Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders
Company 2.0
Podcast Video | Posted by Phil Leigh on November 10, 2008
Download to iPod Video and iPhone
If you would like to learn how to attract disparate talent from the Internet in order to form companies that can tackle revenue-producing projects as a temporary “syndicate”, or as a continuing business, this interview is for you.
Our guest today is Brent Britton who is an attorney with Squire, Sanders, & Dempsey. Earlier he was associated with the MIT Media Lab where he worked as a software engineer. I met Brent at the Third Annual Sarasota Design Summit where he made a presentation on “Company 2.0”. The Summit was sponsored by the Ringling College of Art & Design.
Increasingly it appears that Digital Media companies are getting proposal requests from clients on projects where they (the media providers) may have only 70% - 80% of the required skills. Thus, they must find sub-contractors to do the balance of the work. However, owing to the rapid pace of technological innovation in Digital Media, it can often be difficult to find sub-contractors with the required skills.
Brent’s “Company 2.0” concept is an evolutionary bi-product of Web 2.0. It envisions an Internet marketplace where prime contractors can form alliances with subcontractors, possessing the skills missing by the primes, to undertake complex client proposals. The primes could form a syndicate with subcontractors on a project-by-project basis, or they might combine to form a continuing company to seek similar proposals in the future.
Since Brent is a lawyer he is pursuing a couple of Company 2.0 ideas in the legal field. One, called Lextrovert, would provide continuing education credits for lawyers at lower cost. By way of background, lawyers are required to continue their education periodically in order to stay up-to-date with the law. Typically they do so by attending conferences and listening to lectures, or by getting DVDs of the lectures. The lectures are typically provided by other lawyers.
The Lextrovert concept empowers the lecturing attorney to present his “class” as a recording done at his computer with nothing more complex than a WebCam and a PowerPoint. Continuing Education credits would be earned by those attorneys who pay to watch the recordings and complete whatever additional requirements may be applicable. Lextrovert will share the fees paid by the viewing lawyers with those attorneys who prepare and record the lectures.
Another example is a 2.0 Company that will provide legal services. For example, it can be expensive to get patents, trademarks, and copyrights. However, a law firm whose clients come mainly from the Internet can sharply reduce such costs via the economies-of-scale provided by the reach of the Net. Since they do not have to maintain offices in more than one location, their per-unit fixed costs can be much lower than is common for a traditional law firm. Brent’s (conceptual) law firm would use computer automation to automatically check for conflicts-of-interest before accepting new clients.
Length: This video interview is about 14 minutes long.
Categories: Podcast Video
Tags: Brent-Britton, Company-2.0, digital-media, Internet-video, Ringling-College-of-Art-and-Design, Squire-Sanders-Dempsey, Web-2.0
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