A culture where the proposer starts the business — and the turn from integrator to consultancy (2006)

The firm that grows by losing people

What makes this decision interesting is that, for the goal of turning a systems integrator into a consultancy, the instrument chosen was neither an org chart nor an acquisition but a culture. Let whoever proposes the work launch it; deliberately gather people who mean to start something of their own. It is the reverse of the Japanese personnel design built on enclosure — and holding out the freedom to leave became the single strongest draw for good people. That a 2007 publicity piece and a 2025 business magazine describe the same phenomenon — staff leaving the nest — shows how consistently this culture stayed at the core of the company.

The fine print, though, has not survived. The starting date of the scheme that supported internal independence, and the terms of its compensation, cannot be confirmed in contemporary primary sources; what can be verified is the reality of the culture and its consequences. Even so, the rise of four “Baycurrent clones” suggests that the source of this firm’s competitiveness lay not only in its rates or its sales machinery but in a reproducible model for people. A design that breeds imitators is proof of strength and the seed of a threat at once. The paradox of a company that grows by losing people is one Baycurrent spent twenty years turning into an industry standard.