the ki work blog

Meet the new capitalists

Since the credit crunch started the phrase 'New Capitalism' has appeared with increasing frequency from the mouths of journalists, pundits and politicians. What does it mean? What are the implications of 'new capitalism' for ki workers?

From my research all I can say is 'new capitalism' is best defined as 'old capitalism'. Yep. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, as Pete Townsend wrote.

The fate of the term was sealed at a meeting on 8 January which brought together French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and, er, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a politician as sorely missed as George W Bush will surely be. 

I'm sorry, but when three such enthusiastic supporters of unfettered free markets are suddenly converted to 'new capitalism' it brings out the skeptic in me. (And I should add all the views expressed are my own and are not necessarily those of ki work.) 

Out of gas

These politicians sound too much like the board of a car company trying to get another year's sales out of an aging model. So they add some chrome, different shaped headlamps and an upgraded stereo system. Now it's 'new'. But under the chrome it's the same old gas-guzzling, inefficient, outmoded vehicle.

'New capitalism' is a way of describing the desperate measures that are being applied to keep the sinking globalized economy afloat. The fond hope of Merkel, Sarkozy and that English bloke is that sufficient patches can be applied to the ship of market capitalism so that it will appear to sail as well as it did a year or so ago. Of course, there's no chance of that.

Their form of 'new capitalism' has as much chance of success as Mikhail Gorbachev's new communism a couple of decades ago.

As politicians they do have an impossible task. They cannot say what everybody else knows. We have no idea what is going to happen to the global economy. Change is the only certainty.

Corporate death

That's why I'm so enthusiastic about ki work and believe me I'm not one of nature's natural evangelists. I'm at heart a cynical old hack ready to see the worst in most things. But I do see the future of my livelihood is through flexibility, adaptability and low capital outlay. 

We may not know where the economic system is heading, but we can see some of the forces shaping it. I've been impressed by the work of Harvard's Umair Haque , Director of the Havas Media Lab. He talks of the change from symmetric to asymmetric competition. To over-simplify, capitalism used to revolve around competition between corporate behemoths. Think General Motors versus Ford. Brands such as Coca-Cola took decades to build. Then along comes Google, achieving its position of power and brand with next to no marketing and without attempting to destroy its competition.

I'm slightly disappointed that he chose Google as an example, not that it's inaccurate, but it is another corporation even if it has a very different structure and philosophy compared with its predecessors. Far more interesting to me is the way small businesses can now successfully challenge and beat the big guys. 

The strength of the old corporations lay in their size. Now that's what holds them back. Encumbered by debt, real estate and old working practices, they cannot compete with adaptable, flexible and relatively debt-free small businesses.

Join the revolution

That's where ki work comes in. A team of professionals each working from home, linked to colleagues anywhere in the world via the internet, has negligible overheads. As a result they can beat conventional bricks-and-mortar companies on both quality and cost. 

Visit ki work's main site and see how you can use our online marketplace to fulfill your project requirements or create your own virtual business as a ki worker. 

How Workforce Management magazine predicts glowing future for ki work

New year's the time for 'experts' to make predictions. They're all pretty gloomy. There's no debate as to whether the cup's half full or half empty. Instead optimists hope for a refill in 2010 while pessimists or, perhaps, realists expect a longer wait. That probably makes 'sobriety' one of the key words for 2009.

Fortunately ki work offers a home-brew alternative to fill your own (virtual) glass or better to share a pitcher. Who wants to work (or drink) alone? The good news is ki work's collaborative, work-sharing, guerrilla outsourcing model is finding friends everywhere, even if they don't know it yet.

The leading HR magazine and website Workforce Management lists 60 top predictions, most of which are in total accord with the ki work model. In fact there's so little to contradict the ki work philosophy that it makes my job hard. 

Normally I'd point readers to some small nuggets that back up my argument. This time I can only recommend you read the whole article. Believe me, it's fascinating.

Indeed, the one key prediction that writer Ed Frauenheim picks out to introduce the article is: "There will be more emphasis on collaboration and using technology to support it." Well, of course.

Another couple of quotes I'd pick out are:

"The talent market will look a lot more like eBay than Monster or Yahoo HotJobs."

And:

"The concept of offshoring will cease to exist. Talent will exist globally and companies will go where the talent is. The purpose will not be to get the lowest-cost labor, but rather the highest-quality talent."

There are a couple of key points where I think the article is fundamentally wrong because it assumes most conventional business organizations will be agile enough to cope with the seismic changes that are taking place. I believe that most current business models will prove unsustainable. (But then if I was writing an article for HR professionals I'm not sure if I'd want to be the one to tell them their profession was on the verge of being swept aside by the tide of history.)

