Within the Viant Experiment
By Lucas Daniel
Innovation soaks every fiber of Viant's operations. The four-year-old consulting firm, known internally as the "Viant Experiment," avoids the traditional corporate model by decentralizing its leadership and allowing it to change quickly with the needs of an unpredictable Internet economy. This environment provides a culture of growth and learning that accommodates new ideas and organizational methods.
The recently integrated Innovation Center is a testament to the company's philosophy, tying cultural interactions with its desire to be on the edge of innovation. The idea was to create a unified internal think-tank (or "do-tank," as creative lead David Tames says), that would fuse the ideas of a select group of designers, strategists, and technologists. The group would be isolated enough to develop and incubate new ideas, but accessible enough to communicate those ideas to the rest of the company, inspiring employees and spawning radically different products.
The Viant Formula
To understand the reasons behind the Innovation Center, it's important to understand the roots of the company as a whole and how it came to be a new media front runner. Bob Gett is Viant's president and CEO, though he prefers to be called "chief cultural officer." Gett began to consider experimental business practices because he had grown dissatisfied with the operating principles of traditional consulting firms. Having pursued a consulting career for more than 20 years, he wanted to create a company that was more "organically human," and able to adapt quickly.
