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| CRBJ Home > November 2006 | |||||
They're justifiably outside the boxKay Plantes
Datex-Ohmeda (now GE Medical) faced excruciating product liability costs in the mid-1980s. The cause? A high incidence of anesthesia malpractice cases, coupled with liability laws that held manufacturers accountable for a significant majority of malpractice payments for medical errors, as the manufacturers had the deepest financial pockets. Rather than try to cover liability costs through pricing, Ohmeda took the unusual step of working collaboratively with its competitors to pass tougher anesthesia equipment standards, remove older equipment from use and create, with anesthesiologists, a foundation for anesthesia safety research and physician education. In addition to saving lives and dramatically lowering liability costs, changing the business environment helped Datex-Ohmeda achieve record-breaking revenue growth. The Wisconsin Collabora-tive for Health Quality and The Madison Patient Safety Collabora-tive are two enterprises in which collaboration among health-care competitors to improve health-care quality also trumps competition. The health-care field is not unique in offering opportunities to join with one's competitors. In-deed, every business is surrounded by a containing system, that is a larger set of forces (for example, the supply of talent, and regulatory and legal constraints) that shape its markets and financial returns. Inventive efforts to influence your containing system through collaboration with competitors, other industries or even other economic sectors can sometimes be a high-return strategy. Recently, a group of Capital Region business, government, nonprofit and educational leaders came together to accomplish what no single enterprise or economic sector could do alone. Their creation, The Collaboration Council, aims to change how regional leaders work together. The council's mission is to enhance our region's economic vitality while protect- ing our quality of life. The Colla-boration Council is creating a Regional Economic Development Entity (REDE) to execute its recommendations. Here are two examples of REDE initiatives that will help local businesses: First, an internship Web site and intern mentoring program will make it far easier for businesses to offer and find talented interns. Such efforts have been shown to reduce a brain drain to other states. Second, a marketing initiative and a Greater Madison Web site will draw UW-Madison graduates living outside Wisconsin back to the region. Research shows a high percentage of graduates would consider moving to our region. Embracing the emerging collaborative spirit, local economic development officials, traditionally fierce competitors, have pledged to work together to ensure local businesses stay and expand in the Capital Region and non-local businesses choose to move to our region over Raleigh-Durham, Austin, Portland and other out-of-state competitors. With business financing 90 percent of REDE's costs, the more businesses that contribute to REDE's start-up, the more REDE will contribute to helping local businesses succeed. We should also applaud local government leaders who have pledged to work together: Sun Prairie Mayor Joe Chase, Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, Fitchburg Mayor Tom Clauder, Bristol's Town Chairman Gerald Derr, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, DeForest's Village President Jeff Miller. In today's world, competition can steal your best people, imitate your technology, and rip off your processes in six months to a year. One remedy is to expand the strategies in your arsenal to include collaborative efforts that create a more supportive external environment. How might working with a set of uncharacteristic partners advance your business' success? Kay Plantes is a Madison economist, strategy consultant and executive educator. plantes@execpc.com madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
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