Co-creating the future of law – how to be an architect and bridger

Building on Collective Genius, Linda Hill, professor at Harvard Business School, has teamed up with Jason Wild, CEO Co-Innovation and Customer Engagement at Microsoft, and others, to explore the concept of “Scaling Genius”. This is based on findings that the most successful leaders are able to build not only innovative teams but also networks and ecosystems that can co-create across boundaries. They do this by taking on interconnected functions including:

• as architects, building the culture and capabilities for co-creation; and
• as bridgers, bringing together networks of talent inside and outside their organisation to co-create.

Over the years our Business Transformation and Innovation team has been experimenting and learning what works (and what doesn’t) in terms of being architects and bridgers within the legal sector. We’ve been incorporating various approaches and tools in order to build capabilities, and establish co-creation opportunities, internally and with clients. 

The approaches and tools include everything from design thinking/human-centred processes, process improvement, lean, agile, in-person workshops, virtual workshops, legal project management and legal engineering (working at the intersection of law, data and tech).

This can all sound like buzzword bingo but they are powerful concepts when used in a context-sensitive way.

We know from our latest in-house survey that in-house teams are focusing on digitisation, improving efficiency and implementing new ways of working (eg playbooks). We also know from the survey that the biggest challenge for in-house team is finding the time and resources for these initiatives. This is where teaming up with others and co-creation can help! If you are keen to learn more about the approaches and tools for co-creation please be sure to get in touch.