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.

So what have gorillas got to do with business process outsourcing?

Image via Wikipedia

So what is ki work "virtual business process outsourcing" (or VBPO for short)? Is ki work "collaborative capitalism"? Is ki work "guerrilla outsourcing"? (That's as distinct from "gorilla outsourcing" which is monkey business.) Or is there a better way to describe ki work?

I know you might say: "It's all just words. What matters is the ki work concept." But words are very important to me, not just because they're how I make my living.

Say I meet somebody in a bar, a cafe or whatever and they ask me what I'm doing. I reply that I'm editing a blog for ki work. They'll ask: "What's that?" I could say: "Oh, it's a platform for virtual business process outsourcing." Maybe it's just the company I keep, but instantly the by-now uninterested party would suddenly remember an urgent appointment, spot somebody they just had to speak to or develop an impossibly weak bladder.

Do you see my difficulty?

The erstwhile CEO and founder of ki work Michael Wolff tells me this isn't really a problem as people in the world of outsourcing talk of nothing but BPO or VBPO (obviously that's "business process outsourcing" or "virtual business process outsourcing). Apart from the way it doesn't make outsourcerers sound as if they're the most exciting people to spend time with, the terms and acronyms are probably as clear as mud to the average ki worker. Hey, until a few months ago my eyes would have glazed over.

Michael and the other top ki workers have come up with a couple of other suggestions, most recently "guerrilla outsourcing". This is actually a very descriptive term for ki work.

Guerrilla warfare involves small groups of lightly armed, highly mobile combatants challenging better-equipped, but less mobile, conventional armies. Ki work enables small organizations of highly-flexible online workers to take on large corporations and win. 

While I can absolutely see the parallels, there's something on an emotional level that I find slightly uncomfortable about the phrase "guerrilla outsourcing". The problem I have is that I don't feel as if I'm some sort of successor to Che Image via WikipediaGuevara as a I sit banging away at my keyboard. 

In the same vein I always laughed behind the backs of people who called themselves "road warriors". A software salesman - not many women want to class themselves as "warriors" - dressed in chinos and a polo shirt is not Mad Max. Ditch the laptop and the mid-range Ford, get a spear and a chariot, then I'll believe you're a "road warrior".

As I said, my reaction is totally emotional and irrational.

This brings me to the other description of ki work as "collaborative capitalism". I've blogged before about how ki work represents part of the future as old-style managerial capitalism falls apart.  

I love the idea of the internet providing new ways to work where we collaborate online, across national borders, to undercut and replace traditional corporations. Certainly big isn't always beautiful any more. 

The benefits of economies of scale are disappearing in the digital world. Who needs a big office building with a sophisticated computer network and thousands of employees when your big business can be undercut by a bunch of homeworkers linked by the internet? 

So again, "collaborative capitalism" offers a good description of ki work, but as a term it comes with baggage. What I mean is, in a strangely contradictory way, some people seem to believe that if you talk about "capitalism " you must be a communist. It's nonsense of course, but it's hard to escape the emotional subconscious impact of words.

So how do we describe ki work: collaborative capitalism, guerrilla outsourcing or virtual business process outsourcing? Perhaps you can offer a better suggestion. I'd certainly be interested to hear what you have to say.

What can Ants teach us about Business?

When it comes to organization you might have thought ants were pretty close to perfection. Every member of a colony knows its knows its place and exactly what its role in life is. It's a system that's worked for probably millions of years, but recently one species has found there is room for improvement. And it's having a devastating effect on every other life form that comes into contact with it.

There is a frighteningly detailed report in Science Daily describing the 'new pest'. Well to us it might be a destructive and disruptive pest, but to this fairly unknown group of ants this is success. If they were people they'd be dominating their market.

The 'lasius neglectus' species got its name because it was ignored by science. Not any more. It's now creating 'super-colonies' which are destroying everything in their path as they cut a swathe across Europe. The secret of their success is the presence of multiple queens in a single colony. Other ant organizations fall apart when their single queen is taken out.

Could a similarly loose form of organization have a similar effect on the world of work? As global businesses with fixed goals and structures crumble under the impact of the credit crunch it's a vital question.

At ki work we believe there is an alternative in the form of 'collaborative capitalism'. The development of loose, flexible business organizations able to adapt without cost almost instantly to change poses as much of a threat to 'traditional' companies as the 'lasius neglectus' has had on the ecosystems it's come into contact with.

