Interdisciplinary Understanding is Key For Success

Brad Feld and Fred Wilson both have had posts up recently about Dev Ops and Tech Ops.  Mastering both are vital to the startup, and the topics are confined to engineering.  Engineers salivate when they get to talk about dev and tech ops.

Brad and Fred are both geeks.  I use the term “geek” affectionately, because engineers are vital to innovation.  We would still be figuring out the wheel without them.

There is s flip side to engineering.  Without marketing and operations, companies fail as well.

Too often, businesspeople ignore the technical side of their business.  ”You build it, I’ll sell it.”.  The only technical stuff they like to look at is commission percentage and return on capital.  Engineers hate the businesspeople because they keep coming with ideas and mess with their processes.  Businesspeople seemingly come up with a constant punch list of tasks engineers see as unnecessary.

Engineers often think that if they build the next great mousetrap, people will pick it up and start buying.  I had an engineering roommate in college that said “If you want to market something, just throw two big boobs on it.  It will sell.”

Whenever I lecture at a big university, I always tell the business students to go to the engineering side of the campus and get friendly with them.  They need to understand and be able to communicate clearly to each other to build great stuff and change the world.  The reverse is true.  Engineers need to make friends with

If businesspeople need to understand Dev Ops and Tech Ops, what do engineers need to understand about the flip side to make their job more meaningful and efficient?  How can they develop some empathy for the front office?

I’d start with three things, one they already sort of get.

• First, supply chain management.   By having efficient supply chains companies can cut variance and WHIP, saving them working capital.  That’s called Operations.  Engineers love operations because it involves a lot of math.
• Second, I’d have a very good understanding of Coase Theorem.  Coase Theorem permeates the businesses of great companies, especially companies these days that have grown exponentially.  Coase also illustrates positive and negative externalities, and those can be important to understand in startups.
• Third, I’d know a lot about product life cycles, and sales cycles.  That will help guild future updates and innovation so engineers work hand in hand with sales teams and customers are serviced better.

This day and age doesn’t allow for specialization.  Vertically silo’ing yourself in one expertise leaves you vulnerable.  That market niche might go away through innovation.  It’s very important to be able to critically think, flexibly think and problem solve.  In doing so, sometimes it has to be done through the lens of a different discipline.

The other thing that happens is when you start to smash ideas together from different perspectives, the world is seen in a different light.  Picking up the pieces from that collision might create the next blow out business.

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