Bridging Viability, Desirability, and Social Good
Claire Marsh (MMM '20) turned to Northwestern's MMM program to understand how to bring business and design teams together. Now she's using that expertise to help launch new businesses as a senior product manager at BCG Digital Venture.
Claire Marsh (MMM '20) was a fresh college graduate when she made the leap to work for a social enterprise startup based out of a carport in Nicaragua. The digital-first company faced obstacles like any startup, though some challenges were more unusual, like power outages, flooding, and withstanding the noise of chickens being slaughtered next door by the local butcher.
"If you can focus through that," Marsh said, "you can focus through almost any challenge someone throws at you."
That is exactly what Marsh has done as she's witnessed the enormous opportunity gap and abundance of untapped talent that exists in the world. She's gone from that carport in Nicaragua, to translating between engineering and business teams in Kenya and the United States, to exploring new technology and finance opportunities in rural India. Today, she is a senior product manager at BCG Digital Ventures (BCGDV), where she helps corporations think and act like venture capitalists while helping build new businesses.
Prior to her current role, Marsh spent two years in Northwestern's MMM program. She had always been passionate about design, but she kept running into tension between design and business teams that prevented companies from growing and creating real impact. Marsh turned to MMM to understand how business and design could work together to propel an organization forward.
"I wanted to learn more about how I could bridge the tension and find that beautiful relationship between viability and desirability," Marsh said. "I wanted to know how to uncover a real need in the market — a real human pain point — and rather than sell a product to that pain point, create value that was worth paying for to really grow a business."
Marsh explained that BCGDV subscribes to the same attitude. She loves that the organization is need-focused, not app-focused, and has no interest in creating something that already exists. The desire is to understand what customers need and then create a product — or a business — to truly bring about change.
"Our methodology is focused on 'needs finding' in spaces where there are significant gaps in the market," Marsh said. "We attack the white space, rather than shy away and try to create another Uber for X. We are constantly pushing our corporate partners to look beyond what they already see in their world."
As senior product manager, Marsh is often described as the glue that keeps everything from design, business, and engineering together. Sometimes that means translating needs into solutions or features, and sometimes it means getting into the weeds of a project with the company's design and engineering teams.
The biggest challenge she faces is getting partners to take the proper amount of time on a project so that true insights can be fully collected. She knows time is money to many of these businesses, but she also knows new ideas can't be rushed.
"The discomfort of entering a new space where there may be no examples of success can be daunting," Marsh said. "It is easy for risk-averse companies to fall into a trap of, 'Let’s just get to the answer now, go after it, and check back in on the results in a month.'"
To help guide those types of companies, Marsh leans on her MMM experience. She sells the power of defining the unknown, labeling potential risks, embracing ambiguity, and learning from customers. She uses storytelling to take people on a journey and explain the need for a product or business. She honed those skills in MMM, and she continues to leverage them on a daily basis.
"The biggest thing MMM taught me was how to bring structure and frameworks to a highly ambiguous space," Marsh said, "and how to make people feel comfortable that we will reach something truly meaningful — both from a business lens and customer lens — in the end."