer, faster, and more precise than any one team could maintain alone.

That’s how you keep strategy coherent while letting innovation stay distributed.

Turning movement into momentum

The decentralisation of innovation isn’t a risk to be managed. It’s an opportunity to be organised.

The insurers that thrive will be the ones that find ways to share context without slowing progress.

Sønr 2.0 helps create that rhythm.

It gives teams the freedom to move quickly and the assurance that their work contributes to a wider direction.

It’s innovation as a network – connected, transparent, and cumulative.

Looking ahead

As 2026 approaches, the most successful insurers will be those that don’t just run innovation programmes but build innovation systems – ones that remember, learn, and evolve.

That shift doesn’t require new departments or more meetings.
It just needs better visibility.

And that’s where connected intelligence changes everything.

Join the Sønr 2.0 waitlist → sonr.global/2-0

This article is part of our Sønr 2.0 series exploring how insurers are transforming intelligence into action.