The Committed Innovator: Why innovation competitions work

[MUSIC] Initially, we were actually two teams, both working on solutions in the agentic space already. And when we both got selected for the finals, the Innovation Olympics Committee decided to put us together to challenge us and see how much more innovation we can bring together. Welcome to the committed innovator, where experienced innovators and unsung heroes share their triumphs and trials with our host, Eric Ruff. We'll uncover the real stories behind successful innovations and take you behind the scenes with the leaders developing innovative new technologies and business models to unlock long-term growth. Welcome back to another episode of the committed innovator. Today we'll be highlighting and featuring one of the winning teams from McKinsey and Company's innovation competition. For those of you not familiar with the innovation competition, every year McKinsey and Company has a call for the best business ideas, whether they come from working with clients, working with external stakeholders, or just something that a team sitting in a team room has devised when they're working together. These ideas get put through multiple rounds of evaluation, testing, and pitching, all to come to a grand finale, where one team is selected as the future potential business idea for the firm. We're really, really excited to have the winning team. Why don't you all introduce yourselves and then we'll get going. Hi, I'm Iris. I'm from Belgium. I'm a product manager at Quantum Black Labs and also I've been with the firm for six years, previously as in Coal Saltzont as well. Hi, I'm John Lolland, an engineering lead within Black Labs. I've been with the firm for about nearly six years now. I'm Suryansh Zoni and I'm a senior data scientist, based out of the Atlanta Office in USA. I belong to the LSA at MIT McKenzie, which is a part of the agent, and we have a suggestion called Agent Ours. And that's the expertise I bring in, like the how to build agents at scale. So the first couple things I'm sure everyone has noticed is number one, you're from all over the world. This team is assembled from basically every corner of the firm. And the second is you're not all consultants. You mentioned Quantum Black, which is our technology arm. You mentioned product specialists. This is a very unique kind of team, probably for most people who think they're familiar with what McKenzie and company does. To get things started, John, why don't you tell us a little bit about this winning idea? Yeah, so we're bringing McKenzie Intelligence and connecting that to agents to bring it to our clients. McKenzie Intelligence being the domain knowledge and the expertise that all our talented colleagues have leveraged from working with clients over the past many years. So how did you come up with that? So we started out by taking the machine learning models that Quantum Black, the AI hub within McKenzie, is most known for. We took those and made them accessible to other systems first. And then as things have changed within the world, and agents and agentic solutions have become such a huge part of our work. We've now looked at how we could leverage that as well and bring those models to agents. So how did this team come together, given that you're from all over the world? That was an interesting story because initially we were actually two teams, both working on solutions in the agentic space already. So what was that like having two teams that hadn't worked together? All of a sudden find themselves on the same team competing for the finals across the entire firm. That was very exciting actually, but also challenging. So we had to still rethink how we bring together both our innovations and create a OnePlus 1AQ3 scenario. Yeah, so it was actually also really fun because we got to dive deeper into the agent first innovation as well and really know more about their expertise and what they've been doing as well as what our team's been doing and then figure out how we could bring both combinations or both innovations together. It was also super fun to work with Suriange as a data scientist and his colleague Ryan as a domain expert with even different profiles than what our team in Quantum Black works on a day-to-day basis. So Suriange, what was it like giving you on the other team coming and joining with John and Iris and their squad to come up with this sort of best of McKinsey group? It was like a very wonderful experience I would say in short. Basically first teams who are competing with each other and now we are working together to achieve what was a great experience in Sean. So tell us a little bit about what is this agent first, agent consultant as an agent kind of solution look like. What does it look like when you bring it to a client? Yeah, to answer that question, what is agent words? I will begin from there first. Think of agent words as a combination or a collection of multiple agents that are super powerful of doing a task that would require lot of McKinsey consultants to do in some time. That's the efficiency gain and the impact we are I'm talking about now. And the part of it is the clinical trial explorer for example. And think of the clinical trial explorer as like a massive agentic automation of multi agent workflow which can automate the data analysis for the clinical trials at scale. That's like one example and then working with the team there like our counter pass like we realized how we can meld essentially all the components from the side with our site to make even a much more concrete and comprehensive solution which will impact client sets scale. So you gave a really interesting client example for a pharmaceutical company discovering new drugs. Whether it's that or any other use case for a different organization, how do you know if the agents are going to be as good as the humans that McKinsey would typically deploy for the same kind of work? So we're not saying agents would be as good but I would say agent could empower the people who are on the field