Round Table produces viral reaction among lawyers, profs

June 19, 2000

BY MICHAEL KRAUSS

This is one of an ongoing series of articles on interactive marketing leaders who are doing things other marketers can learn from. They're not yet household names, but will be in the headlines tomorrow. They're the emerging leaders of an emerging marketing discipline

Name, rank and serial number: Russ Rosenzweig, 29, CEO, Round Table Group (www.round.table.com), a consulting firm of academic experts and MBA strategists. BA, Economics, Evanston, Ill.-based Northwestern University 1993; MBA candidate University of Chicago, June 2000. Former senior consultant, Price Waterhouse. Former analyst, Alpha Capital Venture Partners, Chicago.

Mantra: "Align with the thought leaders."

Where the Round Table Group idea came from: "I was on scholarship on the debate team at Northwestern. In debate, every argument has to be supported by evidence. You quote a source, a citation—typically a professor. So I started meeting the professors.

"With the Internet, I knew there was a way to create a consortium of experts and link them together."

Some of the professors: Hal Varian, dean of the School of Information Management at University of California at Berkley; Eric Brynjolfsson, head of the e-commerce department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Yannis Bakos at New York University's Stern School of Business; Philip Anderson of the Tuck School at Dartmouth College; Phil Kotler at J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University; Pattie Maes at MIT; Austin Goolsbee and Harry Davis of the University of Chicago; Mohan Swahney of Northwestern; Tom Kosnik, who teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford; Roland Rust from Vanderbilt University.

How Round Table Group got started: "We pulled $10,000 together (and) ran a small ad in The Wall Street Journal announcing our service. We weren't quite sure who was going to call. (Then) law firms called who needed world class experts for litigation support and expert testimony. We said, 'Here's an interesting segment—litigating attorneys—they're identifiable, they're quantifiable, they're easy to find. They have the same need.' So we e-mailed lawyers all over the country."

That lawyers' reaction: "(It was) Viral. 'Wow, what a great idea. I can't make it to the event, but with your permission, I'm going to copy this to our whole litigation team because they should be aware of this service.'"

The professors' reaction: "There was a viral effect there, too. They'd recommend colleagues who could also do outside consulting and teaching."

What's next: "We're not venture-funded; this was a boot-strapped operation. We have an opportunity to expand the notion of a virtual network of experts: We're doing executive education, e-commerce boot camp seminars and helping build business strategies."

Michael Krauss is a partner with Diamond Technology Partners in Chicago.
He can be reached at news@ama.org.