Two years in Innovation with Liberty IT
I recently had my two year ‘work-versary’ in Liberty IT and thought I’d write this, as much to help me gain some perspective over the last two years as to give others an insight into what it’s like working in a full-time innovation team.
Which is a happy coincidence as my team is hiring! Dublin-based roles here and Belfast here!
So, without turning it into a memoir:
Where have I been working?
The “Incubator” innovation team in Liberty IT, a tech company which is a subsidiary of Liberty Mutual, the Fortune 100 global insurance group. We’re based in Dublin & Belfast, Ireland, and Liberty Mutual’s HQ is in Boston.
What do we do
We explore emerging technology to see is there business value, by:
- working with business partners and customers to ideate, design, build and test emerging-technology proof of concepts.
- research & evaluate new technologies
The emphasis is on business value, so not so much playing with the latest toys, as relentlessly exploring new technology to solve business problems and making a difference in the lives of our customers.
This is our typical workflow:
where we are heavily involved from ideation through to the proof-of-concept stage, at which stage we try to partner with other areas to transition and scale the work.
How big is the team?
When I joined just over 2 years ago (after several years in the Innovation team of Allied Irish Banks), I was the fourth team-member. We’re now at about 20 and we’re still hiring.
What tech do we use
One the best things about working in an innovation team is the variety of projects and technologies. I’ve worked on:
- Chatbots – both text and voice based
- Audio Transcription
- Object detection & classification
- Augmented Reality
- Virtual Reality
- IoT
- Customer facing apps & webapps
- Backend services
and more. No blockchain of course, remember I said it’s all about business value ;-)
I’ve used:
- JS, Swift, Java, Node, React, Angular, Unity, iOS, Android, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Twilio and more!
More importantly however than the tech is the variety of business areas and customers that we deal with, which keeps the job interesting. Technology is the means, but the end is adding value; of coming up with solutions to interesting problems for real people whose lives it will impact for the better.
Ownership of entire lifecycle
One of the main differences between innovation teams and a lot of mainstream engineering teams is that we usually have much more control over and responsibility for projects, and of more of the project stages.
This is because we tend to work as closely with our business customers as possible, on new products or services that may not be fully defined or understood yet.
We’re currently building a webapp (for what I can’t say, it’s confidential!); my team carried out research, created the initial designs, built it from scratch, partnered with user researchers to test it with customers in the field, and have worked closely with our business partners on design, content and functionality throughout.
Some engineers may prefer doing tasks solely assigned by their products owners, leaving them to focusing mainly on the tech. I however prefer being heavily involved in what those tasks are, why we’re doing them, and the best designs to implement them.
Ignite Hackathon
I have to mention the Ignite 24 hour hackathon that I’ve participated in twice since joining Liberty — the overnight event in Liberty Mutual’s HQ in Boston where almost 300 employees from across the organisation work on new ideas. The sheer scale and investment of the competition is a great sign that innovation is important to the company, and the two events have been amongst the most fun I’ve had in any job. They were also a great way to meet more people, from both the Irish and U.S. offices.
Tech for Good
Over the last two years, working in the Incubator has allowed me to do a lot of socially responsible work – such as:
- Giving numerous talks on tech and the future to schools and universities
- Liberty IT is now the sponsor of the Tech for Good Dublin community; I help out each month at the meetups and I built & maintain the website.
- Assisted at TU Dublin Blanchardstown Coding4Girls summer camp the last two years.
- Ran a human-centred design workshop for librarians! Libraries are a lot more interesting than you may think!
- Created and open-sourced an Augmented Reality game, for the Coder Dojo Coolest Projects.
- We’re currently building an app & website for the Inner City Helping Homeless charity in Dublin.
I’ve also had the chance to speak at conferences, attend others, in Ireland and internationally. Like when I realised I was getting paid to watch an astronaut sing David Bowie:
The team’s number one focus is always delivery of value, but I’ve had the opportunity to do much more than just office work.
The people
It’s a cliché but the best thing about the Incubator is the people – skilled, friendly and curious, they are all great to work and explore with. We completely adhere to the unofficial “no brilliant jerks” rule; we operate on the cutting edge of tech but try to make it as good a working environment as possible.
We also get to work with skilled and enthusiastic teams in the U.S. and elsewhere. Liberty Mutual is an old company but is incredibly interested in innovation and improving – having business support for innovation is essential.
What could we do better?
I wrote a post earlier this year “Perpetual dissatisfaction with who we are”, basically about how I’m never happy with progress and always want to do more.
In the Incubator I’m no different – I always think we can improve what we do and how we do it. The beauty is though that everyone has a say in how we improve, it’s an open team where everyone’s opinions are valued and listened to. As Sam, the boss, said this week, if everyone is agreeing about something then he knows he has a problem.
What’s Next
Our team is continuing to expand, which is giving us capacity to help more business teams in more areas — further widening the scope and variety of the technologies and solutions that we work on.
If you’re interested in working with this amazing team, then check out these: Dublin-based roles here and Belfast here!
If you’ve any thoughts or comments, let me know below or you can get me onTwitter or LinkedIn. Check out Liberty IT here. Thanks, Andy
