Companies Come To The Bay Area Looking For Magic
If you’re unfamiliar with our project, Diving Into the Bay Area Work Culture, read our intro here
Meet Justin Lokitz
Strategy Designer and Managing Director of Businessmodelsinc in San Francisco
You in 3 words: Open, Collaborative, and Communicative
Background: Has earlier worked at Oracle and Autodesk in strategy, product management, engineering and sales and has been in San Francisco since 2002. Today he helps organizations and management teams of all sizes find new ways of doing business and generate revenue by assessing, innovating and implementing new business models.
Sneak peak of Justin’s future:
He is about to publish a book on designing better business, titled Design a Better Business, co-authored with Patrick Van Der Pijl, the producer of Business Model Generation, and Lisa Kay Solomon, the author of Moments of Impact. You can read all about it here http://designabetterbusiness.com/
What kind of advice would you give to millennials and people like Paula and I?
I would say, move around as much as possible. Try as many company cultures, startups and places as possible. Don’t get set for 10 years, unless thats what feels like it needs to be. I would move around, I would give myself that advice as well. Move around, try new things and figure out what works, then build something better.
Here are the takeaways from our conversation with Justin
Innovation Challenges
What Justin said is that some companies see the Bay Area as magical, but the Bay Area isn’t really as magical as most people make it out to be. It’s the layers on top of reality that makes the Bay Area feel like the future is happening here.
Most big companies, irrespective of what kind or industry, have processes for executing, but not for innovation. And finding the balance and the time to both execute and innovate is the real challenge.
At the same time, Justin said that innovation comes from people working at the companies, so the challenge is also to design the right processes for the people to innovate within the company — which is also about the culture.
When it comes to talent retention, there is definitely a challenge to retain it — but the question is if talent retention is what companies want and need in the future? Justin told us because there exists no legal way to enforce non-compete agreements in the state of California, talent can move around fast between companies in the Bay Area. An employee can change working place from hour to hour or day to day.
Collaboration and Creative Processes
Following up where we left off on talent, we joked about it creating almost a circular economy of talent in the Bay Area. But if you look at that from a collaborative point of view, companies could potentially benefit from the knowledge and learnings moving around in the Bay Area along with the talent (and the person).
In terms of collaboration there are also more industry partnerships happening, which according to Justin is only a good thing, because it’s a way for all partners to stay relevant.
Work Culture
Going into culture, Justin told us that there is a very organic or natural collaborative culture in the Bay Area. That openness, freedom to try, optimism, sharing and collaboration are natural here and is part of the Californian culture.
This inclusion and willingness to openly share your ideas might be the key element that drives and differentiates the Bay Area from other Innovation Hubs as New York, London, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Stockholm, among others.
Which also connects back to the moving talent and knowledge and the unenforceable non-compete agreements.
Co-written with Paula Vivas-Avila
Thank you Justin Lokitz for your time and sharing your perspective. And thank you to Marc McLaughlin for connecting us.
