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.

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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How collaborative capitalism could reinvent newspapers

I'm convinced that ki work's platform for collaborative capitalism is part of the future. Why? Partly bImage via Wikipediaecause I can see how it could be at the heart of successors to the newspaper industry which has provided me with a living for most of my life.

Believe me,  newspapers today are not a good business to be in, as I'm sure you'd be told by Sam Zell owner of Tribune Co which includes the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and other dailies. His company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday at the same time as the New York Times was attempting to renegotiate its debts with its bankers.

The credit crunch might seal the fate of these once great institutions, but they were dying anyway. It's a sad time for me. This is the family business which is receiving the last rites. Both my parents were newspàper journalists. Printing ink runs through my veins.

Wishing for a swift demise

Now part of me wishes papers would just hurry up and disappear. Newspapers may be dying but the global appetite for news is alive and well. What remains will be a perfect candidate for virtual organization, for collaborative capitalism, for the ki work model.

To explain this I'm afraid I'll have to look a little at newspaper economics. Don't worry this isn't too complex, but I need to show how this isn't a business which is going to re-emerge from the other side of the recession.

As I've said, demand for news is not in decline. The audience is generally increasing. It's just that in developed countries the growth is online or for rolling TV news channels. Newspaper circulations are falling, but not at a speed that explains the catastrophic state of the industry's finances.

The central problem is lost advertising revenue. And you don't have to look far to see what's gone wrong. In the US it's craigslist that's most clearly wielded the newspaper-killer's knife. It's stolen the biggest newspaper income stream - classified advertising. It might sound as if I'm accusing craigslist-founder Craig Newmark of robbery and murder, but it is really closer to euthanasia.

Where have all the ads gone?

Before the likes of craigslist came along anybody wanting to fill a job vacancy, sell real Image via Wikipediaestate or rent an apartment would almost certainly have turned to their local newspaper. Individually, the classified ads they paid for might not have cost much, but together they represented a very profitable business.

Unfortunately any industry that's too reliant on one source of income is vulnerable. A large proportion of classified advertising has moved online and it won't return to newspapers if and when the recession ends. But ironically the readership for many newspaper titles is larger than it has ever been. It's just the audience is visiting websites rather than buying papers from newsstands.  And nobody has yet figured a way of sufficiently monetizing news websites. In reality they're all losing money.

The only way a newspaper can claim to have a profitable website is through an accounting trick. The cost of news-gathering, administration and real estate has to be stripped out. Newspaper websites are really no different from the leech-like news-related blogs which simply comment on stories that have been tracked down, researched, written or broadcast by 'traditional' media. Running a newspaper is very expensive.

It all sounds hopeless, but I remain optimistic that although newspapers are dying, something different and better can take their place. The future is virtual. Strip out most of the costs of real estate, printing presses, management, computer networks and administrative infrastructure, then you've got the potential for a sustainable news organization.

In my next blog posting I'll outline how I think a virtual news organization would function.

UPDATE: Robert Peston, the BBC's economics editor, has an interesting take on how a different form of capitalism might look. Read his view on New Capitalism here.

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.

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 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