I’m traveling today from the West to East coasts and find myself catching up on my reading and blog posts. I was struck by an article in Fast Company magazine discussing a large pharmaceutical company. Now I must admit, I don’t usually think of the terms “fast company” and “large pharmaceutical company” in the same sentence. The article highlights Jorden Cohen, part of an organizational effectiveness group in New York who has built what is termed the Office of the Future (OOF). OOF utilizes a couple off-shore companies to handle some of our more mundane work – creating documents, manipulating and analyzing spreadsheets, scheduling meetings, and researching. As an example… “When questions come in, like who are the key players in the stem-cell market, often I would hire external consultants,” says Kristin Peck, head of worldwide strategic planning. “OOF does the same work for me at one-tenth the cost. It’s sort of mini-internal consulting, for very specific questions.” Jordan was inspired by Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat, and has developed innovative uses of off shore resources are becoming beneficial to his company.

photo by acbo

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