In an interview for MIT Sloan Mgt. Rev., Vol. 50, Spring 2009 at 67, Prof. Clayton Christensen warns that “93% of all innovations that have ultimately become successful started off in the wrong direction; the probability that you’ll get it right the first time out of the gate is very…
How do we define a practice? I believe there are hundreds of solid practices that many, even most, law departments should recognize and contemplate for their own department (See my post of April 2, 2005: survivor bias and best practices; July 14, 2005: the most important practices are the hardest…
A charming and informative book, Peter Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates (Princeton Univ. 2009) at 5, takes as its bedrock model of individual decision making what economists call “rational choice.” The rational choice framework makes three key assumptions about people. First, they are self-interested, caring more…
In the nick of time after just-in-time budgeting (See my post of Aug. 11, 2009: four techniques for budgets.), I ran a comb through my output since the most recent metapost on budgets. Sure enough, out fell a slew of them. The costs that comprise an internal budget surfaced regularly…
I have written extensively about budgets for legal departments, both internal and for matters handled by external counsel (See my post of Sept. 9, 2008: internal budgets with 27 references; and Sept. 12, 2008: internal budgets with 25 references.). Thus, when an article in the McKinsey Quarterly, 2009, No. 3…
The consequences of this change to legal departments occurred to me as I read E. Leigh Dance, Bright Ideas: Insights from Legal Luminaries Worldwide (Mill City Press 2009) at 161. Simon Slater of First Counsel expressed this view. Assume Slater spotted the movement correctly, and further assume that something similar…
Academics who study the companies in an industry sometimes use a statistical technique called cluster analysis. “Cluster analysis procedures generally use simple mathematical measures of distance or likeness to group individual firms on the basis of how similar or dissimilar they are to one another. The average numerical values on…
Preparing for a presentation on Six Sigma as it can be applied by general counsel, I collected what I have written since my first metapost (See my post of Feb. 13, 2008: Six Sigma with 18 references.). Surprisingly different applications of the set of Six Sigma tools have appeared (See…
Many economic sub-disciplines have stimulating ideas to offer law department managers. I have gathered my posts on economics as a broad field, but thought I would highlight four recent sub-disciplines (See my post of Sept. 19, 2008: economic concepts with 43 references, 17 internal references.). Behavioral Economics (See my post…
Claude Shannon outlined the principles of Information Theory in 1948, and the applications of his seminal work surround us still. According to the astounding publication by Autonomy, Meaning Based Computing, 2009 at 23-24, “Shannon stated that information could be treated as a quantifiable value in communication.” For example, from a…