Shift Magazine - Issue 1 2018 - 11

DITCH THE BOSS

IBM

At Zenuity, a joint venture between Volvo and Autoliv
focused on autonomous and advanced-safety software
systems, company direction is led by 55 project teams
of six to 10 employees who have the independence to set
budgets and priorities and pick their leaders - if they have
leaders at all. Every six weeks, teams can choose to reshuffle or otherwise change direction at a regular companywide meeting.
It's about "building a high level of flexibility," said Dennis Nobelius,
Zenuity CEO. "That creates nervousness in some employees, so you
need to attract someone that enjoys flexibility."
It's an effort to speed decision-making by empowering individual
project managers and engineers.

DO FIRST, ASK QUESTIONS LATER

"Our ﬁrst priority is to innovate and debate and make
decisions quickly," said Minyang Jiang, a project lead
at Ford Smart Mobility. "I pivot away from PowerPoint.
Create ﬁrst, critique second, document third."
Jiang, who is referred to inside the company as an
"intreprenuer," oversees GoRide, Ford's nonemergency medical transport service that launched last month in southeast Michigan in partnership with local health care operators. It directly competes with services
such as Uber Health and Lyft's collaboration with medical providers.

FOCUS ON IMPERFECT PROJECTS

Borrowing from the language of coders, some companies have shifted to rapid prototyping, bringing
products to market without a full set of features.
"It's like an assembly line that constantly ships
small updates," said Thom Brenner, vice president of
BMW's Business Line Connected Car. He oversaw the development
of new workflow processes at BMW's connected-car and digital
product research labs. Some features the automaker has introduced
include Spotify and Skype integration in the car.

BMW

Software engineers in BMW's Chicago oﬃces update their team's
agile development process, represented by sticky notes on the wall

BMW

Product experience sketches
at BMW's oﬃces in Chicago,
where engineers brainstorm
how users will interact with
services such as Skype and
Spotify in the car

DRAG THE REST OF THE
COMPANY ALONG

This workflow puts pressure on supporting actors
within the organization to quicken the pace as well. For
instance, BMW's legal team had to rethink contracting
of data and service providers because traditional supplier contracts were too detailed on project outcomes and didn't leave
room for growth.
"They are beeﬁng up their capabilities, looking at new business
models and new ways to negotiate," said Dieter May, senior vice president of BMW's Digital Products and Services.
Incorporating aspects such as legal and technical review of products
can be counterintuitive for enterprises attempting to quicken their pace,
but it could be crucial in developing a go-to-market strategy.
"Many ideas die after they build the ﬁrst product," said Stefan
Schumacher, a director of business development at IBM. The computer
company has teamed with Volkswagen in Germany to collaborate on
developing digital services as well as bringing them to market. "We're
providing business analysts and developers with the product owners.
We integrated legal and data privacy from the very beginning."

EMBRACE FAILURE

And if everything goes south, then you're doing it right.
Silicon Valley embraces failure in a way corporations
- apt to let unsuccessful products and services limp
along - may ﬁnd difﬁcult to stomach.
"If a product loses their momentum, Google is not
at all afraid to shut it down," said Berkeley's Coopersmith, citing
failed products such as Google Glass and a string of social media
attempts. In the auto industry, the safety implications of failed initiatives also underscore a wider culture that aims to get it right at
the outset.
Smart companies move executives into new roles where "you
may fail more often" but learn from those failures in future projects,
Coopersmith said.

may 2018 * shift

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Shift Magazine - Issue 1 2018