National and global CEOs who choose to live in Adelaide

The chief executive of Bionomics has turned her back on Sydney or Melbourne and instead runs her global company from Adelaide.

“Adelaide is one of the great undiscovered places in Australia,” she said.

The biopharmaceutical company has a market capitalisation of $137 million and is fast expanding.

Dr Rathjen flies regularly to the US, UK, France and Melbourne.

“I just try and keep ahead of the jet lag,” she said.

Google’s chief engineer Alan Noble, an Adelaide engineer at the forefront of change in digital technologies, was based in Silicon Valley for several years before realising where home is. “Growing up in Adelaide I didn’t have a great ambition to stay,” he said.

“I did electrical engineering at the University of Adelaide, graduated and promptly left. That wanderlust to see the world was typical but mine lasted for 20 years.”

Three years in Japan and a further 16 in California followed.

Google, in Sydney, came along four years later and a family powwow led to Mr Noble commuting from Adelaide.

“Lo and behold, I have been living that experiment for nine and a half years,” he said.

Chief executive Frank Grasso took an arguably even more intriguing route to South Australia. His business, Dynamic Creative, has its headquarters on North Tce in Adelaide, and offices in Melbourne and Sydney.

The award-winning company is a digital market leader in ad automation technology for inventory driven businesses that gives you more bang for your online ad spend, and is much quicker in effect.

Mr Grasso’s Sicilian family arrived in Melbourne in the 1960s, setting up a gearbox company.

He was a core component of the business after quitting school in Year 10.

He started his search career in Melbourne in 1999 — 33 years later — before moving to Adelaide in 2002 to form e-channel Search.

Three years later, he undertook his Masters in marketing at Uni SA while setting up a research and technology team and developing the Dynamic Creative software.

The speed of growth of his business has been phenomenal.

Four graduates a month are taken on via an intern program at the North Tce headquarters.

A chance last year to become a Google channel partner, sharing stats, hiring and sales procedures added a stratospheric credibility boost.

“I think I resisted living in Adelaide for a while,” he said.

“The fact it takes me 10 minutes to take my son to soccer … and park at the front of the oval, I can’t put a dollar figure on that.”

Distance is the mother of invention.

Dr Rathjen said videoconferencing was a key in doing business.

“We have a major relationship with Europe and the US and it’s important we maintain a face-to-face contact through video conferencing,” she said.

But no city stands alone.

An apartment purchased to cement the Dynamic Creative Sydney arm now operates as a cost-cutting business stopover and a reminder that Mr Grasso has come some way since his gearbox days.

“We’ve got a flat overlooking Paul Keating,” he says. “I’ve waved at him but he’s yet to wave back.”

To find out why an increasing number of Australia’s high-flyers choose to live in Adelaide, be sure to pick up next week’s special edition of The City with the New Adelaide supplement, celebrating everything SA has to offer.

Find your free copy of at stands in Rundle Mall, James Place, Central Market, Adelaide Railway Station, UniSA’s city campuses and at TAFE Light Square.