I fix the conditions that make great products impossible.

The work is never really about the product. It's about the org structures, ownership models, and measurement failures that produce fragmented experiences and wasted engineering. I've spent a decade building at organizational scale inside one of the world's largest retailers. Now I'm building from the outside.

Based in Atlanta, GA
Currently Building + Available
Writing

The work was always
happening.
Now so is the conversation.

I've been developing these ideas in public since 2011 — GOTO Zurich, ConnectJS, Supernova South, 35+ workshops and courses at General Assembly. Here's where the conversation is now.

Essay · March 10, 2026

You Don't Fix Products by Hiring Better People

Companies diagnose design problems when the real issue is org structure, incentives, ownership models, and measurement failures. You don't fix it by hiring better designers. You fix the conditions. Fifteen years of evidence.

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Previously: GOTO Zurich · ConnectJS Atlanta · Supernova South · Black Founders Conference · SoundBoard · General Assembly (first UX Design course, Atlanta, 2014) · Fortune 500 consulting: Disney, BB&T, Lockheed Martin

Ventures

Baskerville & Co.
is not a consulting euphemism.

It's a real operating entity with active ventures. The same point of view that shaped a decade of enterprise work — organizational behavior as a design problem — now applied from the outside.

B&Co — 001
44 Signals

Audio learning for working professionals who need depth, not noise. Dual-mode platform — long-form and pulse-format — designed to meet people inside the time they actually have.

In development
B&Co — 002
Five Deep

An AI talent agency built on a different incentive model. 90-day pay structure aligns the interests of talent and placement organizations — instead of optimizing for the transaction, it optimizes for the fit.

In development
B&Co — 003
VestaOS

An operating system layer for AI-assisted work. Holds context, standards, and session history across every session boundary so the work compounds instead of resets. Built from the problem of doing high-stakes work inside tools with no memory.

In development
B&Co — 004
Context Hop

The portable context layer. One system — not a patchwork of GitHub and Notion — readable by any model, owned by you. What AI-assisted work runs on when the session ends.

In development
About

The thesis arrived
before the vocabulary.

I started doing this work before I had a name for it. The instinct — that most design problems are actually organizational problems in disguise — showed up early. In 2011 I co-founded TripLingo, built a multi-platform language learning app in six months, and raised $2.35M. We were moving fast, and the places we got stuck were never the design problems. They were the conditions around the design problems.

A decade at Home Depot gave me the scale to test the thesis at organizational weight. I wasn't running the portfolio — I was in it… shaping the conditions inside it. Managing teams of UX practitioners. Influencing fifteen or more cross-functional partners without direct authority. And making the case, over and over, that the problem was never the design. The No New Apps Initiative. The Experience Metrics System. The Journey Management Task Force. Each one was an argument made at organizational scale — not a deliverable, not a project. A changed condition.

Now I'm building from the outside — Baskerville & Co. as the operating entity, with a set of ventures that apply the same thinking to different problems. And I'm stepping back into the public conversation after years of deep internal work. The ideas were always developing. Now so is the writing.

Vincent Baskerville
Disciplines
  • Org-Scale Change Design
  • Cross-Functional Systems Thinking
  • Product Org Architecture
  • Facilitation & Workshop Design
Where the work happened
  • The Home Depot
  • Salesforce
  • CallRail
  • Lithium Technologies
  • TripLingo
  • General Assembly
Positioning
Executive-level thinking applied to the problems most organizations have already tried to solve the wrong way. W2 or via Baskerville & Co. — same thinking, different form.
Vincent Baskerville
Work With Me

Two paths.
One conversation.

Both audiences are buying the same thing: executive-level thinking applied to complex organizational and product problems. The difference is the form it takes.

If you're building or rebuilding a design or product organization — and need someone who has done it at scale, with the organizational scar tissue to match — I'm open to the right conversation. I've led at portfolio level, influenced without authority across 15+ cross-functional teams, and built governance where none existed.

Let's talk →

If you don't need to hire direct — but the problem still needs someone who's done this at scale — that's what Baskerville & Co. is for. Strategy through execution, facilitation, embedded design and product work. Small number of engagements each quarter, by design.

Start the conversation →