Alex Lutskiy came back to build. He kept finding teams.

Most people leave a job with a cardboard box and a grievance. Alex Lutskiy eventually added a thank-you. After six years at an American company, he recalled being dismissed in a meeting that lasted minutes. Years later, encountering the chief executive responsible at a conference, he thanked him. The dismissal had helped set him on the route to Kyiv and a company of his own. A career can be remarkably inconsiderate about delivering its gifts.

That recollection suits a founder whose working life has crossed the Atlantic in both directions. Lutskiy built a technology career in the United States, returned to Ukraine, and founded Innovecs. He now also serves as president of the Ukrainian Amateur Hockey League. The software business and the hockey league share an interest that appears repeatedly in his public work: bringing people together, then giving them a structure in which to do something.

A return ticket with other possibilities

Lutskiy comes from Kharkiv. In 1994, he moved with his family to the United States, settling in Elmwood Park, New Jersey. He had studied German at school and had to learn English. His education was in computing; his first American work, however, involved sorting pens for five dollars an hour. The technology industry would have to wait its turn.

He subsequently worked with Visual Basic at a Manhattan startup and joined supermarket group A&P, moving from senior software developer into project management. The distance between those jobs matters. Writing software and coordinating the people who write it are adjacent occupations with rather different daily frustrations. His career would increasingly involve the second, while retaining the practical grounding of the first.

His later responsibilities included vice president of Business Applications and Operations at Ipsos and vice president of Delivery at GlobalLogic. He also founded and ran the offshore technology business E-Vector. Long before he was asking clients to trust Innovecs, he had been on the purchasing side of technology services, learning what a supplier looks like from across the table.

The return to Ukraine brought that experience into contact with a local engineering workforce he wanted to build with. He has described knowing the outsourcing business from the customer's side and then seeing the potential of Ukrainian developers firsthand. The opportunity grew from those two experiences meeting. A grand founding myth would be tidier. This version has the advantage of sounding like how business decisions actually happen.

Three people, then a much larger conversation

Innovecs dates its founding to 2011. Its beginnings were small: a three-person team. The business grew into an international software engineering company, serving clients across industries rather than depending on one consumer product. That distinction gives the founder's story a particular texture. Much of the work happens inside someone else's business, where a successful delivery may attract considerably less attention than a failed one.

The company's record includes four consecutive appearances on the Inc. 5000 list, covering 2017 through 2020. Lutskiy's own recognition included Ukraine's Person of the Year 2016 award in the digital industry category, presented in March 2017. These are useful milestones in a story whose substance is the steady accumulation of teams, clients and responsibility.

He also developed places where expertise could circulate. InnoHub provided a venue for business and technology events; InnoCamp became an educational initiative for IT specialists. A services company depends on what its people know and how well they can work together. Giving learning an institutional home fits that business model with admirable directness.

By 2020, his appearance on the Tech Talks Daily podcast was framed around a company that had grown from three people to more than 800. The conversation also concerned relationships and entering new markets. Even while discussing expansion, he kept returning to the people doing business with one another. An international client may sign a contract with a corporate entity; the daily relationship still has human voices at either end.

The client is expected to come back

Lutskiy makes a point of distinguishing a customer from a client. In his account, the latter implies a continuing relationship. Transparency in the work creates trust, and trust makes a longer engagement possible. His interest in American business practice centres on that longer horizon, as well as the habits of networking, management and commitment he observed there.

There is a useful complication in his view of corporate culture. He values openness and relationships while also accepting that a growing business must make difficult staffing decisions. The experience of being dismissed belongs in that account. Warmth does not remove a manager's responsibility to make a decision; a decision can have consequences its author never intended.

His earlier comments about working abroad carry the same outward-looking attitude. He welcomed employees gaining overseas experience, even if they chose to stay abroad. He described returning workers as bringing knowledge useful to their industry and country. Having made the journey himself, he treats international experience as something that can travel with a person, rather than something a single employer can possess.

“Focus on added value”

Alex Lutskiy · 2018

That short injunction also offers a way to understand his position in outsourcing. A buyer has a business problem before a supplier has a proposal. Lutskiy's years inside other companies gave him repeated exposure to that sequence. His own company would have to make the relationship useful enough to continue, through changes in technology, staffing and the client's priorities.

A little room to be wrong

As Innovecs expanded, Lutskiy's writing turned to a problem familiar to founders: how to develop leaders beyond the founder. In a February 2024 essay, he advocated giving emerging managers room to make mistakes, with intermediate measures and regular reviews that keep the consequences manageable. Responsibility arrives alongside a way to see whether the work is succeeding.

He proposed mentorship, challenging assignments and opportunities for former employees to return with new experience. He also warned that a company full of visionaries can struggle to act coherently. Someone must translate direction into coordinated work. The meeting in which everyone has a new vision is liable to run well beyond lunch.

His account allows for people leaving when they outgrow the available work. That is a particularly revealing concession from an employer. Investment in someone does not confer permanent ownership of their future. The practical ambition is to keep creating worthwhile work, with incentives that make staying attractive, while accepting that careers continue to move.

Innovecs has also given access to leadership recognizable formats, including CEO Talks and Open-Door Dialogues. Its InnoBoost programme invites employees to submit ideas for possible projects. These arrangements put an appointment, a conversation or a proposal where an abstract promise might otherwise sit. Culture becomes easier to examine when people can point to something they can actually use.

Then the business acquired a league table

Hockey gives this story its welcome change of scenery. Lutskiy plays the game himself. Innovecs began supporting the Ice Hockey Federation of Ukraine in 2021, including work involving youth and national teams. His stated ambition extended across spectators, amateurs, beginners and professionals. There was room in that picture for rather more than a sponsor's name on a shirt.

On June 8, 2024, Kyiv hosted the official launch of the Ukrainian Amateur Hockey League, established through the partnership between Innovecs and the federation. Lutskiy became its president. The launch included skill competitions, hockey matches and a discussion of the league's structure. An initial 40 teams were planned across six divisions.

The software connection was practical: Lutskiy said a statistics platform was being developed for the championship. A league needs fixtures, regulations and information people can follow. Here was a familiar managerial task in an unfamiliar wardrobe: turn a shared enthusiasm into something that can operate across locations and keep people participating.

In a later LinkedIn update during the league's second season, Lutskiy described teams coming from ten Ukrainian cities, four major cups and 46 cup matches, alongside hundreds of regular league games. He also reported a marriage proposal at the end of a cup. Even a carefully organised competition occasionally acquires an event that refuses to fit neatly into the statistics.

Still building the next version

The recent business story continues to change. Innovecs' October 2026 anniversary account describes 25 delivery locations and more than 150 clients. Gaming work has developed into distinct brands, including Innovecs Play, launched in May 2025. The company is also positioning its engineering around the use of AI, following internal experiments with tools and recurring work processes.

There are public commitments alongside that expansion. Innovecs became a signatory to the Women's Empowerment Principles in October 2024. Lutskiy was also recognised as an Inspiring Leader in 2024. These belong to a wider record of trying to give the language of opportunity a working structure, whether through professional development, access to leadership or participation in sport.

The recurring subject is how people get another chance to do something: a developer becomes a manager, a former employee returns, amateur teams acquire a national competition, a dismissed executive starts a company. Lutskiy's career contains plenty of job titles and dates. Its more interesting movement lies between them, where an unwelcome ending, a journey home or a game on ice becomes the beginning of further work.