Life at the Crossroads of Business and Engineering
To thrive in today’s digital economy, businesses need solutions that solve real-world problems and create shared value in novel ways.
In a recent episode of the Business, Innovation and Technology podcast, Matthew Sinclair, Partner and VP of Engineering at BCG Digital Ventures (BCGDV), joined host Jordan Rogers-Smith, Solutions Engineering Lead for Global Agencies at Meta, and Jean-Marie Ferdègue, Director of Solutions Engineering for Gaming at Meta, to offer a framework for fostering a culture of innovation.
In the episode, Matthew, Jean-Marie, and Jordan discussed what really drives innovation at work, including three major drivers: multidisciplinary teams, finding the right talent, and psychological safety in the workplace.
First, a look at disruptive innovation.
Typically, innovation is presumed to come easily for small and nimble startups or big and resourceful corporations, but BCGDV plays in an interesting space when it comes to innovation.
Matthew explains that BCGDV takes the “hack-and-hustle of the startup world” and combines it with the unique corporate assets of its partners to build Ventures at a velocity that is “simply unattainable” had they been working on their own. He says there are three key ingredients needed for this to happen:
● A methodology to identify and validate ideas that are worth pursuing.
● People who know how to work together in multidisciplinary product, engineering, and design teams.
● Access to the unique assets of corporate partners that give the Venture advantages which are otherwise unavailable.
“When you combine these three elements, you end up unlocking a pretty powerful engine room for disruptive innovation that would otherwise be quite difficult for corporates to access by themselves,” shares Matthew.
Building Multidisciplinary Teams.
Matthew describes BCGDV as “people-driven.” Ideas are nothing without people bringing them to life. At BCGDV, it starts with outstanding engineers, but the real key to success is the multidisciplinary team. BCGDV is comprised of seven cohorts: strategic design, product management, engineering, venture architecture, experience design, growth architecture, and internal operations.
At BCGDV, the team takes a design thinking approach to innovation. Each new venture is considered based on: desirability (do people want it?); feasibility (will it work?); and viability (can we generate value?). Engineering plays a significant role in determining feasibility by exploring technologies or combinations of technologies that might not be apparent to other stakeholders. They complement a designer’s instinct to understand user motivations and uncover latent frictions, and a businessperson’s understanding of market demands and sales targets. Innovation happens when these groups’ insights align with the client’s needs and generate value for end-users, clients, and BCGDV.
BCGDV’s business model also allows for diverse, cross-functional teams by creating a new team for every new venture. BCGDV has launched ventures in a variety of industries, from healthcare and insurance to logistics to household budgeting, both inside and outside the firewalls of its corporate partners. People build skills across multiple types of projects, and then carry that expertise from one venture to the next.
Meta’s approach to creating diverse teams is similar, though they view innovation through a slightly different lens. Innovation within the Solutions Engineering Team is impact-driven. This focus on impact is the common thread that aligns priorities across skill sets within a team. Jean-Marie describes it as the X Effect. The Solutions Engineering Department builds multidisciplinary teams by bringing together people with a variety of skill sets from throughout the Meta organization. Collaboration within project teams keeps the focus on impact, prevents siloes, and keeps things lean.
Finding the Right Talent.
BCGDV and Meta both build cross-functional teams through intentional recruitment. They seek the right talent in other departments within their respective organizations or through external hiring. Diversity of skills and experiences is critical for both companies, though they have different strategies for identifying the best candidates for the job.
At Meta, recruiters and hiring managers look for what Jean-Marie describes as “a strong bias toward impact.” External hires are trained on the concept from the beginning. Measurable impact is a primary metric in the performance review process. The ability to work collaboratively and achieve impact through strategic solutions is paramount. The Solutions Engineering Department creates diverse teams by recruiting talent (internal or external) based on necessary skill sets, even if candidates do not have direct experience with the product or project. This focus on diversity also applies to solutions engineers within project teams — coders with unique skills and experiences help facilitate the creative exploration of complex business problems and potential impacts.
BCGDV seeks the same diversity of talent as Meta. Diversity of talent is already built into BCGDV’s strategy of building brand new teams for every venture. But there are inherent challenges in recruiting the right kind of talent from outside the company. Matthew explains two somewhat oxymoronic terms BCGDV uses when identifying potential candidates: deep generalists and aspirational entrepreneurs.
● Deep generalists are like Kent Beck’s Paint Drip People. In short, as you draw a paintbrush across a canvas, drips will eventually form and roll down the canvas. Some drips will last longer than others. Eventually one will stop, and another will form. Throughout their career, an engineer will dip into various areas of expertise, from new industries to new programming languages.
● Aspirational entrepreneurs are those candidates who have a career path in mind and are eager to gain experience and move forward. For example, if an employee hopes to become a CTO one day, BCGDV provides opportunities to act as the equivalent of a CTO on projects outside the client partner’s corporate firewall. In other contexts where we work inside the corporate partner’s firewall, engineers can act as the technical leader. They also provide career paths for entry-level associates to move up through the organization. BCGDV is also very supportive of engineers choosing to join the large number of alumni that have gone on to do their own thing outside BCGDV.
Ensuring Psychological Safety.
Jean-Marie and Matthew agree that innovative ideas emerge independent of factors like company size, age, or industry. While there are many similarities and differences between how Meta’s Solutions Engineering Team and BCGDV’s engineers approach innovation, they share one foundational principle: innovation cannot move forward without psychological safety for every team member.
In Jean-Marie’s experience, innovation requires a group of people who can safely voice their ideas. The best ideas come from open conversation and feedback. For many, this is a significant challenge. It requires people to let their guard down. Many of us keep ideas close to the chest to protect ourselves from judgment, keep the peace between colleagues, or avoid trying and failing. Psychological safety on project teams drives innovation by redirecting the focus from protecting oneself to protecting the problem-solving process.
At BCGDV, Matthew builds psychological safety through what he calls “failure fitness.” Every time someone goes to the gym, it gets a little easier. Failure fitness is the same idea. Over time, failure gets easier as team members stop internalizing it as a personal weakness and grow more comfortable embracing failure as a part of the process. Matthew lives by example by being open and transparent about his own failures and encouraging his team members to get as comfortable as they can with failing.
Listen to the full episode here and keep up with the latest from Meta’s Solutions Engineering Team on Medium.
Connect with Matthew Sinclair on LinkedIn and Twitter @MatthewSinclair.
Connect with podcast host Jordan Rogers-Smith on LinkedIn and connect with Jean-Marie Ferdègue on LinkedIn.
Want to find out more? Start the conversation with BCGDV.
