Specialisterne: leveraging the unique skills of Autistics at competitive market terms

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Specialisterne (‘the Specialists’ in Danish) seeks to harness strengths that many people with Autism Spectrum Disorders possess - good attention to fine details, precision, and high tolerance for repetitive tasks. Their consultants bring the joy of work into areas where it is often missing today.

There has been quite a bit of interest from researchers in the social enterprise. Robert Austin, Professor at Copenhagen Business School and Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, uses the Specialisterne story as a case study in his classes. Austin first learned about Specialisterne from Jonathan Wareham of ESADE Business School in Barcelona, Spain; the two cowrote the case with Javier Busquets, also of ESADE.
(source: Toronto Enterprise Fund Home Page Content News Articles The Surprising Right Fit for Software Testing)

Indeed, Robert Austin believes that Specialisterne’s approach could apply to others as well within companies. He believes that for a company to compete effectively in the 21st century, people with differences (whether it be Autism or anything else) need to be operating at the top of their respective games. Austin believes that redefining conditions like autism as differences, rather than disabilities, is important for a developed economy:

…“Innovation is where it’s at,” he says, “and you can’t innovate without variation.” Austin says we need to recognize special abilities in people, realize that these may come with challenges to working in a traditional workplace, and find a way to minimize disabilities and take advantage of differences…

…In an article he co-wrote this year with Javier Busquets, Austin quotes a manager at one of Specialisterne’s client companies, who had a revelation when he realised the tailored management approach could benefit all his staff.

"He realised that the same approach could be applied to all his employees, especially the particularly talented ones.

“Many (but not all) of those, he observed, had eccentricities or other idiosyncrasies of personality or behaviour.”

He goes on: “You don’t apply interchangeable units of labour to a task; rather, you ‘cast’ a group of variously talented ‘actors’ particularly suited to their roles. And you don’t get to choose among the features, only among the people. Suppress idiosyncrasy and risk suppressing talent also…”

(sources: http://www.irmuk.co.uk/articles/Austin_Managing_Differences.pdf; Akun Demo Slot Mahjong 3 PG Soft Anti Kalah, Simulasi Demo Gacor Pragmatic X1000 Maxwin; Company where being ‘different’ is a bonus)