Until recently the ants didn't pose too much of a threat as they don't fly. But they've also found a new way to travel, hitching rides in flower pots transported across borders. Is this the insect internet?

Have ants found the answer to business growth?

Application development leader Michael Haschek joins the ki work top team

Organizer of the European Tool Command Language (Tcl) Conferences Michael Haschek has become the category for application development at ki work, the online marketplace for remote and virtual workers. Michael has 25 years experience  leading application development projects in a variety of languages.

He is the author of the contact manager CMfoni and the embeddable application ViCo. CMfoni is designed to work with social networking sites (LinkedIn, Viadeo, Facebook, NING) and PLAXO (see http://www.cm4net.com, http.//www.seamless-llc.com). ViCo enables users to retrieve contact information from different social networking sites.

Why Bush is following Lenin to overthrow Capitalism 2.0

Will managers be the real victims of the unlikely duo?

Just a few weeks ago we seemed to be facing economic Armageddon. For the short term we've been saved from meltdown thanks to George W Bush, Gordon Brown and other western leaders following in Lenin's footsteps and nationalizing many banks. 
 
Whatever happens, it's going to be a long time before trust in financial institutions is restored. And, lest we forget, our faith in Wall Street was already pretty fragile after the accounting scandals of Enron and the rest. I wonder if these crises are merely symptoms of something rather more profound. 
 
There's a real chance we may be reaching the end of managerial capitalism or Capitalism 2.0 after 150 years or so. Let me explain what I mean with some gross oversimplification. But, hey, this is a blog not a masters dissertation. 

Knowing who is boss

Capitalism 1.0 was personified by the boss who was both owner and manager. He made all the decisions, hired, fired and kept the profits or suffered the losses. It was nice and simple, but it couldn't stay that way.

The cost of the machinery and new production techniques of the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century meant bigger was almost always better or at least more profitable. So bosses started selling a share of their businesses to banks, other companies and individuals to fund expansion. 

Eventually many bosses owned only a minority stake in their businesses. Their companies had also often become so big they were beyond the control of one person. So managers were hired to run the businesses and managerial capitalism or Capitalism 2.0 was born.

It's been a remarkably successful and resilient economic system for over 150 years. The ability to adapt to has been managerial capitalism's greatest strength, but as it's developed the division between ownership and control has become both wider and more blurred.

As a result more 'ordinary' people have a direct stake in their economy than ever before. In many countries the majority of the population have borrowed the money to own the homes they live in. Their savings are often invested in pension funds which are among the most powerful institutions driving the world's stock markets. 

Despite the broadening of ownership most people have little influence on the running of the businesses they have a share in. In fact this downturn will see people laid off by companies they partly own through their pension funds. 

Of course nobody worried too much about all this while the global economy was booming. It all looks a bit different as we peer over the edge into a recession of uncertain depth and length. But we do know that nothing will ever be the same. Trust in banks and other Capitalism 2.0 institutions has been damaged, perhaps fatally. 

Taking back control

From the chaos something new will rise, perhaps Capitalism 3.0 or 'Collaborative Capitalism' as it's being dubbed. The underlying forces that could create this new way of working have been developing for years and they can fundamentally alter the economic forces that have made managerial capitalism so successful.

In many knowledge industries economies of scale have been turned on their head. Individuals and small businesses can compete with corporations on price and earn a reasonable return.

The key force in this is the Internet. It's given knowledge workers access to many of the tools which were until recently only available in large offices with sophisticated data networks. All freelancers are missing are corporate overheads and real estate costs. Big business should be worried. 

Ki workers of all countries unite

Look at the corporate success stories of the digital age such as Google, eBay and Amazon. All collaborate with their customers. In fact the divisions between customers, suppliers and competitors can be so blurred as to be meaningless. For instance, on an Amazon product page you'll find outside companies offering prices below Amazon's own.

Have a look inside at ki work's platform. See how collaborative capitalism 3.0 can provide a platform for professionals to work together and create their own virtual businesses than can undercut bricks-and-mortar corporations bidding for major projects.

 

Why pay for anything on the internet?

When I came across ki work a few months ago it was the first question that came into my head. Are they after my money? I'm not used to paying for stuff on line, in fact I'd like to think I've become something of an expert at finding free internet software and services. And I don't mean stealing. Sometimes that's meant, as my mother used to say, I've been a long way for a short cut.

