Packed with creative insights
and practical advice
Browsing Month July, 2011
What You Can Learn from Car Dealerships Following the Bottle of Water Principle
July 29th, 2011 → 7:14 am @ Ari Kaplan
I have been talking about reinvention in professional services since early June, when the BigHand tour started and Wiley released Reinventing Professional Services: Building Your Business in the Digital Marketplace, but it is not just lawyers, accountants, doctors, architects, consultants, and similar providers of sophisticated services that are experiencing an industry-wide transformation. This article — Dealerships spruce up: Cappuccino while you wait? by Tom Krisher – about the auto industry caught my attention because it reflects the universal nature of recreation and realignment in modern business.
The Ultimate Reinvention – From Lawyer to Lego Artist
July 28th, 2011 → 7:12 am @ Ari Kaplan
In March of 2010, my then-seven-year-old son and I went to the Agora Gallery in Manhattan, where famed Lego artist Nathan Sawaya, a former associate with Winston & Strawn, was exhibiting his extraordinary work. Nathan generously joined us to give my son a personal tour, answer his questions, and review a Lego creation my son had made just for the visit.
I saw the video profile below on Yahoo! last night and had to share it. Nathan is the ultimate reinventor and his story amazes me every time I hear it (I had the chance to interview him for this article in Total Balance magazine). As powerful as his story is, when you experience his work in person, you realize how remarkably talented he is. I am sure that his current tour in Australia will be as successful as his U.S. showcase.
Reinventing Billing in Professional Services
July 27th, 2011 → 11:50 am @ Ari Kaplan
David Snow, ALM’s editorial director for technology, shared a great recap of Corporate Counsel magazine’s annual Survey of In-House Technology in- Small Surprises in the 2011 In-House Tech Survey. He notes that in addition to providing insights on mobile security policies and cloud computing, the survey highlights variable success with requiring law firms to use e-billing systems selected by their clients to organize bills, reduce confusion or human error, and realize immediate savings. It seems like a clear road toward greater efficiency, but Snow reports that only 35 percent of the companies surveyed require e-billing, citing law firm objections to paying vendor fees.
I had a second opportunity to speak with Jay Shepherd, the visionary founder of Prefix, LLC, while on the BigHand reinvention tour in June (our first interaction was in connection with this research report: The Evolution of the Legal Profession: A Conversation with the Legal Community’s Thought Leaders on the Front Lines of an Industry in Transition, sponsored by DiscoverReady). He discusses the reinvention of billing in profession services below:
Telemedicine and the Continuing Evolution of Professional Services
July 25th, 2011 → 7:30 am @ Ari Kaplan
Fulbright & Jaworski partners, Mark Anthony Kadzielski and Jee-Young Kim, both based in Los Angeles, issued a briefing – “New Telemedicine Rule: Practicalities and Pitfalls” – about a new rule governing telemedicine credentialing and privileging that became effective earlier this month. They note that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services defines telemedicine as the “provision of clinical services to patients by practitioners from a distance via electronic communications.”
It is in many ways the essence of reinvention.
The goals of the new rule include many of the same elements that a variety of industries are focusing on for their constituents:
- Providing more flexibility to small hospitals and critical access hospitals in regions with a limited supply of primary care and specialized providers;
- Creating a more cost-effective alternative to traditional service delivery approaches; and,
- Improving patient outcomes and satisfaction.
I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Gabriel Pivawer of Edison Imaging Associates, PA in Edison, NJ for Reinventing Professional Services. During our conversation, he discussed a key trend in teleradiology, which you are welcome to listen to below –
Progressive’s Snapshot and Reinventing Car Insurance
July 22nd, 2011 → 7:33 am @ Ari Kaplan
Reinvention is everywhere. I found this article – Progressive Uses New Driver-Focused Technology To Determine Insurance Rates – by Malia Wollan from Fast Company particularly compelling (privacy concerns aside). It profiles Progressive CEO, Glenn Renwick, and the company’s new Snapshot tool, which monitors miles driven, as well as braking, acceleration and speed over a six-month period in an effort to price based on individual behavior than general population statistics. I have included a video discussing Snapshot below:
The article notes that Allstate offers a device called Drive Wise.
