Small Business Labs

"Vertiports" and Air Taxis Getting Closer

According to the Axios article Meet the "vertiport," where you'll go to hail an air taxi, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is releasing "vertiport" design guidelines.  

A vertiport is where vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles will take off and land. This is a necessary step for air taxis to become operational.

Several electric VTOL (eVTOL) manufacturers are already working on plans to build vertiports in several U.S. cities.

Two leading air taxi manufacturers, Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation have partnered with Reef, the U.S.'s largest parking management company, to build vertiports atop existing parking garages (click to enlarge image below).

After a very long gestation period - the first flying car prototypes were produced over 100 years ago - we seem on the verge of flying taxis becoming a reality.

Test flights are happening, and plans to start operating commercial air taxi services are just 2-3 years away. 

Even the big airlines are getting on board. United Airlines, for example, recently put down a $10 million deposit on 100 Archer's eVTOLs.

We're certainly looking forward to our first ride.

McKinsey's 2022 Technology Trends

Last month the global consulting firm McKinsey released its 2022 Technology Trends Outlook.  

We pay attention to McKinsey because they advise leadership teams from a wide range of organizations, including Fortune 500 firms, government agencies, foundations, nonprofits, and tech startups.

So their tech trends influence a large number of decision-makers around the world.  

McKinsey groups their trends into two broad themes, which they describe as:

"two thematic groups: Silicon Age, which encompasses digital and IT technologies, and Engineering Tomorrow, which encompasses physical technologies in domains such as energy and mobility."

They rank the trends on three metrics:

• Innovation: based on related patents and research efforts
• Interest in the technology: based on recent news and web searches.  
• Amount of investment in the technology in 2021 (size of bubble in the chart)

McKinsey also provides an adoption rate score for each technology but doesn't use that score in its ranking chart.  

This approach leads to some interesting results.

As the McKinsey chart below shows (click to enlarge), applied AI is the leading technology with a very high innovations score, coupled with relatively strong interest scores and investment levels.

Tech industry darling, Web3 scores relatively low. This is due mainly to a low innovation score - despite many techies believing Web3 is the next big thing.  

The McKinsey article provides a detailed analysis of the 14technologies in their list, and how it ranked in 2018.  

We like McKinsey's approach because they go beyond just looking at the technology and include data on the drivers of adoption.  

Anyone interested in tech trends will find McKinsey's list well worth reading.

The Power of Weak Ties and Coworking

LinkedIn's study A causal test of the strength of weak ties shows that weak ties - casual acquaintances versus close friendships - provide the most useful connections in job hunts.

This confirms Mark Granovetter's landmark 1973 study The Strength of Weak Ties 

As LinkedIn's article points out, Granovetter's study was conducted well before the era of big data and his surveys often had less than 100 respondents.

LinkedIn's study was massive. Key quote from their article:

"Digging deep this time, Rajkumar and colleagues tracked the modern-day connection-making patterns — and job-hunt outcomes — of 20 million LinkedIn members. The research was conducted on data from 2015 and 2019."

The reason weak ties turn out to provide the most help for job hunters is nicely explained in the LinkedIn article:

"When we connect with so-called weak ties — people we know only slightly — we gain access to job networks that stretch into unexpected areas. That lets us find people and opportunities we otherwise wouldn't know about. 

This is the magic of weak ties," Rajkumar says. "They bridge information flows. They help us navigate large spans of the labor market efficiently." By contrast, our best friends' contacts are so similar to ours that they don't help much; they're redundant." 

So what has this got to do with coworking?

The answer is simple. 

As we pointed out a decade ago in our article Coworking Strengthens Weak Ties, belonging to a coworking space increases the size and usefulness of members' weak tie business networks.

We also found that weak tie networks don't just improve job hunting outcomes. Weak ties also improve business development outcomes. 

This is especially important for independent workers (freelancers, etc.). who can leverage their coworking weak ties to win new projects and business. 

Like Granovetter's studies, our first studies on weak ties and coworking were qualitative and had relatively small sample sizes.

But since 2012, we've surveyed thousands of coworking members and interviewed hundreds more on this topic. And our findings have been consistent - coworking increases the weak tie networks of members, and that improves their business development outcomes.

LinkedIn's weak tie study doesn't directly confirm our work on weak ties and coworking. But it reinforce our study's findings by illustrating the power of weak ties.

Airbnb's Guild on How Communities Can Benefit From Digital Nomads and Remote Workers

Airbnb says its Guide to Live and Work Anywhere "provides industry-first analysis of global remote work initiatives."

This isn't even close to accurate- there have been many studies on this topic. 

But marketing hyperbole aside, the Guide provides an interesting look at how cities benefit by offering incentives to attract remote workers.

They also show the incentives cities are using. Below is the Guide chart on Tucson's remote worker incentive package.

The growing competition among cities and countries to entice digital nomads is one of the most interesting remote work trends.

