A storygraph™ series. Innovating Aon's place in the future.
Aon decides which fits this moment. The deck — like the work — branches here.
Aon does not need another report telling it what 2030 might look like.
It needs the work that turns foresight into product. Ethnography that reaches the truth a survey can't. Scenarios its leadership can step inside. Films that travel beyond the boardroom.
And, on the far side of all of that — the innovation outputs that justify the journey.
This proposal describes how that work gets done. By c3t. With storylab. On Aon's behalf.
What Aon brings to market.
New voluntary benefit constructs — modular, life-stage, agentically delivered. Built for the buyer Aon will be selling to in 2030, not 2026.
How Aon delivers value.
Reimagined advisory motions, broker enablement, and CHRO experience design — all built around the integration layer Aon will need to own or rent.
Where Aon plays the long game.
Category-shaping bets — infrastructure positions, AI-native trust architecture, ICHRA and portable benefits plays sequenced for compounding advantage.
An honest mirror, drawn in the language of the category.
We map Aon's current capabilities, market posture, and narrative position against the voluntary benefits landscape as it stands. Not what Aon says. What the market sees. We pressure-test c3t's existing 21-signal framework against Aon's specific footprint, identifying which signals are most consequential to Aon's 2030 trajectory and which are noise.
The desk work that earns the right to ask new questions.
Industry reports, regulatory tracking, competitor moves, adjacent-sector analogs. We pressure-test the read-ahead's 21 signals against the latest published evidence and identify what's emergent, what's settled, and what is not yet on the page. The output is not a literature review. It is a sharpened set of hypotheses that determine where the deeper research has to go to be worth the field cost.
Aon's research investment becomes Aon's owned media.
storygraphs™ — storylab's ethnographic protocol — applied to Aon's leadership, employer clients, and end-members. Audio-recorded, transcribed, and synthesized into the field intelligence that fuels every scenario downstream. Optional add-on: cinematographic capture — real lighting, real audio, two-camera coverage, releases designed for downstream use from interview one. When elected, the same fieldwork that produces strategic insight also produces a hero thought-leadership film, short cuts for distribution, and a library of clean interview moments. Aon owns the assets either way.
Signals become tensions. Tensions become the architecture of the future.
We translate the research into narrative tensions — the polarity-mapped, story-shaped insights that explain why each scenario emerges. This is storylab's Narrative 201 framework applied to Aon's specific context. Without this layer, scenarios are trend extrapolation; with it, they become decisions. Done as a working session with Aon leadership, not as a delivered document.
Time-projected, signal-anchored, Aon-specific.
Building on c3t's 2x2 scenario architecture from the read-ahead, we develop an enriched scenario set with narrative depth — what is plausible, what is possible, and where the gap between them is most strategically interesting for Aon. Each scenario is given the architecture it needs to become a film in Stage 6: stakes, characters, decision points, plausible outcomes.
storygraphs™ — interactive scenarios where leadership steps inside the future.
Each scenario is built as a story — Aon as the central character, navigating real strategic decisions under signal-anchored futures. Methodology pioneered by storylab in Philip Morris International's long-horizon scenario work; refined into the storygraph™ format. The output is not a deck. It is an interactive cinematic experience with branching outcomes that Aon's leadership can play, replay, and use as a thinking tool long after delivery.
Innovation sprint methodology, with the scenarios as creative provocations.
Aon's leadership in the room. The storygraphs™ as live provocation. storylab's design thinking toolkit — Polarity Mapping, Killing Assumptions, Empathy Mapping, the OI/FAST exercises from the storylab Parsons curriculum. The job is to convert scenario insight into specific innovation bets. Not idea-generation for its own sake. Decision-shaped, capability-aware, sequenced for compounding advantage.
The 'one big swing' from the read-ahead, made tangible.
We translate the prioritized concepts into investment-grade innovation bets — concrete, sequenced, capability-aware. Each output carries a strategic rationale, a capability requirement, a competitive read, and a sequencing logic. The deliverable is the document that Aon's leadership takes into the next board cycle, the next budget, the next roadmap. The path arrives where it was always going.
An honest mirror, drawn fast.
Capabilities audit, signal validation against Aon's footprint, secondary research synthesis. The week ends with a sharpened set of hypotheses that determine where the deeper field research has to go to be worth the cost.
Ethnography as content infrastructure, in motion.
Focused ethnographic interviews, audio-recorded and synthesized fast for the foresight work that follows. Optional add-on: cinematographic capture for downstream production — hero footage banked, ready to become Aon's owned media.
Signals become tensions. Tensions become decisions.
Polarity mapping with Aon leadership. Scenario architecture refined and selected for build. Done as a working session, not as a delivered document — Aon co-authors the tensions that shape the futures.
Aon as protagonist, navigating signal-anchored futures.
A baker's dozen of storygraphs™ — branchable, replayable, hosted. Structurally similar to the prototype in this deck, but each one built deeper and richer, buoyed by the ethnographic research from Stages 1–5. Aon's leadership steps inside thirteen different futures and rehearses the calls each one demands.
The Sprint is not the Engagement at half. It is a different shape of work.
Sprint workshop with Aon leadership. Concept portfolio synthesized from the scenario insights. Roadmap drafted. Build-phase proposal embedded in the close. For organizations ready to commit before they expand.
Built for this proposal. Playable now.
Aon for Eons is a storygraph™ series — cinematic scenario planning where Aon is the protagonist, navigating signal-anchored futures. The prototype shown here, Efficiency Harvest 2030, is the first scenario built. The full engagement builds a baker's dozen.
Opens in a new tab · 7–9 minutes per playthrough · Branching, replayable.
Aon decides which fits this moment.
20+ years leading transformation programmes across UK, EU, and North America. Operating-model design at scale. Global health & benefits practice lead. The architect of how the work delivers.
Parsons-trained Strategic Designer applying future-scenario methods to regulated finance. COO/CPO of the world's first FCA-regulated fintech. US Army Captain, Bronze Star recipient. Designed the Aon read-ahead.
Narrative strategist and scenario planner. Two decades translating signals into protagonist-led futures across PMI, KSA, Petronas, BBVA, Sinch, GHD, American Family, and the UN. Author of the storygraph™ method. Lectures on strategic design at Parsons.