Design Outsourcing

Concept sketching techniques for Product Design.
Master this and you will have the most necessary skill that any product designer should possess.

Outsourcing occurs when a business secures (purchases) products and/or services from a third party, as opposed to producing them in-house. There are several advantages and disadvantages to outsourcing.
Advantages of Outsourcing
One of the biggest advantages can be lower personnel costs. By outsourcing job duties to non-employees, a business does not have to pay consistent wages or [...]

Best Applications Outsourcing: Oklahoma Dept. of Human Services and ACS, a Xerox Company
Awards Criteria: Best use of outsourcing to achieve the buyer’s objectives for ITO while also achieving mutually beneficial outcomes.

Lessons from the Outsourcing Journal:
* Buyers have to work closely with service providers when designing new systems. If they don’t get [...]

The idea behind personal outsourcing is to free up more of your time by delegating tasks that don’t require your personal touch to complete. I’ve heard of people outsourcing reading to their kids and even arguing with their spouse, but the whole point of personal outsourcing is to free up time from unimportant tasks [...]

10 Reasons to Outsource Product Design & Development
By Robert R. Andrews, Medical Division Manager, Foster-Miller, Inc.
The highly competitive medical industry requires firms to utilize every possible resource, both
internal and external, to stay ahead of the curve. While many medical device companies have
been capitalizing on the benefits of outsourced labor and manufacturing for years, only recently
have [...]

Some interesting tweets about “outsourcing”:
chris_heiler @ldesigngurl I hear ya. I’ve been outsourcing my bookkeeping to a virtual bk in Canada for about the last 10 months. I’ll never go back…
nlitenmebabe China investor finalizes deal on NBA’s Cavaliers (Reuters) : Reuters – A Michigan in.. http://bit.ly/7UWBhp [outsourcing sports??]
ttdotcom Join Matt Makowicz for ‘Everything You Ever Wanted [...]

Does this sound ridiculous?! American workers outsourcing their own personal work (and their life)!
Is this the future?

This is quite an interesting article from Time magazine about the quality of college education in the US, and how it impacts the job market. Do you think this has a direct relation to companies that outsource jobs overseas?
by Kristi Oloffson
Employers and career experts see a growing problem in American society — an abundance [...]

Do you think that just because your business is small you can’t outsource? There are ways to send your writing, IT tasks and other needs overseas to add efficiency to your enterprise. By doing some prior planning and following some pointers, you can get the quality help you need.
Starting Out
Here are some pointers for launching [...]

Outsourcing has become a “charged’ word. It is an important concept to understand because of its business applications (both for corporations and for small businesses) and because of its political implications. The following is intended as a primer on the main topics related to outsourcing. We have included a (hopefully) balanced summary of the “offshoring [...]