Chris Lutz, Innovation architect · Company builder
The technology is rarely what’s stuck. It’s who decides, who owns what, and which parts of the company were never designed to work together. I find that and fix it, so you can run fast and grow smart.
My company’s commerce software ran The Knot, Hershey, Teleflora and USPS. When I sold it to EPiServer, 150 clients moved across.
You hire me through Apex Global Agency, the firm I founded. The first call tells us both whether it’s a fit.
For founders, owner-CEOs and operating partners who own the result and can change how the company works. I stay with you from the first plan until it runs without me.
Most advice stops at the plan. I stay through the build, so the plan turns into something that actually runs.
That covers more than software: how money moves, who decides what, who owns what, and which parts of your company were never designed to work together.
If your team keeps shipping and nothing changes, the problem usually isn’t technical. It’s a decision nobody made higher up. I help you find it and make it.
My shorthand: architecture tells you what to build, and assembly is how it actually gets built. You get both from me.
I find where your parts don’t connect, design the fix with you, and stay until it’s running.
With AI, everyone holds all five roles. Almost nobody is set up to run them.
Deciding what to build, getting it made, doing the deal, putting the pieces together and owning what comes out. AI put all five within one person’s reach. I spent ten years building tools for each one, so I know what running them takes.
The question is whether your company is built to support you doing all five.
Most wasted work starts with a decision nobody made. I help you find it and make it, so everything after it has a clear direction.
I’ve done this since 1988: Innovation Labs at MCI, then Discovery, Nokia, Charter and Nextel.
A good plan still has to survive real people, real deadlines and real budgets. I help you get it made.
I learned it in The Blacklist writers’ room, 2015 to 2017, watching a hundred-person production come together every week.
Good work still has to be represented well. I help you line up the partners, the terms and the people who believe in it.
Through Apex Global Agency, which I founded. We represent companies, brands and IP, and senior operators, and package them into deals. We only take on work we’d build alongside.
Technology, people and process have to fit. I stay where they meet until they do.
I built Mediachase from 1997 to 2012. Its commerce software ran The Knot, Hershey, Teleflora and USPS, and Optimizely is only now retiring it, fourteen years after I sold the company.
Projects end and teams move on. I help you decide early what to own, so the value stays with you.
When I sold Mediachase to EPiServer in 2012, 150 clients moved across. What I kept, the architecture, was worth more than what I sold.
Most of my early calls are twenty years old: streaming in 1999, online marketplaces in 2000, commercial open source after that. So here is a recent one you can check.
In 2023, before the 2024 wave of AI agents, I trademarked IP Companions™. It sets where AI fits into the work and lets the model behind it be swapped: Mastra, Claude, OpenAI or whatever comes next. The models keep changing. The framework still holds.
That’s the shift I’m working in now.
The companies I’ve built and work through today. You hire me through Apex Global Agency.
Where the IP lives. Creator Cloud™, IP-Lock™, and IP Companions™ were all built here.
Where clients hire me. The Agency connects, the Accelerator Studio builds, Ventures launches.
The Innovation Studio Framework™, deployed as a live studio. New York, Los Angeles, Stockholm. Three practices.
Enterprise delivery at scale. Senior advisory, and the parent of Ignite Studio.
I lead engagements through Apex Global Agency. They fit one situation: you’re carrying a build, a launch or a big change you can’t get over the line, and it looks like a technology problem but isn’t.
In 2001 the dot-com crash killed the business I’d spent four years building. I didn’t shut Mediachase down. I rebuilt it as a software company and sold that one in 2012.
So when your project goes sideways, and most do at some point, I can tell which part actually broke. You rebuild around it instead of starting over.
At Apex that system is the Apex Connected Growth System™: Plan, People, Systems, Partners, Momentum.How it works. It starts with a fit call.
The one that survived the new strategy, the reorg and the last round of features. That usually means the problem is in how the company fits together, and that’s what I fix.
You need one feature built. I’m the wrong fit, and you’d be paying for more than you need.
You can change how the company works, not just approve another project.
You care whether the work lasts and keeps paying off.
Your goals have outgrown the systems you inherited, and you have room to change how the work gets done.
You don’t want a deck. You want someone to help rebuild the thing with you.
Book a fit call and bring the problem that keeps coming back.
On the call I’ll tell you whether I can help. Sometimes the answer is no, and it’s better to hear that on the first call than in month four.
If it’s a fit, we’ll plan the next step together.
Fit calls are booked through Apex Global Agency, the firm I founded.