NineSigma--Can The Model Be Adapted For Law?
Mavericks At Work: Why The Most Original Minds in Business Win is a terrific book, written by Fast Company co-founder William Taylor. The book has many attributes that make it a "must-read," but the one I want to focus on here is a company discussed in the book named NineSigma. Here's the backdrop to put this discussion in context.
The discussion of NineSigma takes place within a discussion of the open source movement. In that context, consider this discussion of P&G:
"We have 7,500 R&D people who operate in 150 different areas of science," [Larry] Hutson explains. "But when you look around the world at these 150 areas, you see that there are one and a half million people outside of P&G with training that is equal to or better than our people. In other words, for every one person we have in a particular area, there are 200 people on the outside of equal minds or better. Now it's pretty obvious that 200 can invent better than one--you don't have to be a genius to figure that out."
It's Hutson's mission to figure out how Procter & Gamble can tap into that outside genius. His initiative, called Connect + Develop (that's C+D, as distinct from R&D), has a mandate to help the consumer giant import half of all new technologies and product ideas from beyond the walls of the company. It's hard for an outsider, Hutson says, to appreciate the stakes of this shift: "Here you have a nearly one-hundred-seventy-year-old company with an unbelievable sense of pride in its science and marketing. And we're viewing the outside world as the other half of our R&D lab. It's an absolute sea change."
This alone, without more, should inspire people to imagine change. But there's more:
Hutson is also a tireless champion of NineSigma, a fast-growing outfit in Cleveland that has built what it calls a "Managed Exchange"--an Internet-based global network through which companies can issue a call for help to researchers around the world, any of whom may be hired to deliver a solution. Forget sending a run-of-the-mill RFP to the same old suppliers, NineSigma uses the Web to identify the best minds in a wide variety of fields and sends targeted RFPs to every corner of the world.
There is substantially more discussion of this in Mavericks,but this little hors d'ouvres should inspire lots of thought on how this same model could be modified for the practice of law. For example, a few ago, I posted on Jeff Carr's 4 buckets--advocacy, counseling, process and content. The NineSigma approach to content is obvious--no highly paid associate that the firm is really training should be doing basic, blackletter law research. That can be done by a pre-qualified researcher at a much lower price. The firm's value-add becomes what it does with that basic information.
I am just at the front-end of thinking about this. But if a company like P&G can go through the sea change described in Mavericks (and you will marvel at the examples provided in the book), perhaps there is some cause for optimism that the legal profession can move forward as well.
One further thought: I have written about Legal On Ramp before, and, indeed, many who read this will be reading it on LOR's website. Legal On Ramp is precisely the kind of company that could be the NineSigma of the legal profession. Be sure to think about the possibilities in that context.
