Gig Economy – HBR

Gig economy, colloquially known as sector for the informal workforce, had took off and was pretty successful, judging by the huge valuations for the likes of its unicorns such as Uber, Deliveroo, Grab, Gojek and Wework.  Those start-ups have certain things in common, in that their business platform is digitally enabled by huge advancement in technology.

Traditional Infrastructure

These platforms build up on their digital infrastructure in order to quickly scale up. There has been even the notion and also the rise of cloud computing, in that in lieu of investing in traditional physical server put up in office, these tech start ups opt to quickly scale up or down by paying for 3rd party cloud services hosted by the likes of Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Server. These 3rd party cloud computing enabled these start-ups with expanded storage, huge bandwidth and powerful computer processing capability to quickly cope up with spike in demand during certain timing.

The conveniences offered will thus enable these tech start ups especially in the e-commerce and data visualization sectors to benefit tremendously by scaling up or scaling down quickly accordingly. As such, it is pretty common these days to see the 11-11 sales, 12-12 sales, valentine’s day sales and so on in Amazon, Lazada, Alibaba and the likes, and really without the fear of booming web traffics in such short span of time, which could clog down traditional servers.

Traditional Workforce

Although they disrupt conventional businesses, they do tend to be low-entry barrier to new market participants to join in and they tend to be user friendly in terms of ease of using their services. Some of the existing business models that had been made obsolete are such as ticket agencies, hotel booking services, traditional retailers, moms and pops shops, department stores and the list go on. Some of them had adapted and moved on to that digital spaces not wanting to be left out.

Though being lesser discussed, these techs start ups do provide one crucial benefit. In that, they are able to offer working opportunities, absorb some of the workforce (especially the younger generations), increase labor participation and thus reduce crime rate especially in the developing countries where there is a huge gap between the classes, due to gaps in education and jobs and social opportunities.

As with the old, markets will keep on re-inventing themselves and as such, will keep spinning off new business models to absorb some of the affected workforce and some other new workers.

Traditional Office

An example of such new business model include the co-working space, in that it totally dismantle the old notion of traditional 9-5 office. Companies could opt not to invest, rent nor buying new offices in order to pack their staffs and could place their employees and or contractors in a more cost efficient co-working space. Other gig workers or contractors could also join in and share the facility and perhaps to exchange some ideas among themselves and therefore, perhaps to increase overall productivity and skills sets due to working together in clusters, which otherwise would not occur by these flexible ideas. In our previous article on the Future of Work, we had discussed that this is possible and that certain job functions could be outsourced and filled up by these Gig workers, who love the flexibility being offered.

Not long into the future, these gig economy could contribute and be the main growth engine of many nations.

escveritasDigital TechnologyThe Futuredisruption,economy,gig,techGig economy, colloquially known as sector for the informal workforce, had took off and was pretty successful, judging by the huge valuations for the likes of its unicorns such as Uber, Deliveroo, Grab, Gojek and Wework.  Those start-ups have certain things in common, in that their business platform is...Your Industries Online