SharkNinja is a global product design and technology company that creates 5-star rated lifestyle solutions through innovative products for consumers around the world.
Jailbreak SharkNinja is a company-wide initiative launched by CEO Mark Barrocas to accelerate AI innovation, backed by $1 million in awards to employees who use AI to solve business problems and improve efficiency. It encourages staff to “break” traditional workflows and adopt AI across every part of the business.
Brittany Snipe, VP of Global Supply Planning, connected with us to share details on the company, her role, their Hack Week (Jailbreak), what innovation means to the company, AI’s role within the company, and more!
Video Transcript
Keith Cline: Britney, thanks so much for joining us.
Brittany Snipe: Yes, nice to be here.
Keith Cline: I’m excited to talk to you because we’re going to talk about SharkNinja, which is a company in the Boston tech scene that everybody knows. They make the great consumer products that you guys create, and it’s just a culture of innovation. I think what we’re going to talk about in this video speaks volumes of what that means. But before we get into this whole hackathon week and what you call a jailbreak, I want to talk about you. So what is your role at SharkNinja?
Brittany Snipe: Yeah. So my role here at the company, I am the VP of global supply planning. So my team, we are the ones that are responsible for making sure all the product gets to where it needs to be. It is right product, right place, right time. That’s actually our jailbreak concept for the week. We are responsible for both brands. So both the Shark and Ninja brands, it is global, all regions. We work with our factory partners all over the world to make sure that we are getting all the core products launched, the new products launched, all the accessories, the parts, anything a consumer might need every day. And it is quite an exciting adventure. There is always a new challenge. You know, things pop up all the time in supply chain. You deal with the unforeseen circumstances that can happen. You could have a challenge with something happening on the factory floor. All of a sudden, something could happen with a retailer. And so, you have to be ready to act at a moment’s notice. Makes every day exciting, which is really fun. And it’s one of the things I like most about the job.
Keith Cline: Well, and based on the scale of SharkNinja, this is a conversation we could have separately, and we might have to do that because I have so many questions. But we are here to talk about what’s been happening this week. So what is jailbreak?
Brittany Snipe: Yeah, so jailbreak is like the theme for our hack week. So hack week is really all about taking time out of the business. For the last four days, this is day four of it. It has been all global meetings canceled and everyone really focused on taking the time to get in rooms and solve problems. We are really focused on leveraging AI this week and thinking about what are those challenges that are happening day-to-day and how can we use AI to solve those problems to optimize, to speed up things, to make things more efficient, to be creative. Like, what are the problems that we didn’t even know we had? That’s one of the things that is coming out of that for us too this week. 10 years ago was the first hack actually for me. 10 years ago I was in China, so I wasn’t in Boston for the first hack week. So, it’s nice to be here for the second version of hackathon. And people really are just breaking out. It’s like break free of the concepts and do something that’s the unthinkable. Like, what did you not think was possible? And you can really feel the energy around the building.
Keith Cline: Well, Fast Company recognized SharkNinja as one of the top 100 best workplaces for innovators. And I think this is a perfect example of that. I mean, 4,200 plus team members are just focused on this hack week. That is such a commitment to innovation that you’re leveraging your employees internally versus bringing in an external consulting firm or strategy firm. Instead, let’s leverage the brain power that we have here, right?
Brittany Snipe: Yeah, it is incredible. And one of the great things about it is it is global, and we have people from other parts of the business here. Our particular hack that I am helping to co-lead this week, we have associates from our Asia-Pacific region, we have folks from the UK office who are here, folks from all around the world. And then vice versa, people who are here located in Boston have gone to other areas for the week. We do have some external folks who’ve come in to help, but really they are there as support. To your point, sometimes companies will bring other people in to say here’s how you should do something or give guidance to the teams, and it’s really our teams who are driving it and the so-called experts are just there to help. It’s really the teams here who are driving it.
Keith Cline: So, how does it all work? Like, give us the inside look as to what this whole week looks like.