My other disagreement with the Workforce Management article is it's postulating these changes ten years away in 2018.  The dramatic shifts in the way we work are going to happen an awful lot sooner than that. Sign up free for ki work and see how you can be part of the work revolution.

Here is tomorrow's news

Image via Wikipedia

The demise of newspapers will be a sad loss for local communities, democracy and journalists. (Okay I know the last is a little selfish but it has been my profession for too long so I have a vested interest.) But seriously, papers at their best do hold local politicians to account and they provide some sort of social cohesion. Without them it'll be difficult to find out what local sports teams are up to, what's playing at the multiplex and even who has died in the neighborhood.

Although as I said in my last ki work blog posting I believe traditional printed newspapers cannot survive or even reinvent themselves I do think there's room for a new type of local news source which uses traditional skills. To show how it could work I'm going to develop a theoretical model here.

Local news reinvented

We'll start with a journalist called Jack who has been laid off when the newspaper he was working for closed down. Fortunately he's got a bit of cash in the bank from his final pay-off to cover not so much the start-up costs of his new business but to enable him to eat while he develops revenue streams.

As a reporter and a resident he'll have developed good local contacts including with the police, churches, schools, politicians, shopkeepers and all the people who keep a community running. He might not have a printing press, but he does have a PC and an internet connection so putting their stories online is pretty simple.

Using blogging software he creates a local website covering the same things as his old paper. It is a great deal of work as even so-called 'user-generated content' has to be chased and often delicately rewritten. He can't afford to alienate contributors.

One thing he probably won't have to worry about is search engine optimization. As his audience is geographically focused publicizing the site is a combination of word-of-mouth, flyers and ads in stores. In that context Google ranking doesn't matter too much.

Undercutting the corporations

The central point about his whole operation is that it's cheap. He already has a PC and broadband. Hosting his site costs less than $10 a month. His investment isn't cash, but time. It's a sea change from his old newspaper with hundreds of staff, expensive offices, printing and distribution to pay for. Image by ~jjjohn~ via Flickr

But old papers face one challenge in common: finding revenue. The easiest way to monetize a site is through contextual advertising such as Google's AdSense. There are also thousands of affiliate schemes which give website owners a percentage of sales income from the likes of Amazon. These are simple schemes to set up, but they're unlikely to give Jack a living wage.

A more effective way of earning money is to sell ads and sponsorship to specific businesses. This is not an easy task for a journalist. The problem comes in retaining any vestige of independence when speaking to a local business. Is it advertising that he's after or a story? And will an advertiser get editorial preference?

The ki work model

Image via Wikipedia

This is a completely different form of organization from that which controls most newspapers today. Instead of a few companies with a large number of employees it is a network of skilled individual entrepreneurs. In many ways it's a return to the way newspapers used to be locally owned and run.

The solution is to hire somebody to sell advertising. That person does not have to come from the neighborhood. All that's required is for Jack to supply a list of the right contacts and phone numbers. And, hey, we've got the beginnings of a ki work virtual business selling ads for a number of these news microsites. Advertisers can then be offered packages covering several areas. But the whole thing's flexible unlike a newspaper with its fixed staff and other costs.

There are other ways for Jack to develop his virtual business across the internet. Resources can be shared. He could strike a deal with a movie site to provide reviews for the shows at the local multiplex. Both sides will gain traffic. In ki work terms it represents a form of collaborative capitalism where small businesses are able to undercut large corporations. Big may be beautiful, but in the online world it's not always financially viable.

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What's the point of the ki work blog?

In fact what's the point of any business blog?

I believe every business should have a blog. Of course I would say that. It's my job. But even Joe the Plumber could pick up extra customers with a little help from the internet. Seriously though, there aren't many companies that wouldn't benefit from improved communication with current and potential customers.

Before looking at the benefits I'll briefly point out the pitfalls of blogging for business. The key thing to remember is that a blog is a public representation of you and your company. If it is badly written, sparse and out of date it will reflect badly on your brand.

The problem is that it's easy to start a blog, but rather harder to keep it going. It takes considerable time and effort. That's why a business could benefit from employing a professional blogger or an editorial team who will ensure that the blog is regularly updated and of a quality to show your business in the best light. This could cost a lot less than you might expect.

Let's see how your business might benefit:

1. A blog helps you to develop a personal relationship with customers and, perhaps, employees. Partly this is a result of the informal first-person style of blog writing. More importantly they're interactive. If there isn't a public response mechanism, it isn't a blog.

