At Intercom, the company values clear guiding principles to build product and keep teams aligned. The engineering principle "shape the solution" allows them to deliver better customer value by involving engineers from the outset in the development process. This approach enables great engineers to care about what they're working on, understand the role of collaboration in building products, and make informed trade-offs to ensure cost-efficient solutions are delivered. By collaborating with colleagues across Product and Design teams, engineers learn to think like designers and product managers, leading to a culture of ownership and zero blame. The company's approach has resulted in successful projects such as Inbound Custom Bots, where engineers worked closely with designers to come up with a new pattern that would serve customers well and bypass technical constraints. By shaping solutions from beginning to end, Intercom aims to build better products for its customers and empower its engineers to grow and learn.