Year founded: 2000
Staff: 50
The cross-disciplinary digital agency has racked up a ton of awards for designing cutting-edge websites for Sony Pictures, Coca-Cola (KO), Google (GOOG), General Electric (GE), Nike (NKE), and Adobe (ADBE). During the early years founder Michael Lebowitz and crew focused heavily on the movie industry but eventually branched out to other consumer areas. In 2008, Second Life developer Linden Labs hired the company to rework the popular virtual world's user experience. In 2009, Harvard Business School took a close look at Big Spaceship's success, its recent shift to a versatile, team-based structure, and the challenges in maintaining its laid-back, creative culture (foosball tables and videogame consoles litter parts of the workspace, and Lebowitz encourages employees to work on internal pet projects like The Most Awesomest Thing Ever in between assignments) while adapting to increasing client opportunities.
"A friend once said to me, `You guys punch way above your weight,' " says Lebowitz. "We've stayed small intentionally, but at same time, I think we've proven that we don't have to increase scale in order to increase the opportunities that we have."
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Last updated December 06 2010: 10:54 AM ET
