In today’s economy, the competitive advantages held by larger organizations are becoming irrelevant.  Bigger is not necessarily better.  Instead, the spoils of war go to those that can collaborate across continents to create products and services that are truly remarkable.  “Smart Outsourcing” is an article I prepared for the foreign magazine “New to the Market.”  The article contains principles and specific concepts I learned while building my start-up business, Advanced Advocates.  In the article, I state the importance of leveraging technology and outsourcing to keep costs at a minimum to remain competitive in the global marketplace.  What do you think?  What’s stopping you from executing on your ideas?

Smart Outsourcing: Tools and Principles To Help You Get Started

Links

The book “What Would Google Do?” By Jeff Jarvis (check out his buzzmachine.com blog)

http://www.abovethelaw.com/

Article about the ABA advisory opinion.

Outline of the video blog

“The law and its execution are aided by its obfuscation.” Jarvis, What Would Google Do? So true! Since the law is so complex, lawyers are [somewhat] insulated from the crowdsourcing/community control phenomenon. However, there are fewer opportunities in the legal marketplace today than there was last year. Part of the contraction in the legal industry is due to the economic crisis. Since money is tight, the market rewards efficiency which places a lot of pressure on bloated law firms. Will they return to their stature of enormity and power? I don’t think so.

What is a Googley lawyer?

Spartan attitude towards overhead. Leverages every technological advantage to drive costs down and passes savings over to clients. Outsources all simple legal tasks.

Authentic and unique. In the Google age, the trick is being found. There are hundreds of thousands of lawyers, but there’s only one you. Instead of showing a facade of perfection, be human, be unique and people will be drawn to the authenticity (which is rare). Check out Gary Vaynerchuk and you’ll figure it out in a few minutes.

Vast network. The Googley lawyer doesn’t deal much in atoms. They stay remote and for connections with partners in a virtual environment and pass the savings to clients.

The masses benefit but they don’t take control

The ABA won’t allow it (yet). None of these suggestions involve turning the reins over to the masses….But these changes do represent a huge transition from how services used to be delivered (with the associated fat/costs). Access will be more feasible for the masses.

The folks at Zoho don’t seem to think so. They’ve prepared the below spreadsheet explaining why they think Google will run from business productivity programs. As everyone knows, Microsoft built its empire by standardizing business applications i.e. Word, Excel, Power Point, Outlook, etc. Google plays in a different sand box. Can Zoho compete with Microsoft as they create low cost solutions for businesses? Click on the spreadsheet to see a larger version. On its blog, Zoho said, “Google is perhaps the most stunning technology success story ever, but we simply don’t believe Google has the rational business incentive to get too deep into the business/IT software category. The lower revenue and profit per employee figures would be tolerable if there were huge growth opportunities there, but when very successful companies like Adobe and Intuit pull in revenues well shy of a Yahoo, when even the enterprise software leader SAP is smaller, and slower growing than Google (Google makes nearly as much in profit per employee as SAP or Oracle Salesforce make in revenue per employee), it is fairly clear this market is not going to make a material contribution to Google’s growth and profitability objectives. So what is Google’s plan here? It is fairly obvious they are in it to put Microsoft on the defensive on its home turf, so that Microsoft’s offensive capability in the internet is diminished. It is also perfectly clear why Microsoft wants to be an internet player – as Google has shown, it is a higher margin business even than its monopoly-profit core business.”