on the IAM.com/Razorfish saga: “Our Work’s Fine, Just Pay the Bills“

I may be naive, but I think it’s ridiculous for a dot-com company to farm out their web design work. I can understand a bricks-and-mortar company hiring a company to do pure design work that will be overlaid on a structure they build themselves, or that they have partnered with someone else to do. I can even relate to a strategic partnership with a web company with the latter providing the actual site. But to hire someone straight up like that? I think it invites failure. It’s like a recipe. The knowledge of designers or programmers has to be deeply accounted for by management of a dot-com – it’s an essential piece of the puzzle. Their familiarity with the business model, the history of the project, but from their own unique perspective, is critical. And – the key challenge of a dot-com is just that – to integrate the technical knowledge of designers and programmers and others with the “product” as defined by a deep knowledge of the market, the business proposition, the value to users and to investors/clients. That’s not a casual thing – it’s a mission. I have some understanding of that – it’s a grandiose way of describing a big part of my job.