At sales enablement company Seismic, a six-person team of engineers is operating differently than the rest of the organization. They are working with more uncertainty and fewer rules, and their mandate is to fail fast.
Carefully staffed with the company’s most forward-thinking “10x engineers”—a common term for those who deliver far more value than their peers—this incubation team is building AI products for Seismic’s customers and guiding its internal workforce. For example, they launched an agent to create presentations using content from approved sources and a tool for role-playing sales conversations. Most important, however, they are not just trying to push the technological edge but are laser-focused on specific use cases that will benefit the business. They are also accountable for the success of every product they create.
When generative AI launched the new AI boom, Seismic realized the technology would have to drive both the company’s innovation priorities as well as how it operates internally, according to Krish Mantripragada, the company’s chief technology and product officer.
“So under that sort of strategy, incubation is smack in the middle of it,” he said.
The incubation team is one of Seismic’s five AI pillars, and it’s the one the company especially credits with driving the velocity of its AI transformation. Since forming the team, Seismic said it saw products built with AI go to market two to three times as fast as non-AI products.
