Can Our Children Cocreate As Free Agents? WCIT 2008

Here's my 3rd and final two cents worth in conjunction with WCIT 2008.

We’re already witnessing a few smart companies using the Internet and related technologies in radical ways to harvest talents of innovators working outside corporate boundaries. Some of these companies routinely involve customers, independent contractors in the creation of new products. Loncin, a motorcycle manufacturer in China lets its suppliers work with one another to design components, making sure everything fits together, and reduce costs. The Linux operating system was developed over the Internet by a network of specialists. When this approach to innovation becomes widely practiced, the impact on labour activity and skills of our workforce could be significant.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia, is a product or service created by its distributed customers. OhmyNews, a popular South Korean online newspaper is written by over 6,000 citizen reporters. Threadless, an online clothing store engages hundreds of customers each week by getting them to submit new designs for T-shirts. The community at large votes for its favorites.

As more and more sophisticated work takes place interactively online and new collaboration and communications tools emerge, companies can outsource increasingly specialized aspects of their work.

Top talent for a range of activities—from finance to marketing and IT to operations—can be found anywhere. The best person for a task may be a free agent in India or an employee of a small company in Italy rather than someone who works for a global business services provider.

The implications of shifting more work to freelancers are interesting. For one thing, new talent-deployment models could emerge. TopCoder, a company that has created a network of software developers, may represent one such model. TopCoder gives organizations that want to have software developed for them access to its talent pool. Customers explain the kind of software they want and offer prizes to the developers who do the best job creating it—an approach that costs less than employing experienced engineers. Changes in the nature of labor relationships could shift payment schemes from time and materials to compensation for results. The other interesting thing, in conjunction with this new model, our workforce must have the required skills to be able to engage in this new model. Talents entering this workforce will require even stronger skills in team collaboration, information processing and problem solving.

I would not be wrong to say that this trend would gather steam in sectors such as software, health care delivery, professional services, and real estate, where companies can easily segment work into discrete tasks for independent contractors and then reaggregate it. As companies move in this direction, they will need to understand the value of their human capital more fully, seek new skills in the talents they need and manage different classes of contributors accordingly.

Again, all these trends in the way companies harvest talent and manage human capital will have a significant impact on future workforce. Are we preparing them for this new trend? Will our education system evolve fast enough to meet the future workforce? Are we doing anything as individuals, as parents and as responsible citizens to prepare our children who will enter the workforce?

Further reading:
Thomas W. Malone, The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004.

Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life, New York: Basic Books, 2004.

Daniel H. Pink, Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live, New York: Warner Books, 2001.

Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, Cambridge, MA: Yale University Press, 2006.

C. K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy, The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004.