Doug Lockyer

From 1997 through 2000 Doug was active as Visa USA's Internet Strategies Consultant Of Record. Riptide used the tree frog as a strategic report mascot to epitomize the concept of "thinking by leaping", referring to Doug's trademark, discontinuous, visionary approach. The approach demands first a high level of due diligence and needs analysis (much like jazz music, whereby a musician must study and be intimate with classical music first, before leaping to abstraction), then a grounded, responsible but complete divorce from the path the client was on, which would have lead inexorably to what was always going to happen anyway. Often this path gets re-acquired, but one has to be equally willing to abandon preconceptions, or return to them.

The first strategic direction project was to recommend or design a solution that would enable VISA to save money from call center operations by automating as much of the support relationship between VISA and its (then) 17 Million merchants, using online communications.

Simultaneously VISA wanted to explore the potential for a co-branded e-commerce initiative between VISA and key global partners.