Background
The impetus for the creation of this website has been given by the course on ‘Outsourcing & Off-shoring’ I have been teaching since 2005 at the Business School of Lausanne University (Faculté des Hautes Etudes Commerciales).
Doing this, I am looking back on a +20 year career in management consulting and information systems integration. As a Project Manager and then a Partner with Accenture, I was impressed by observing the breaking up of significant value chains in different industries - and how the structure and dynamics of some industries hae changed over the last 10-20 years.
And, yet, outsourcing and off-shoring are still relatively young value creation strategies. Best practices in terms of realising an outsourcing project as well as managing an on-going outsourcing relationship are still not widely available and acknowledged. Finally, at least in some geographic areas respectively industry sectors, outsourcing experience still is quite scarce and has not developed into solid industry practice.
Goals
The aim of this platform is to contribute to the development of outsourcing relationships that are productive and sustainable - from a strategic, financial and moral point of view.
The actual goals express my understanding of the role and added value that academic research and development can provide to the business world as well as vice-versa, i.e.:
- to provide the neutral position allowing to identify best practices ,and the effective ‘meeting place’ allowing to share them among industry participants;
- taking a step back, to come up of with new concep,tual or methodological approaches to effectively address key business issues;
- to create and energize a network composed of interested business professionals, academic researchers, etc., dedicated to outsourcing & off-shoring topics and related disciplines.
Considering the status of the outsourcing industry and the location of most of the specialised advisory institutions, a special focus will be given here to the situation in Switzerland and in Continental Europe.
Content
As indicated, this web site will hook into expertise located with business professionals and leading academics. It will present them in the form of Executive Insights as well as Expert Voices.
In addition to video and audio interviews with executives and experts, relevant know-how will be tracked down as presented in relevant books and periodicals proposed as Literature Reviews. Specific training opportunities in the form of ‘physical’ seminars or web-based conference will be pointed out and entered into a dedicated Agenda. Finally, feeling the urge to make all this knowledge operational, Case Studies will be presented, some of which prepared on an exclusive basis for this website.
Thanks
At last, many thanks to the professionals that helped me set up this blog: Alex Osterwalder from Arvetica shared his vision for the innovative use of web technology with me as well as many practical hints. (Alex also writes a unique blog on business models at: www.businessmodelinnovation.com.) Roberto Ortelli (rortelli(at)gmail.com) was in charge of programming and successfully customized Wordpress. Alessandro Anzani defined the visual outlook of the website and interfaced with Diane Zivkovic who designed the icons.
Pius Bienz, PhD
October 1, 2008