Posted by Bob R/CA on 3/28/06

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On 3/28/06, Dante wrote:
> Short-term, our business looks bad; over the longer
> haul, one has to think that there's hope. I am told
> that the Chinese character for "crisis" and
> "opportunity" is the same.

There is much wisdom in this perspective - if we focus too
much on the negative impacts on the old routine, we may
miss the opportunities on the horizon.

A good read on this concept is Clayton M. Christensen,
from Harvard School of Business, who describes the
phenomenon of "disruptive technologies," innovations or
changes that can shake an entire sector.

His is no simple "who moved my cheese" allegory, only
helping you become comfortable with changes - he proposes
frameworks for understanding why they happen, why they
happen inevitably, and why even the biggest players go the
way of the dinosaur if they don't respect and manage
change.

In addition to the sea change brought on by the regulatory
changes in bankruptcy, another big change hitting every
aspect of industry is globalization. We're seeing its
impact already through the outsourcing of legal work to
India. We had always assumed that the service industry
was safe from this trend, but that doesn't appear to be
the case, at least not completely.

I heard today that while our own Dow had risen a
respectable 7% or so in the last 6 months, the stock
market in India had grown a full 80% in the same time.

So there is clearly a massive change underway due to
globalization - the question is, where is the
opportunity? There must be a flip side to the outsourcing
of legal work to India - where is it? What practice areas
are best situated to benefit by it, and which are most
imperiled?

Crisis and change - disruptive innovations, 3/28/06, by Bob R/CA.

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