But within Telecom other terms like "skunkworks" and "Digital Vultures" have sometimes been used ("because we get to spend all the money and have all the fun ... we take that as a compliment").
Snodgrass won't divulge the size of his budget. He's got his own capital. It's significant. It is a lot.
That was clear when Telecom - to be rebranded Spark in a couple of months - unveiled ShowMeTV promising it will be the "Netflix for New Zealand" and inked a partnership deal with Spotify to offer some mobile customers free premium accounts with the online music giant.
Snodgrass says when he put his small growth team together it first looked at the big things happening in the market and quickly learnt "it's all around mobile".
"You can connect anywhere on the globe - it is just ubiquitous and it's a great experience. "
"It doesn't mean fixed is dead. But we all carry one ... we're doing more and more on it and that's where the consumers are. "
Snodgrass refers to the convergence of on-the-go technologies that underpins SoLoMo (Social Local Mobile) applications.
Much of this is aimed at "Generation C" a connected force that is not age-based and spans generations.
One of Digital Ventures' early moves was to make an opportunistic $5 million investment in Vigil, Sir Ray Avery's technology startup, which is developing a wristband which constantly monitors vital health activities and stores the information online.
"With that we didn't really have a strategy. It ticked our boxes. It was about using mobile devices and cross-data networks. It forced us to think about what value we bring to it beyond cash."
There have also been the innovations to take friction out of the system like Skinny Mobile and Big Pipe.
It all entails a fundamental business culture change.
Digital Ventures has a bias for action - Move Fast. Fail Fast. Fail Cheap - with customer preferences probed before the product is bolted down.
Snodgrass pitched hard to be in charge of the company's growth agenda. When Simon Moutter returned to Telecom as CEO in 2012, he was running product and a "bit of strategy".
"We sat down and we wrote the new strategy around the four planks - revolutionise customer experience, simplify the business, win key markets and then win the future."
That's when Snodgrass began to "push hard".
"I'd been angling to create the growth unit under my product area. So he goes: 'So you have to decide by the 15th of January whether you are going to do growth or whether you are going to do product'."
On January 15, 2103 Snodgrass made another play to put the two together. Moutter gave him 24 hours ("make your choice").
He relates that the next day Moutter said, "I want you to do the growth one because it's a bit like when you ran Xtra - and also you've been in the core too long and you're a little bit boring - you need to get back'."
War stories aside - and Snodgrass has plenty of those - it required a board mandate to give the Digital Ventures boss the clear scope to take a different approach.
Says Snodgrass, "At the core we're going to do disruptive processes."
That means engaging talented people.
"We have to be awesome at digital. Awesome at social and ultimately we have to create a working environment to get these guys."
So what could be on offer next? Here are three potential innovations.
Creating a smart farm
Snodgrass says this comes down to creating a web portal and connecting a whole bunch of sensors. "So farmers can get real time data on their phones about thing like water supply and potentially milk vat monitoring in real time within a closed loop. Imagine the NZ Inc possibilities around Smart Farm."
Creating a smart life
Digital Ventures has launched a website to test what appeals to potential customers about the smart home. Key questions: Do they want to see their pet? Have the doors been opened or a garage door not closed. Is the swimming pool pump is not working"
"We will work out is there a business here".
Loyalty cards go mobile
Says Snodgrass: "All Loyalty cards should be on your phone. There's no reason to have to carry them things around. You should be able to transfer data across different loyalty systems."
Digital Ventures is in discussions with banks and health facilities as it explores the boundaries of data mining. "If you find likeminded people who share the vision you can get going a lot faster," says Snodgrass. "But we're are picking winners in each category. People used to talk about the last mile. It's actually about he first milimetre for us to create a better experience. You need big data and analytics in the back end but you've got to deliver the right experience to the right person in the right place."
Rod Snodgrass:
"You can't shrink your way to victory."
"Walking backwards slowly is actually quite hard."
"In past knowledge was power now dispersal is power."
