Lucid Software is a work acceleration platform that connects people, processes and systems across the lifecycle of work, giving organisations the visibility needed to understand how work happens, align strategies, uncover inefficiencies and redesign processes for better outcomes. Lucid does this through its core products: Lucidchart, Lucidspark, and airfocus.
By connecting the people, processes and systems that drive how work gets done, Lucid helps businesses accelerate four key transformations defining the modern enterprise: AI transformation, system transformation, product transformation and process transformation.
Jamie Lyon, Chief Strategy and Product Officer at Lucid Software, shared with us why shared context is becoming one of the defining advantages of the AI era, and what she’d tell anyone starting out in tech.
What was the idea behind the company?
Lucid was founded more than 15 years ago by Ben Dilts and Karl Sun to solve a simple but frustrating problem: teams needed a better way to collaborate on complex work.
At the time, existing tools made it difficult to share ideas, align on decisions and build on one another’s thinking in real-time. They set out to create a cloud-based platform that made collaboration intuitive, accessible and intelligent from the start, helping teams turn complexity into shared understanding.
Lucidchart was the first product built from that vision. Since then, Lucid has expanded to support more of the ways teams brainstorm, plan and execute work, while staying true to that original goal of helping organisations make complex work easier to understand and move forward.
Tell us about your core product or service
The core services within the Lucid Suite consist of Lucidchart and Lucidspark, for intelligent diagramming and whiteboarding, and airfocus, a product intelligence platform we acquired last year.
Lucid helps organisations make work visible, actionable and easier to accelerate across teams. It brings together the people, processes, systems and dependencies that shape how work gets done, creating a shared understanding that teams can use to make better decisions and move work forward.
Our Work Acceleration Platform brings these capabilities together through purpose-built solutions such as the Cloud Accelerator and Process Accelerator, helping organisations better understand and plan changes to their cloud environments and standardise and govern process documentation.
While many organisations are investing heavily in AI, they often lack the shared context needed to deploy it effectively across the business. That’s where Lucid fills the missing middle – helping teams map processes, systems and dependencies so both people and AI can work from the same understanding. Capabilities such as Process Agent help teams capture and validate that context, while Lucid’s MCP server connects it directly to AI ecosystems.
By making work visible and creating a shared operational blueprint, Lucid enables organisations to identify where AI can deliver the greatest value, redesign workflows with confidence, and scale transformation across the enterprise.
What most excites you about the prospect of AI transforming how we
work?
What excites me most is that we’re only at the beginning of AI’s impact on the way we work.
AI is advancing rapidly, and while it’s already boosting individual productivity, the broader opportunity lies in using it to help entire organisations work smarter and more collaboratively.
Our research found 67% of knowledge workers already notice improved speed and efficiency from using AI. But beyond this, workers are using it to enhance collaboration with teammates (57%) and help teams process information with greater clarity (45%).
In many ways, AI is making process cool again. As organisations look to embed AI more deeply into how work gets done, understanding and improving those processes becomes increasingly important. Shared context will be one of the defining competitive advantages of the AI era. AI models will become increasingly accessible, but every organisation has its own systems, knowledge and ways of working.
Those that gain the greatest value from AI will create the visibility and alignment that allow people and AI to work from the same understanding.
What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome in your career?
I’ve moved across different functions and industries throughout my career, which has meant often stepping into areas where others have been experts for years. That can naturally bring on a bit of imposter syndrome, and one thing I’ve had to learn is being comfortable with not knowing everything right away.
Leaning into curiosity and inquiry have been key to getting me up to speed. At the same time, I’ve learned that my experience across different functions and industries is a strength, allowing me to bring a fresh perspective to the problems we’re trying to solve.
What is your number one piece of advice to aspiring technologists?
Stay curious and stay up to speed, but don’t let the pace of innovation overwhelm you. Especially right now, technology and AI are evolving so quickly and there’s a lot to take in.
So it’s important to find the ways that work for you to stay informed. Personally, I love listening to podcasts, but things like reading newsletters, engaging in relevant communities and conversations with peers can be just as valuable.
Hands-on experimentation gives you a much more practical understanding, including where it can create value and where it may fall short. Try the tools yourself, test different use cases, and spend some time figuring out what they can actually do. With so many new developments happening every day, focus on what’s relevant to you and spend enough time exploring it to form your own perspective.
What can we hope to see from Lucid Software in the future?
We’re entering a new era where every organisation will need an operating model designed for people and AI to work together. Lucid is where that operational blueprint is created, where teams can understand how work happens today, redesign it for tomorrow and continuously evolve as technology advances.
Whether driving AI transformation, system transformation, product transformation or process transformation, organisations only succeed when they can clearly map how work happens today, align cross-functional teams around a shared reality, and redesign their workflows for tomorrow.
Over time, we hope teams using Lucid build greater confidence to adapt, innovate and execute more effectively as AI becomes embedded across the enterprise.
