Inside Job Need a fresh perspective on projects, markets and more? Chances are, the answers you need are right under your roof.

Like any entrepreneurial company, Full90 Sports Inc. needs good advice from time to time. The 3-year-old San Diego soccer head-protection company with $1 million in 2004 sales doesn't rely on consultants, however, for answers to its manufacturing, marketing and branding challenges. Instead, it relies on input from its 21 employees, who bring a variety of work experiences and viewpoints to the conference-room table.

"We don't need [consultants]; we've got internal experts," says founder and CEO Jeff Skeen, 46. "They've had enough experience on the outside that they know how this whole thing works."

Developing a critical mass of "outsider insiders"--insiders who can see problems from the viewpoint of an outsider, such as the customer or a supplier--is essential to doing business quickly and at less cost in today's fast-changing marketplace, says Janice Klein, a business professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Business and author of the new book True Change: How Outsiders on the Inside Get Things Done in Organizations, which looks at how alternative perspectives drive innovation and real change within companies.