![]() So when you cut out the middleman, you save some money by going directly to the source. Thank you for having me.ĬURT NICKISCH: So let’s start with that phrase that we’ve all heard to cut out the middleman. Her book is Direct: The Rise of the Middleman Economy and the Power of Going to the Source. She’s here to talk us through her argument and to give some advice for how to navigate this economy as consumers and businesses. Kathryn Judge is a finance expert and professor at Columbia Law School. Today’s guest has written a thorough critique of what she calls the middleman economy. They’re invaluable connectors in a global and complex economy that also gives them outsized power. The prices and mind-boggling access of goods that come via middleman are hard for customers to resist. They’re why you can easily buy something designed in Europe and made in China, you can search homes for sale and apply for a mortgage without ever getting off your couch. I’m Curt Nickisch.Ī great deal of what’s possible in our modern economy is thanks to middlemen. Judge wrote the book Direct: The Rise of the Middleman Economy and the Power of Going to the Source.ĬURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. And she explains how customers and workers alike can lead to intermediaries offering more transparency and social value. Judge details the downsides and risks of this trend. Thanks to technology and globalization, she shows how the importance of “middlemen” in the value chain has increased, along with the length of global supply chains. Kathryn Judge, a finance professor at Columbia Law School, is troubled by the rise of intermediary platforms between products and services and the customers who eventually purchase them.
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