2. A blog will promote your corporate website. As any search engine optimization (SEO) expert will tell you, the way up the Google rankings is through links and current content. A regularly updated blog will provide both. But do make sure your blog is properly integrated with your main business website.

3. You'll attract better job applicants. The best people want to work for dynamic businesses that are passionate about what they do. And where do potential job applicants look first? Google. Then your website and blog.

4. Blogging can help to develop internal team spirit. Communication is not always perfect for any business with more than a handful of employees, not to mention freelances and contractors. A blog provides an informal repository for information about the business and a place where people with a direct stake in the business can interact.

5. A blog can improve your media profile. News events don't always happen when we want or can control them. Competitors make announcements, governments introduce legislation and accidents happen. Journalists need quotes and expertise. Where do they turn to first? The web and Google. If a person's not immediately available the informal style of a blog makes it the next best source for a quote. And when your blog's been used once journalists will come back for more.

6. Blogging increases your intelligence. No really. I don't mean it'll boost your IQ, but a good blog links and reacts to other blogs and news sources. The whole process of creating an informative online resource is a valuable activity in itself as an objective for research.

7. Your products can be improved by blogging. A blog provides the ideal place for customers and employees to offer suggestions for improvements and new products. Just make sure somebody's responsible for keeping an eye on the interaction. A blog entry followed by a whole string of complaints is not a good advertisement for your business.

8.  Blogging gives your business authority. Everybody who runs a business is an expert on their sector. Putting your name to regular blog entries that display that expertise will boost your image, credibility and stature as a business leader and by extension that of your company.

Whatever the combination of reasons, a well-maintained blog will benefit your business. And if you're looking for a professionalto run your blog you could do worse than posting a project here on ki work .

Reuters writes about boom in online job seeking

This is one of an increasing number of articles that show how the recession is driving people to join professional social networking sites such as, in this case, LinkedIn and Xing. Online networks a magnet for job-seekers | Technology | Reuters

The fact that it was written by the Reuters news agency means it will be very widely read. Reuters has traditionally made its income from charging newspapers, television and radio stations across the world for the right to publish it articles.

For people who are insecure in their jobs this type of article represents both good and bad news. The increasing popularity of social networking services means employers will turn to them as a means of filling vacancies. But how do you differentiate yourself from the millions of other people also registering in the hope of improving their job prospects?

One of the people quoted in the Reuters article says it took him a long time to build up his network to the point where it helped him to find a job last year. Now it's much more difficult.

There is a powerful argument for investing a little cash to boost your online career. If nothing else it means you'll probably be competing in a space that's a little less crowded. After all if you're unemployed you've nothing better to do all day than post copies of your resume on free sites.

You'll still need to put some effort into networking. Money alone won't buy you friends. But it is worth cehecking out the premium options offered by social networking and employment websites.

On ki work's site we offer the option of paying $50 a month to become an accredited expert. This gives increased prominence to your online brand, allows you to certify professionals and buyers while, most importantly, giving you the opportunity to earn from leveraging your network. You'll find plenty more information here at ki work.

Of course most people won't pay a subscription for any online service and many of them may prosper. But is worth thinking about whether it might be worth boosting your earning prospects by investing a little cash along with your time.

International supply chain veteran links up with ki work

Neil OConnell is the latest to join ki work as a category leader - in the specialist marketplace of supply chain management software. His 17-year success story includes four years as CTO of supply chain and logistics provider StonePath as it grew from zero to $350 million in revenue. At Oracle he led the North American Industrial Supply Chain Group. His experience includes B2B, B2C, ecommerce for retailers and manufacturers along with third party logistics providers.

Neil Says: "As we continue to race forward with advances in technology and the emergence of more and more countries in the supply chain the software community will require better ways to collaborate and deliver to enterprises worldwide. ki work affords us the opportunity to build a brand and reputation that eliminates the barriers of location."

To join Neil's marketplace, either to find or outsource work, simply go to Neil's SCM software marketplace, and create a service offer or project. Neil is also looking for Experts to build teams for larger projects - contact Neil directly via ki work if this interests you.

view the press release

cut costs - go virtual

As the credit crunch bites, websites such as LinkedIn are reporting huge increases in traffic as job-threatened experts rush to pimp their resumes. Job sites and freelance marketplaces are similarly swamped with applicants. Few people regard their current employment as safe.

It doesn't take an economist with a crystal ball to see that the job losses already afflicting the financial services sector will soon spread. If banks won't even lend to each other, what hope is there for other businesses? It's only a matter of time before their credit dries up.