Brittany Snipe: Yeah. So, we had a kickoff on Monday morning. It was really exciting and we got to hear some great inspirational words from Mark who really gave us the challenge to think bold and come up with great ways. Teams have broken out into sort of three different things. We’ve got a top 20 hack as a business globally that we want to solve for. Then there are different what are called functional hacks, so different parts of the organization and departments have broken out into groups to think about what are areas that are going to help their specific departments. And then there are solo hacks or individual hacks. If you are someone who just has a great idea you want to really dive in and work on on your own over the four days, there is a way for everyone to be involved and to contribute and think of something that they can do to support growth in some kind of way. But there’s also a lot of fun things around. Like, I’m sitting next to mini golf. We’ve had great food. There have been robots. There was a robot here drawing caricatures of people. So there are fun events too to keep the energy going because you need it. I mean, we’re spending eight hours a day getting together in breakout groups, with people coming around. The concept of red teaming is something we use here too, which is jumping into somebody else’s group and giving some feedback and brainstorming other ideas. So, it’s really been fun. I’m a little bit sad to see it go back to business as usual. We do have to get back to doing some of the things we need to and take some of what we’ve been doing this week and feed it into that. That’s going to be the exciting part. Next week on Monday, what someone was doing last week is not going to look the same because of what they’ve done this week as part of the hackathon.
Keith Cline: Well, I was going to say, so what happens next? Like, after all these ideas and this whole week happens, what is the outcome?
Brittany Snipe: Yeah. It’s really new ways of working. I think thats just how SharkNinja is as an organization. It’s not take four days, go work on something, and then you just forget it. It really is how do you now operationalize that and then take that into the next phase of what you’re doing. And that is a big piece of it. We move with speed. And so it’s not a set-it-and-forget-it type of mindset. It really is that you take this and then you phase this into something that you’re doing, or it becomes your new process, your new operating model. You continue to iterate on that, build on that, and expand it. And so it’s just going to become the thing that transports you into the next wave of progress for a lot of the teams.
Keith Cline: Now, AI is obviously everywhere, and when I think of this type of week and the culture of innovation at SharkNinja, how is AI coming into play here?
Brittany Snipe: It is the theme. For us, I would say it started with a couple of different things throughout the business. I’d say people probably started more using it a little bit as a chatbot, helping to go through emails as a phase, and we had a lot of sessions even through last week of helping teams get up to speed coming into hack week. We have people who started off on Monday not knowing much, and now I have people even on my own team who are using things like Claude Code or using other external apps that feed into Claude. So they’ve really upskilled, and I think it’s going to start to become part of everyday processes. We are getting out of traditional models like Excel for teams like mine, even supply planning. So you don’t have to be an engineer, you don’t have to be someone who’s in IT, you don’t have to be someone who uses something like CAD. It is anybody, regardless of what your function is, can do this. And it is saving time. I mean, it’s saving hours for teams who are used to having to do things in traditional ways. And for a company like ours who is already one that moves very fast, I can’t imagine what it’s going to do for us going forward.
Keith Cline: Why do you like working at SharkNinja?
Brittany Snipe: It’s interesting. I’m what they call a boomerang. This is actually my second time working for the company. I left the company and then I came back. And part of the reason I came back is one, how fast it moves, how much it grows, and how much it values evolution—not just in its products, in its categories, and its growth, but how much it actually appreciates that in the people and the ideas that the people bring. There was always room for someone to say, “I’ve got something. I think there’s another way of doing this,” and everyone is open to that. Because of that, there’s no shortage of opportunity for someone here. You don’t feel like you have to follow anyone’s old process, and you don’t have someone sitting in a room saying, “Well, this is just how things are done.” It’s always, “What else can you do? What more can you do? How could you do it faster? How could you do it better?” And that’s what’s exciting to me, and that’s what has kept me here. That’s what brought me back here. And that is one of the things I enjoy most about it. Not to mention that there’s always something new and innovative coming out. There’s never a dull moment. And so it’s just really great, and it’s a nice place to be, kind of at the forefront of that innovation that continues year after year.
Keith Cline: Well, Brittany Snipe, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the details about SharkNinja and this extraordinary week. Jailbreak, I think, is just amazing what you guys are doing as a company, and it really speaks volumes about the culture.
Brittany Snipe: Yeah, sure. Very happy to be here and nice to meet you.