and when enable them to achieve outcomes in a shorter and a much more efficient way which will generate a huge impact. So John you're part of Quantum Black. I mean you've been in the machine learning AI space for a long long time with the rest of your colleagues. How are you seeing this sort of shift to agents and what does that do for how we serve clients? I think it's a super fast moving world that we're that we're working in at the moment. All of our work and for many of our teams is focused on agents at the moment. I think a lot of our clients are just trying to figure out they understand what they're trying to understand how agents work. They're trying to understand how it really can be applied in in useful use cases within their system. So that's where we come in. We're spending a lot of our time exploring how we can best leverage them and do other things with them. But then also how we can then turn the demos and some of the POCs and the great videos that we all see online. How we can turn those into impactful solutions that we can bring to our organizations. So talk a little bit about the process. So we had two teams developing these world class solutions, having tested them in some clients. What was the process to actually bring things together into one solution on behalf of the firm and pitch it? So are both solutions already had a very distinctive positioning, I would say, the solution that we build on the Quantum Black site has a bit more of a horizontal positioning where we build technology that will enable many teams across practices at McKinsey and companies. So whether that be life sciences or marketing and sales or operations, whereas on the agent first team site they already build applications very targeted towards life sciences organizations and really bringing value for them. So putting both together really enabled us to create a full package. So given that you're active and fully utilized members of the firm, how did you find the time to work on this idea? Where did it come from? Did you get the support? How did you carve out sufficient space to come together as a team and develop something so outstanding? So the main problem over here, essentially the first one that we tried to solve was how to automate a clinical trial data analysis that scale. And that's where we brought in multiple expertise, essentially, where we had like a first solution built off from scratch. And then we decided to how we can combine it with the power of the other team to make it even more comprehensive solution at scale that can deliver the results. And in fact, yes. Yeah, it was indeed an effort on top of our daily jobs and daily responsibilities, which sometimes indeed asked a bit much of us. But since it was so related to our product already of what we were working on, it was actually useful, additional work for us to work on. And it helped us generally in our product roadmap and strategy as well. Yeah, I think we were looking for opportunities to radiate our idea amongst the firm and find other opportunities to work with clients. So we felt that this could be a good opportunity, which turned out to get more exposure from senior leaders. So this isn't really a competition for just ideas and concepts. This is a competition for real businesses that can scale and have evidence that they're already working with clients. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. It's also a chance for teams to come together and work in new ways. What was that like and what was the most exciting part about becoming part of this team? What I'm really proud of of our team is the diversity. We have different roles, engineers, knowledge experts and also integrative consultants from across geographies as well as different genera, male and female colleagues in our team, which makes it even more exciting to bring the full diversity of the firm to this competition. Do you think it was a better team because of the level of diversity on it? I definitely like to think so. Yes. 100% definitely. I think the number of people we had involved, the collaboration and all the different ideas and perspectives you get from that level of diversity, I think is what brought us through the rounds and got us through through the final. For my perspective, the team was quite wonderful. The vibes were very positive from everybody on the team. There wasn't any time where we didn't have confidence that we were to win. We always had the confidence that we were going to win this competition and the collaboration was quite a memory. It was quite good. How did you come together to create the winning pitch? What was that like to present in front of basically the most senior leaders of the firm? That was very interesting because actually it was the first time the full team met in real life. We had some dry runs before virtually, but it was actually the first time in New York that we met each other in person. That was a very fun experience. We had to do still some dry runs in New York. It was daunting but also exciting. We were basically doing a sharp time or dragon's den pitch to this group of very senior folks from the firm. We felt like we tried to deliver the message and get it across as well as we could do. And to clarify for our listeners, effectively teams find themselves, submit an idea. Those go through at least three rounds of early evaluation with partners and senior partners from different regions and different functional expertise or sector expertise from the firm to eventually get to the top five teams that get to present to the firm leadership and then there's a winner. This to dimensionize the number of things you had to go through to get to that final pitch was impressive nonetheless. Let's talk a little bit about the role of the Innovation Olympics within McKinsey since your participants. Some kind of mechanism like this lifts out the best ideas from the bottom and surfaces to get funded and resources to scale. I think these sort of opportunities that we get is quite interesting and basically it enables us to think