But crisis brings opportunity, and this should excite entrepreneurs. There are new opportunities since the original dotcom depression at the start of the decade, like widespread penetration of broadband, mobile devices and lower-cost web development. Last time round internet access outside the office meant dial-up. Now there's no need for a physical office at all. It's an unnecessary expense.

In many ways, a virtual organisation is ideally suited to an economic downturn - it's flexible, scalable and has very few fixed costs. That's how we operate at ki work, where we're developing a platform for online workers to create virtual businesses and sell their services. The ki work team of 14 is itself distributed around Scotland, England, Ibiza, Ukraine and California, with occasional people sourced through the ki work site doing short-term projects. We see a future where social networking provides the foundation for the creation of virtual teams and long-term businesses. It's a natural extension of services such as LinkedIn and Facebook. 

There are plenty of tools to enable virtual working (see web apps to beat the credit crunch), but even though the technology's available, people management across large distances, and even cultures, can still be difficult. The art of online communication isn't always easy, but it can be done. We're already seeing large communities of developers come together and self-organise to create great projects entirely online. And these online communities become progressively resistant to macroeconomic problems - it's hard to see the development of Linux or Firefox being slowed by the credit squeeze.

Undoubtedly many companies are going to fall victim to the credit crunch. But with credit being increasingly expensive and hard to come by, businesses which are unencumbered by debt, rent and capital will be in an extremely powerful position. As conventional business structures crumble around us, we may be seeing the dawn of entirely virtual corporations.

freelancers of the world unite to combat credit crunch

One of the widely predicted effects of the current financial crisis is a large increase in the number of freelance workers. Even before the world's financial institutions started to tumble freelancing was growing fast along with flexible working and outsourcing. But could freelancing soon be as outmoded as the 'job for life'?

The original 'freelances' or 'freelancers' were mercenaries, literally 'free lancers'. Today we're hired more because of our skills in writing or programming than for our jousting prowess, although the thought of riding into an office on horseback does have a certain appeal.

From a company perspective freelances (without armour!) have long offered a cost-effective means of hiring specialist skills to complete short-term projects or to cope with the ebbs and flows of business. At a time of economic turbulence, freelances have provided a way of filling gaps and grabbing opportunities without the long-term costs of employing permanent staff. Freelances are sometimes cheaper and always more disposable, but their relationship with a company is still basically that of an employee.

But this downturn comes at a time when knowledge work has changed dramatically. Many of the practices that have continued since mass production created the industrial revolution are now obsolete. Large offices are just factories for knowledge workers where businesses reaped the economies of scale from sharing resources, most recently in the form of data networks. Now, for millions of workers, there is no real need for them to physically vist the office to access those resources.  They're available anywhere with a dial tone. Physical offices are often just a drain on resources.

The internet means companies can use the best and most economical knowledge workers wherever they are in the world. You only have to look at the growth of flexible working and global outsourcing to see how businesses are taking advantage of these possibilities. But they're also having to change their working practices.

Partly this is because you can't see what anybody is doing if they're not in the office. The focus has to be on outcomes. Logic might suggest that requires the creation of very detailed and specific goals. The problem is if there is no room for manoeuvre the results are unlikely to surpass the lowest common denominator. Improvement is actually discouraged because it might not fit the detailed specification.

Arguably, the most effective form of outsourcing is one which uses collaboration rather than instruction. Outcomes may be drawn up more loosely so there is room for initiative from the individuals or groups doing the work. At some stage the outcomes will become more important than the organisation.

If that point is a little too philosophical, the current financial crisis is also creating conditions which encourage alternatives to freelancing. Although the length and depth of the downturn is impossible to predict, it's certain that credit will be harder to find and more expensive. Immediately, that's going to cause problems for companies lumbered with large amounts of real estate. Even if they downsize, outsource or otherwise reduce their cost base, they're still going to be left with a dubious physical asset on their balance sheets. They're going to face a threat from newer, unencumbered businesses.

And, when the downturn ends, credit is still going to be tight even though companies need to invest to survive. If your business is, for example, selling phones, MP3 players and computers, you'll be left behind if your designs are two years old. Somebody else is going to be making something faster, more desirable and cheaper.

One way of continuing development through the credit squeeze is by spreading risk and reward. Instead of employing freelances to complete projects, allow them to self-organise as partners. It's not a new idea. Any even slightly complex product we buy is a combination of components from different manufacturers with a multiplicity of intellectual property owners. The internet enables collaboration on a massive scale to create products such as the Firefox browser and Linux operating system. On a commercial level eBay and Amazon provide a platform for hundreds of thousands of small businesses.

