Since 2018, the five seasons of the Groupama Innov’Camp have enabled the Group to develop 13 innovative projects for its customers and employees. This intrapreneurship and project acceleration programme consists of immersing project teams in an innovative ecosystem conducive to networking for eight weeks. It alternates between training, coaching and networking with experts. The initiative takes its inspiration from start-up incubation methods such as Design Thinking for generating ideas and hypotheses and Lean Start-up for adjusting the proposed solutions. At the end of the Bootcamp, the teams will have validated their value proposition, prototyped a solution, put together a business plan and proposed a concrete roll-out plan.

Fostering the expression of talent, the development of individual and collective expertise, and employee satisfaction and retention, “Groupama Innov’Camp” won four awards in 2023:  in the HR Innovation Awards (Trophées de l’Innovation RH), in the “Large-scale HR Project” category; the “HR & Business Award” of the 2023 ANDRH Grand Prix; in the Managerial Innovation category of the 2023 Argus d’Or; and the Special Jury Prize in the RHD Strategist Grand Prix organised by the UDAP (Union des Directeurs de l’Assurance et de la Protection sociale).

Nicolas Desse for the Elus 3.0 project (2019 Bootcamp), Maxime André for the climate risks app (2023 Bootcamp) and Aurélien Bigueure for the Low-Carbon Label borrower’s insurance offering talk about their respective experiences in the Bootcamp. 

N.D: In 2019, our initial idea was to build a library of good practices in order to promote exchanges and mutual inspiration between the mutualist elected members of our local mutuals throughout the region. The Bootcamp allowed us to better understand this project and set off immediately in the right direction: to invent a digital system accessible to all elected members, based on an existing app from a regional mutual, namely “Elus 3.0”. 

The exchanges with the promoters of the system and with our mentors, some of whom came from external companies, were decisive on another key point: understanding that the success of the project would be 20% linked to the tool itself and 80% to its promotion! Creating a tool is good, but it is essential to think up a promotion and value creation approach so that people will appropriate it and use it. And here again the Bootcamp was very useful. For disseminating best practices, we started out with the idea of dedicated forums and with the benefit of good advice we finally chose to use the existing social networks and Groupama bodies. That is the Bootcamp’s strength: asking the right questions, getting set straight if you go down the wrong track, racking your brains! If we hadn’t gone through the Bootcamp, I think we would have remained too focused on the tool, without integrating the need to find solutions to bring it alive in time.

At the end of the Bootcamp, we presented our project in an oral exam. This was a significant moment! At the end of this pitch, we had our specifications. Since then, the app has been considerably enhanced. Beyond the library of good practices – 420 of these are currently available on all subjects – it makes it possible to organise bodies at local or national level and offers mutualist elected members numerous functionalities for keeping up with the Group’s news, accessing their documents, enriching their skills through online training etc. 

The Bootcamp was both a great people-centred adventure and a live wire for energising our project and bringing it to maturity! It is the reason that Elus 3.0 has become the essential tool in the promotion of mutualist elected members. The app is used by 8,000 of them on a daily basis. Many opportunities for future developments are being explored. The tool gets better with user feedback!

M.A: The goal of the project is to support farmers in their decision-making in order to reduce their exposure to climate risks for their crops. 

By sharing insights and projections derived from data recorded by Groupama in crop insurance since the 2000s, the app would make it possible to identify the risks on a concrete and factual basis and to offer suggestions. A first phase of this concept was rewarded in 2021 with First Prize in the “Varenne de l’Eau” Hackathon¹. 

It was then selected by the Groupama Group Executive Committee to be included in the fifth season of Groupama Innov’Camp in 2023. The eight-week process allowed us to explore fresh possibilities around the initial ambition. We came out of it with a frameworked concept proposal. One of the strengths of the Bootcamp is that it gave us immediate access, without having to go through any formalities, to various players in the agricultural world (farmers, trade union leaders etc.). We conducted forty interviews in order to understand their expectations before submitting our concept in the form of drawings and models. As these discussions progressed, the idea matured and came into focus and in June 2023 we were able to arrive at a conceptual prototype.

Another advantage of the Bootcamp system is the opportunity that it gives us to isolate ourselves from the hubbub of everyday life, within a nursery for start-ups, and to remove ourselves from our operational tasks for two days a week over eight weeks in order to concentrate entirely on the development of the idea. 

We also benefited from the “Talents” training module, which accelerates the process of team members getting to know each other and makes it possible to work together in a fluid, convivial and efficient way. Finally, of course, the Bootcamp is a fantastic lever for giving visibility to an innovative idea, at the highest level of the business, for bringing it to fruition and providing it with resources!

Since the end of the Bootcamp, the project has been continuing. We have developed the initial functionalities of the app in Proof-of-Concept form, and have entered the test phase with players in the agricultural world for validation (or not) of the concept.

A. B: As a reminder, France created the Low-Carbon Label in 2019 in order to oversee and promote low-carbon projects. Project developers commit themselves for five years, with quantified carbon storage or non-emission targets. They receive economic support from a financing company, which invests in the project in order to obtain carbon credits that will offset its greenhouse-gas emissions. Carbon offsetting operators, such as Stock CO₂, set up and label the project and put project developers and financing companies in touch with each other. 

To support this transition in the forestry sector, Groupama Forêts Assurances partnered with Stock CO₂ to create, in 2022, an innovative reforestation insurance product that protects young plantations against several hazards, including drought and flooding. 

We also wanted to provide a product to secure carbon offsetting projects in agriculture because we strongly believe that supporting our farmers in their transition to more sustainable practices is essential for the future of our planet. This is this project that was included in the Bootcamp in 2022 (fourth season). The multidisciplinarity of our team, the support of our mentors, the acceleration methods, the interviews with experts from the agricultural world, having direct contact with Groupama’s decision-makers – all of this enabled us to succeed quickly. By shaking up our initial certainties and helping us prioritise and frame our project. 

We wanted to create an insurance offering accompanied by a service offering, and the Bootcamp allowed us to realise that we had to focus on the insurance offering first. We also decided to design a personal insurance product, to protect the farmer, rather than a non-life insurance product covering his working tool. And among the three avenues identified for this offering, the answers obtained from the business lines concerned within the Group led us to adopt the idea of a “borrower type” insurance product designed with Groupama Gan Vie. 

At the end of the Bootcamp, the concept was completed and the economic model was identified.  This novel solution makes it possible to ensure the financing of a low-carbon project in the event of disability, loss of total autonomy or death of the farmer, for the duration of the project (five years).  This is both reassuring for the farmer, who knows that his efforts and investments are secure, and for the financing company, which knows that it will receive its carbon credits. After the Bootcamp, we carried out a feasibility study and then created the offering, which was launched in December 2023. The insurance is now directly integrated into the agricultural carbon offsetting projects labelled by Stock CO2.  This solution gives confidence to financing companies wishing to engage in Low-Carbon projects and supports our members in their transition. 

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