outside the box and then maybe execute the idea as well if our idea is concrete and innovative. If our organization's performance is kind of activity to empower the people, it is quite an experience which helps them to grow in the industry and become recognized for what they have and what ideas to have. So it enforces essentially like people to think more that yes, there's a reward of thinking outside the box. Yeah and adding on that, I think our team actually was a great case showing that the Innovation Olympics really succeed in bringing a bottom up innovation I would say because our team was not necessarily a very big team. It was rather a small team but yet we still made it to the finals and actually won. So it really shows that any team with any capabilities or size can actually bring up their ideas and get the biggest sponsorship in the firm in McKinsey. I think it's hugely important as well because a lot of the great ideas you're going to have in an organization are going to be from those people who are working very closely with clients on a day to day basis and they're going to have these ideas and this mechanism to surface those ideas, not just surface them but celebrate them and provide like the impetus and the funding to turn them into something real is incredible. What was the most surprising thing about the competition as you went through it? We got through it. That's totally fair, absolutely. You won. That's that anyone would be excited about that. What was surprising to me was the level of sponsorship and visibility. So the level of jury members maybe was really the top of the firm that all took out time of their calendar to be there and guide us and pay attention to our innovations. That was definitely very surprising to us. Getting our awards from Bob, our global managing partner was definitely one of the highlights of my career and will be for a long time. I still remember when I joined the firm, I saw Bob on a video on like an intro video to the firm on orientation and I was thinking when will I meet him in person? Is there will there ever get an opportunity to be next to him? And when it actually happened in reality when I'm not just Bob, I met all the senior leadership across the world. That experience was quite like exhilarating actually. It was quite, I wouldn't consider, even though I'm a senior but I'm a junior in the industry, being a junior and then experiencing all these events was quite, and memory that I believe this word. That was the hope that we would find the best ideas and be that you would get a chance to get coached and apprenticed and interact with the very, very top leaders from around the world of the firm. So I'm glad to see that that was a meaningful part of the experience. And Bob does really take the time and invest the effort to participate throughout and of course make sure that he gives out the winning trophies at the end. What else did you find inspiring or exciting about participating? I think seeing the level of the quality of the ideas from all the teams, we saw lots of the teams through the rounds, but all of those that reach the final are incredible solutions in their own right. Some dedicated to specific practices or specific sections of an organisation but also some more broad solutions. But all of them are just incredible ideas and hugely talented teams working on them. So what's next for all of you? You've won the competition, you have some funding and support, take your ideas. I know your practices are really excited about the potential for changing the way that the firm serves its clients using the technology platforms you've had. What's next for you all as you bring this forward? Maybe to think about like a new idea and how we can take our current expertise that we have built across the past six months on agents, ML and the coq and the combination of two to make even a more innovative and a unique solution that we can come up with. The unique capability by combining our forces and that actually generating an impact. Yeah and also of course scaling our innovation and our use cases across many clients and many practices. I think seeing it actually used in organisations is really an important accomplishment and value driver for us and our innovation. Really our team is now also looking more into the concept of skills developed by Anthropic which is something we're exploring and seeing how it could provide value for our clients as well. Yeah I'm a big fan of skills. I think it's a very interesting approach to building capabilities and virtualising knowledge and workflows. So during the competition did the judges challenge you on something that really helped push your thinking and make your idea better? The judges challenged us to make our pitch really practical and tangible. So not to stay too theoretical but really make it real and bring in client examples and translate it to what will this mean for our clients. So they're really pushing to be practical and pragmatic and ensure that it wasn't just an idea. It was something that you could really imagine being deployed in a client or even perhaps outside the firm as well. Exactly. One question that came up that time was essentially like how are we making sure the output quality from these agents are concrete and that actually I mean we do we have already implemented those things for sure but that helped us frame the answer even better that yes when people ask these questions what possibly we can reply with and how better we can do it. So there was a real push to make sure this was a real idea that actually would become a business not just a concept that was on a bunch of PowerPoint pages. Exactly. And when did you think you might win or that you thought you might have some momentum that was carrying you to the next round of the competition? I think never even when we were walking up to get the metal we were still kind of in shock. I mean when we came to the last to say like when they were announcing the people who want like essentially like our team name came to the last