Somebody, somewhere has to pay for everything that's supposedly free on the web. Even people who are giving away the fruits of their labor online are at least receiving pleasure from impressing others with their prowess. By the way there's nothing wrong with wanting to see your name in lights or whatever the equivalent is for programmers.

No-cost web services

More often the motives of those behind 'free' services are a little more commercial. It may be that they're just trying to build an audience with the hope that sometime in the future they'll be able to profit from them. This is a bit of a risky strategy. People generally aren't happy to start paying for something they've been receiving for free.

Payment doesn't have to mean direct charging. Even the use of advertising will alienate many customers when it's introduced. Certainly I know that given the choice I'd pick a service that didn't have advertising although that doesn't necessarily mean I'd be willing to pay from my own pocket. That would depend on how much I valued the service and how obtrusive the ads were.

Free isn't always cheap

And there is another alternative, which is where ki work comes in. The basic idea is that some people pay for an enhanced service while the majority invest their time rather than their cash. It's a fairly popular model for web services which avoids reliance on annoying adverts.

Fortunately I have nothing to do with the financing of ki work. I'm just the blogger. But I do understand some of the general principles of web economics. In general this means the fixed costs of running an online service are proportionately quite high while the variable costs are relatively low. In other words, if you create a website the expensive part is the design and content. Hosting is fairly cheap. It doesn't cost any more to have 500 visitors than five. It does make a difference if you get 500,000 though.

Many Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses use this model. Individual customers aren't charged in the hope that they'll recommend and popularize the product so businesses will pay to use it. It's a very cost-effective way of promoting a service.

More for your money

At ki work the majority of users won't need to pay anything for the service. They'll be professionals displaying their credentials in the form of service offers and getting work that way. It's a good and risk-free way of using ki work. Some ki workers will want a bit more prominence and the opportunity to share in income. They can pay $50 a month for 'Expert' status if they want to earn more from building teams for large projects. Or for $200 a month they can become 'Category Leaders' and earn even more from co-ordinating an entire marketplace.

The basic idea is that ki workers are rewarded according to their investment in time and money. Check the ki work site for full details. The main point to note is that this isn't any sort of network selling or pyramid scheme. You can earn money for completing projects whether or not you've paid anything to ki work.

If you do decide to pay it is worth getting in early and grabbing some prime real estate as an expert or category leader. Hundreds of people are joining daily and as ki work grows the highest-earning positions will be taken and that includes ones in your area of expertise.

So, do I have a definitive answer to the question: Why pay for anything on the internet? Of course I don't. But I do know that in virtual or real life you generally get more out of something the more you put in. And that could be time or money.

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

Pioneering sustainability entrepreneur joins ki work

Anders Abrahamsson has become ki work's category leader for sustainability entrepreneurship, or 'sustainopreneurship'. He is already running or developing six ventures: SLICE Services and Publishing™, DJ Anders, ÆREAS(i), Club2Club, Ignition® Communications and SEEDS Innovation Fund - which can all be found at Anders' personal website.

The aim of sustainopreneurship is to use entrepreneurial methods to solve sustainability problems in areas such as health, illiteracy, poverty, communication, energy, water and food security. The solutions should allow the stakeholders to get their needs fulfilled in ways that respect all life support systems. You can read more about the concept in this Wikipedia entry.

“In an effort to deliver options beyond today’s business-as-usual thinking my goal is recruit 75 world-changing experts to the sustainability entrepreneurship category. We want to support those with business goals of improving our relationship with the planet and peoples, as agents of change, making meaning and money at the same time; by turning the biggest problems of our world to even larger business opportunities. In short – businesses with a cause.”

To find or outsource work in this area, simply go to the sustainability entrepreneurship marketplace and post a service offer or project.

view the press release

Ki Work founder now leader of International Outsourcing Consulting

Michael Wolff, ki work's CEO and founder, is putting his skill and experience where his mouth is by becoming the category leader for International Outsourcing Consulting. As CEO of Lydiastar Telecommunications Michael was a pioneer in the world of outsourcing.

He explains: "I founded ki work to build a Web 2.0 infrastructure where freelance entrepreneurs can collaborate and find work from wherever they are. 'Live local - work global' is the motto.

"With resources in all other areas of business globalizing, the remote workforce is an inevitable solution to modern business needs. ki work is powering this revolution."

Michael will be explaining why he became a category leader on ki work too. See ki work webinars for more details.

If you're an outsourcing consultant, or are looking for one, you can post your services or projects you need doing for free at the International Outsourcing Consulting marketplace.