Reinventing Architecture in Africa
July 21st, 2011 → 10:28 am @ Ari Kaplan
In this great piece – Architect Diébédo Francis Kéré Repurposes European Techniques For His Native Country – by Fast Company‘s Linda Tischler about a school in Gando, Burkina Faso, reinvention in the architecture industry is striking. It describes Diébédo Francis Kéré‘s amazing design of a school using a new type of brick made of clay, fortified with 10% cement, and compressed by hand tools into building blocks, as well as a unique double roof of clay and iron that produces a breeze simulating air-conditioning. Kéré even drew plans in the sand to help those erecting the structure.
An amazing individual, the article quotes Kéré:
You have to have a dream, start small and believe.
Reinventing Medicine and Law for $25 or less.
July 18th, 2011 → 8:16 am @ Ari Kaplan
In my new book, Reinventing Professional Services: Building Your Business in the Digital Marketplace (Wiley, 2011), I profiled, among many other ideas, Zipnosis, a web-based services that allows you to interact with a live doctor and receive a diagnosis (and associated prescription) in about 10 minutes for $25. And, for $9.95/month, LawyerUp will provide you with “a top-notch, pre-screened lawyer working for you within 15 minutes.” LawyerUp (discussed more fully in – NYT: Delivering a Lawyer Within 15 Minutes (Soda Extra)) and Zipnosis represent a new breed of companies reinventing once closely protected professional practices.
A New Billionaire’s 10 Rules for Success – How #4 Applies to Professionals
July 15th, 2011 → 7:56 am @ Ari Kaplan
This is a great piece – A New Billionaire’s 10 Rules for Success by Robert Frank of the Wall Street Journal – about Bob Parsons, the founder of GoDaddy.com. The one rule that resonated with me was #4: “Always be moving forward.” As part of this rule, Parsons suggests that “[s]mall daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.” Throughout the BigHand tour, I often raised the issue of incremental innovation and I discuss many features of this theory in Reinventing Professional Services: Building Your Business in the Digital Marketplace (Wiley, 2011). Professionals that focus on small changes to their marketing, operations and interaction often yield surprising results.
Can You Create an E-Book Like This for Your Clients and Prospects?
July 14th, 2011 → 7:36 am @ Ari Kaplan
Recently, productivity software maker, RocketMatter, introduced a free e-book called: The Law Firm of Tomorrow! – Part One: Marketing 2.0 and Legal Tech Savviness (click on the link to download), which provides -
- Guidance for creating a Facebook marketing strategy.
- Techniques for optimizing your email blasts and Twitter usage.
- Strategies for employing cloud computing to reduce both cost and risk.
- Ways to identify security issues to be aware of for mobile computing.
In reinventing your practice, business or profile, what type of information can you provide in an e-book format to help your audience? RocketMatter will be hosting a free webinar – Reinventing your Law Practice in the Recovery (click on the link to register) – on July 28th from 12-1pm ET during which I will provide a few suggestions for sparking some of these ideas.
I had the opportunity to interview RocketMatter founder, Larry Port, a few years ago. Our discussion highlights many of the trends that have continued to develop and a number of techniques that have helped make the company successful in this environment. Listen below:
A Culture of Collaboration
July 11th, 2011 → 5:12 pm @ Ari Kaplan
In an interesting example of reinvention, Chicago-based kCura, the maker of Relativity (and a book sponsor on the BigHand Reinvention Tour) announced that its Relativity software platform will gain its own applications marketplace, called Ecosystem, by the end of this summer, and that the new offerings will be developed by kCura, independent software vendors, and the user community.
Law Technology News reports in – kCura Plans E-Discovery App Market – that Digital Reef, Nuix, Pure Discovery, Wave Software, Equivio and Milyli have all provided firm commitments of their participation.
The initiative represents an effort at broadening a market through collaboration and is a great example of recreating a traditional model of technology development.