On the surface, the two companies couldn’t be more dissimilar. To get to Rite-Solutions headquarters, you turn off the strip malls of Route 114 in Middletown, Rhode Island onto a nondescript side road named Corporate Place. The building is in a business park like thousands across America, definitely not a candidate for a write-up in Architectural Digest. There is even something generic about the company’s name. Its CEO and co-founder, Jim Lavoie, dresses business casual. By way of contrast, Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal’s (KBS+) headquarters occupies a spacious loft in Manhattan’s ultra-hip Tribeca neighborhood. KBS+’s Chairwoman and CEO Lori Senecal is as sophisticated as her surroundings and reputedly dresses in one color, black. Rite-Solutions’ 200 employees design mission-critical software for the Department of Defense and gaming industry. KBS+’s 500 employees help market premier brands like BMW and Puma.

Despite their differences, both companies evolved convergently (as biologists would put it) to adopt a common philosophy that allows them to capture lightening in a bottle. They both believe that success depends upon harnessing the genius of their employees to shape their organizations’ future. Senecal works to ensure that every employee “at all levels of the company adopts a growth mentality and essentially is a creative entrepreneur.” If anything, Lavoie’s vision is even more radical. Rite-Solutions is an employee-owned company that eschews the notion of hierarchy entirely; every employee in every function has an equal opportunity to contribute to shaping the business’ strategy.