Managing Growth

As Mark Ford, Principal, Deloitte, shares in this segment (download 7 minute iPod compatible video, 34MB), Deloitte's privacy and security practice is growing in excess of 30% per year, and the firm expects this rate to continue through 2010. An issue with this kind of growth in demand is how to add quality capacity to meet it.

Deloitte's strategy consists of a mixture of internal growth and and acquisition. Recently, the firm acquired Iditarod Systems, a McLean, VA based firm in the identity space. Iditarod has a similar culture to Deloitte's and brings a valuable technical focus to the table.

At Michigan Innovators, we tend toward Larry Schmitt's definition of innovation, i.e., a change that is accepted by the market place. In the case we have been discussing in this series of segments, Deloitte perceived a decade ago that the Internet would bring a whole host of access and security issues to its traditional corporate clientele. The rapid growth of Deloitte's Internet security related practices bears witness to the scope of change taking place in that market place.

(n.b., As used in this article, "Deloitte" means Deloitte & Touche LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Deloitte's site (www.deloitte.com/us/about) outlines the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.)

Kevin Phillips, founder of LTI-IT, believes in setting a point on the horizon and then sailing for it (download 7 minute iPod compatible video, 34MB). He began his journey 12 years ago as an internal IT technician for LimnoTech, the parent of LTI-IT. After 3 years, he had succeeded in getting LimnoTech's network to a very high level of performance, and he was ready to leave.

LimnoTech countered with an offer to let him start a division. Five years ago, they made the decision to start spinning that division out to a separate company. In the next 5 years, he would like the company to go national. He believes their training advantage will enable this move, and they already have projects in Washington, D.C., and Tijuana, Mexico.

As Paul Schutt describes in this segment (download 4 minute iPod compatible video, 19MB), there are over 130 people involved in publishing Issue Media Group's weekly regional news magazines. Although all reporting is local, many aspects of production are centralized. This centralization assures quality and helps maintain the editorial focus on growth. Central functions include:

• The executive editor
• The executive photo editor
• The executive film editor
• The production editor
• All back office functions

An additional benefit of centralization, particularly relevant to Internet publishing, is Issue Media Group's use of tagging to create mini sites around neighborhoods. Essentially, articles with particular tags are republished all together. In this way, a body of information on a topic can accumulate all in place, making an attractive target for search engines. Coherent tagging structures are only possible with a centralized editing function.

Issue Media Group can have 7 or 8 markets under development at once (download 9 and a half minute iPod compatible video, 50MB). Typically, Issue Media Group waits until it has pre-sold a year's worth of sponsorship in a market before it moves in. It discovers opportunities from the response it receives at economic development conferences where it presents. Sponsors include stakeholders in the local economy like institutions of higher education, banks, health care providers, and real estate.

In order to produce content for a given market, Issue Media Group contracts 3 editors and 10 to 15 stringers (freelance writers). The managing editor oversees content production. The development editor sniffs out new stories in economic development. The jobs editor maintains a finger on the pulse of hiring. The stringers act as role players, providing content in their areas of expertise, for instance economics. Finally, Issue Media Group does not limit itself to to text content but also produces a highly visual publication with images and video.