essentially which was a winning team that's been in York. We are winning. So when the second team was announced I was really happy I'm like okay we have actually won even though I was new with no allowance. So even even when your name was announced it seemed it didn't seem believable that's that's part of the fun of a competition like this I guess. And what advice would you give others for next year if they're thinking about participating or even other organizations that don't have innovation competition? How would you advise them? For our colleagues, I would say definitely participate it and do take the time to think through the idea and the innovation because it will also help you just refine the work you're doing. Also, during the competition, we pivoted our value proposition or the core messages a few times throughout the round because it was over-duration of, I don't know, eight months or so and the agenteic world moved so fast that we also had to change our page or adapt our pitch to that. So through our colleagues, I would say keep flexible or keep questioning your own value prop and pitch as the innovation changes. There was a push as well to really think about the pitch and being able to distill your idea down. Even though maybe technically or your solution was really great, you had to be able to articulate it, bring it to the audience in a very short, I think we had three minutes or something in some of the early rounds to pitch this. So to be able to articulate that fast effectively and to have something compelling that would get you through to the next rounds as well. It was a great skill to push us to do that. Yeah, I want to take this idea even at the next level actually, maybe like how this would enable people at the firm. I think everybody has the spirit of being an entrepreneurial in some fashion in themselves. When you join this firm, like the idea is like how we can generate impact. Sometimes like we get stuck in the same process, but when we think outside the box and become an outlier altogether, by thinking of new ideas, that's where our true spirit comes out and that's what defines McKinsey actually in my opinion. Were you surprised at the level of support you got from all of our colleagues across the world, both in terms of creating the space for you to do this? Well, also in terms of helping you refine your idea and ensure that it was the best it could be. Yeah, absolutely. I think going back to your question around how would you advise external organizations to do something similar or how to do in the best way. I think the level of support and commitment from the senior leadership to support what you're doing, the sport you get from your team makes and your colleagues as well, is definitely something to replicate. I think that you could quite easily be a sort of internal competition. The ideas don't really go anywhere and it was, you know, people wouldn't want to do it in future times, but I think these experiences of meeting the managing partner, pitching to all this, some of that senior leadership. And then getting ongoing sponsorship and sort of accountability for that is incredible. And I think it makes it such a worthwhile enterprise. So if you could offer one piece of advice, we'll ask each one of you to future teams and or entrepreneurs and innovators in any large organization hoping to bring something of value to scale. What would it be? I think my takeaway, at least for myself, but then probably that also applies to others is to be bolder because this was very bold. We went out of our comfort zone and really believed in ourselves and our idea, which proved to be right. So now that's a takeaway for me to also more of my daily life and work life be even bolder and really go for it. I think what I've taken from it is finding the largest opportunity you can to radiate your idea and to get the most exposure from it. I think before I entered this, my expectations of how to interact amongst our colleagues in the firm and with clients was at a level that this has taken it just like far beyond that seeing the scale of the firm, the impact that has across multiple organizations. I think that's really of my eyes to how you can really do this differently. I guess other people in other organizations exploring the way that they can do the same thing and what opportunities they have to have access to the top people in their firm. The decision makers, I guess, who can give them the capabilities and enable their ideas to do this themselves. So from my perspective, like I always tell everybody, like there is a pattern that everybody follows and that pattern sometimes become deterministic approach and you are operating model. But when you think like an outlier, you become and be little bit stochastic in your thought process, you innovate. So to make it Chris, I say be stochastic in a deterministic environment and then you will become outlier and eventually succeed and get to the success. That's like I always say to everybody, think outside the box, regardless where you are. Given that you're winners, do you think you'll become mentors for future teams, aspiring to win? I would love to. That would give us a front-roce to the next innovations coming for the firm. Well, I hope you are. I hope you inspire many others. I hope you continue to be innovative entrepreneurs throughout the firm and wherever your careers may take you. I wanted to thank all of you for all the effort, hard work and of course congratulate you on your success and appreciate you taking the time out today to join us on the podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you. You do. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. You can find a transcript of this podcast at mckinsey.com/committedinnovator. And we really want to hear from you. Please email us your questions about innovation or suggestions for other entrepreneurs when we should invite to the show. Our email address is [email protected]. We look forward to having you join us again next time on the Committed Innovator. [BLANK_AUDIO]