This Week’s Perspectives on the Future of Work: Week of December 14th
oDesk’s weekly column brings you the latest news on labor markets, innovation, and online work.
Week of 12/14/2012:
Bloomberg: Alternatives To Running Your Business From Home
When working from home, the line between personal and professional can quickly become blurred. If that sounds too familiar, check out Karen E. Klein‘s tips for finding flexible work options outside your home office. Beyond local coffee houses, Klein recommends venturing out to libraries, hotel lobbies, co-working spaces and even incubators for a refreshing change of scenery, some networking and collaboration opportunities, and often a great cup of coffee.
Forbes: Is Your Employment Model Too Stateful?
Is your workforce stateful or stateless? Rawn Shah discusses the concept of “Workforce-as-a-Service” or “talent in the cloud,” repurposing the IT descriptors ‘stateful’ and ‘stateless’ to describe allocation of human resources. Shah writes that a stateless workflow—one in which people can contribute to multiple projects at the same time instead of being stuck in one role or task—can help businesses be more flexible than with a stateful model. The benefits of going stateless include accessing the right employee expertise every time, while fostering greater business agility.
Business Insider: Mary Meeker’s Must-Read Presentation on the State of the Web
Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins shared her annual 2012 Internet Trends presentation this week. In it she discusses the state of the Internet, with analysis and forecasts on everything from mobile advertising to tablet adoption. She also discusses disruptive technologies and how they are transforming traditional industries, shifting the world away from a heavy dependence on fixed assets to one in which assets are lean and resources are on demand. This certainly applies to organizational structure and workforce models—check out one of her slides below!
Did we miss anything? Are there any insights you find particularly interesting? Let us know in the comments section below!
