By Laura Dambrosio December 12, 2014
Earlier this year, Ilya Pozen—well-known entrepreneur and owner of development agency Coplex—published an LinkedIn article on why the agency model is dead. He goes as far as to say that this model “sucks the innovation out of companies”.
Why would an agency declare the death of the model it was built upon? In this case, Pozen is channeling his entrepreneurial dexterity to disrupt his own company. He calls out the traditional agency structure and pricing strategies as outdated. His stresses a few important distinctions between where we’ve been and where we’re going, the biggest being the notion of co-creation—where cross-functional teams collaborate with clients to get to market faster and keep pace with rapid innovation in the industry. You’ll find a manifesto of sorts on the Coplex website (formerly Ciplex) that lays out their views:
We need an agency model that allows for collaboration, transparency, and agility. We need an agency that doesn't waste time and keeps things simple. We need a model that allows for innovation, changing requirements, and true creativity, which is so crucial to drive our modern business forward.
Embracing change eliminates stagnancy, and Coplex seems dedicated to finding the best new way of doing things. Just a few months after Pozen’s article, we published a case study on how they use a lean methodology in their development process. This philosophy is apparent throughout production, where they use a very agile workflow that lets designers, developers, and clients iterate—or rather, co-create—alongside each other to produce innovative WordPress and Drupal websites.
In his article, Pozen calls on the industry to acknowledge the need to change—to help shape a future where cross-discipline learning and speed to market are far more important than job titles or hierarchies. Expect to see more of this as lines continue to blur—the lines between mobile and non-mobile devices, the lines between design and development, and the lines of demarcation around what a digital agency should look like in 2015.
Topics: Education, Agency Partners
