Del.icio.us Innovation

When a group of lawyers, and one economist, gathered in San Diego earlier this month for a conference called Leading Legal Innovation, much of the discussion focused on parallels between the legal profession and U.S. automakers, and the two industries' shared resistance to innovation. If, as most at the conference believed, significant change in the legal market is inevitable, what will the new world of legal services look like?

While the global economy began slowing down in late 2007, forces transforming the face of business trace back more than a decade. Over that time period, technological improvements have made it ever easier to start and scale a business. Convergence went from being a cliché to a reality. Companies from countries like China, India, and Brazil burst onto the world stage. The global slowdown coupled with the credit crunch in late 2008 accelerated these forces. If sagging employment and dwindling economic prospects led historians to term the 1930s the Great Depression, perhaps it is appropriate to tab today's hyper-competitive market where competitive advantage dissipates in a heartbeat the "Great Disruption."

Profile of our US COO.

Site at SFMOMA that corresponds to the exhibit of the 1000 journals project.

malleable, low power

But 2009 is shaping up to be a trigger for an unprecedented surge of innovation that may be one of the most important turning points in the last 100 years.

"some of the more unique and inventive uses"

L2C