Ki Work is another platform that has the potential to extend the collaborative, virtual and flexible way of doing business. It offers a low-cost framework for knowledge workers to come together to create highly-flexible virtual organisations. These can either sell their services to larger businesses or, as may become more the pattern of modern commerce, collaborate with other organisations to create something so new we don't really have a name for it yet.

Welcome to the 'virtual collaborative corporation' - virtual business, powered by freelancers. Is this the new wave of employment that will rise out of the destruction of the financial system?

Nick Clayton

(photo credit: leicester county council)

How I was fired from The Scotsman for blogging

As I was writing what was to be a new blog entry on the difference between ki work and freelancing something happened to me for the first time in my life. I was fired. Yes, I've lived through recessions and been made redundant before, but I've never been sacked for any sort of misconduct, real or imagined.

The story of my sacking has been covered in a few places including: The Guardian's media website, Roy Greenslade's blog
and UK Press Gazette. You can also read the original article and a follow-up on allmediascotland's website.

In my words here's what happened and it's a sad example of the way old organisations can react as they face being swept away by the digital tide.

Until this week I wrote a weekly gadget column for The Scotsman. I've had a relationship with the newspaper for more than a dozen years as a staff member and freelancer. Throughout the dotcom boom of the 1990s I was the paper's technology editor, with sole responsibility for its weekly supplement called 'Interactive'. Later I was part of the team that launched the award-winning scotsman.com website. And I continued to write for the paper after I left to start my own business penpusher.com in 2000.

Last week I wrote one of my regular blogs for allmediascotland. As you might imagine it's a fairly specialist website for media types in Scotland. The theme of the article was how communications technology would make newspaper offices and some types of job obsolete. In fact, I was describing how something along the lines of the ki work model could be applied to newspapers and their associated websites.

In passing I mentioned how all but one of the estate agents I had talked to about selling my Edinburgh flat had told me not to bother advertising in The Scotsman. I didn't think there was anything remotely contentious about reporting these conversations. In fact at the end of August the paper carried an article about the company that owns it under the headline Johnston Press hit by house market woes as property advertising slides.

Most newspapers have traditionally made the majority of their income from advertising, not from the cover price. And the most profitable ads are recruitment and property. Partly that's because they can charge more from a page full of small ads than a few big ones. More importantly, perhaps, local newspapers operated a de facto monopoly. Until a few years ago, for instance, I would have had no option but to advertise my flat for sale in The Scotsman because anybody wanting to buy property in Edinburgh would look at the paper's property supplement.

Now the logical place to go to is the web where potential buyers can search according to criteria such as price, location, number of bedrooms and so on. Unless a property is unique and photogenic advertising is probably a waste of money. It's the same with recruitment. Most jobs can be broken down into fairly simple criteria of location, qualifications and salary. A simple online form will lead job-seekers to what's available.

A few years ago newspapers had the opportunity to use their brand recognition to grab the online property and recruitment markets. It would have been a bold move to offer free advertising on their websites. But they were scared this would cannibalise their income so they left the door open for craigslist, Monster jobs and others to take the markets for themselves. The newspaper industry hasn't been uniquely shortsighted, its behaviour is little different from the music business which is also being destroyed by its determination to protect its short-term position.

So far this blog posting has been somewhat negative, looking at the economic forces that are destroying newspapers. I like to think that some of those same forces can be harnessed to produce something better. I don't mean a world where bloggers replace all other news sources. I do believe there are skills in written journalism that go beyond the ability to type. Wikipaedia has shown that collaborative editing can produce quality writing. I'll look at how I think that model could be developed for news journalism in a future ki work blog.

What the credit crunch means for IT | Tech News on ZDNet

What the credit crunch means for IT | Tech News on ZDNet

We're all IT workers now and this article contains some good news and some bad news for us all. Let's look at the bad news first.

The immediate impact of the credit crunch will be to throw thousands of employees out of work. Non-essential projects will be put on hold which will hit contract workers hard. Outsourcers in countries such as India will suffer as they rely on the financial sector for a very large proportion of their income.

It's obvious really. In the short term companies will look to make quick savings and it's cheaper not to renew contracts than to lay employees off.

In the longer term savings from outsourcing, especially to countries with lower rates of pay, will outweigh the costs of redundancy. What's not clear is when companies will move from short-term cost-cutting to longer term savings.

The article suggests home working will continue to grow as companies sell off real estate. It also suggests there could be a silver lining arising from the crisis that's engulfed huge financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers, AIG and Britain's Northern Rock. Governments are going to look at legislation which will reduce the risk of them getting into a similar mess. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act which followed the accounting scandals which brought down Enron and others created large numbers of jobs.