Whether it's the creation of digital nomad villages, providing specialized remote work visas - or, as Airbnb's Guide points out - providing direct financial assistance, countries and cities are increasingly engaged in an arms race to attract remote workers.

Study Finds Only One Third of Americans are Financially Healthy

The Financial Health Networks 2022 U.S. Financial Health Pulse study reports that financial health in America declined across many demographic and socioeconomic groups over the past year.

This is the first time in the five years of this study that Americans' financial health declined.

As the report chart below shows (click to enlarge), the share of Americans reporting being financially healthy declined from 34% to 31%.  

The study also reports that 37 million Americans are financially vulnerable, 139 million are financially coping, and 78 million are financially healthy.

We track this data because a lack of financial health is a key driver of the growing number of part-time gig workers.

Those financially vulnerable or coping are much more likely to supplement their income with part-time, or even full-time, independent work.  

And as the Financial Health Network's findings show, 176 million Americans fall into these two categories.

This is one reason we continue to forecast that independent work and the gig economy will continue to grow.  

The report has a lot more information on the financial health of Americans and is well worth reviewing for anyone interested in this topic.

NIL Payments Have College Athletes Joining the Creator Economy

If you're a college sports fan, you know that NIL payments - paying college athletes for the rights to their name, image, and likeness - is changing amateur athletics.  

After the NCAA lost a supreme court case, college athletes were allowed to profit from their celebrity. This lets college athletes - especially football and basketball players - earn money by monetizing their name, image, and likeness.

Morning Brew's In year No. 2, NIL continues to disrupt college football points out that 12 college football players have signed agreements worth over $1 million.  

And it's not just high-profile stars. Key quote from Morning Brew:

"Boosters at many powerhouse schools have formed controversial collectives to funnel money into athletes' pockets. At Texas Tech, the Matador Club collective is paying every football player and women's basketball player $25,000 a year in exchange for event appearances and community service."

This means even the back bench walk-ons that couldn't qualify for a college scholarship can earn a decent amount of money.

NIL money is not limited to football and basketball players. Even college athletes in nonrevenue sports - like golf - are being paid.

It's also not limited to college athletes. High school athletes are starting to earn NIL money, and even elementary students are getting into the act.   

The rules around NIL money vary by state, but NIL recipients are independent workers. And because they're earning money by monetizing their name, image, and likeness, they're part of the creator economy.

Not surprisingly, the big conferences dominate NIL revenue. 

The chart below is from OpenDorse, an athlete marketplace, and NIL technology company. It shows the top 10 conferences by total NIL Income.

It's unclear what the long-run impact of this shift from amateur to paid college and youth sports will be.

But what is clear is that NIL money has created a large, new segment of the rapidly growing creator economy.  

Edelman's Depressing 2022 Trust Barometer Study

We've followed the Edelman Trust Barometer research series for many years, and we consider it one of the most important studies we follow.

As we point out in the title, we also consider it one of the most depressing studies we follow. 

The reason is the study chronicles the long-term global decline in people's Trust in society's institutions.  

And the 2022 study, which is subtitled The Cycle of Distrust, continues to show this decline.

As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), businesses are now the most trusted institution, with 61% of global respondents saying they are trusted.

The chart also points out that businesses got the top spot because their trust level fell less - down 4% points from 65% in 2020 - than governments' trust level over the past two years.  

Two of the other top 10 findings caught our eye. Key quote from the report:

Distrust is now society's default emotion: Nearly 6 in 10 say their default tendency is to distrust something until they see evidence it is trustworthy. Another 64% say it's now to a point where people are incapable of having constructive and civil debates about issues they disagree on. When distrust is the default – we lack the ability to debate or collaborate.

There is a collapse of Trust in democracies: In many of the democracies studied, institutions are trusted by less than half of their people, including only 46 pts in Germany, 45 pts in Spain, 44 pts in the U.K., and 43 pts in the U.S. Moreover, no developed countries believe their families and themselves will be better in 5 years.

These are genuinely dismal findings.

The one bright is that the trust deficit provides an opportunity for businesses that can develop a trusted relationship with their customers.  And it shows customers are willing to give businesses a chance to do so.

Even as Coworking Takes Off Again, the Women's Coworking Space The Wing is Grounded

The Wing, a network of work and community spaces designed for women that raised over $100 million in venture funding, is closing.

Below is the email The Wing recently sent to members.

   

The Wing always saw itself as much more than a coworking space. They envisioned their firm as a lifestyle brand built to empower women in all phases of their lives. 

The New York Times described The Wing's vision in their lengthy 2017 article The Wing, a Chic Women's Club, is Going Wide as:

"... a locus of a mediacentric feminist movement, like Ms. in the 1970s, or a mass-scaled temple of "exclusivity," like Soho House, if Soho House wrapped itself in a marketing banner of she-power."

The Wing had 11 locations in 2019, with six in New York City. But as their email says, they struggled during the Covid-19 pandemic and could not recover.

The coworking industry, in general, struggled during the pandemic. According to Fortune's As the office goes extinct, the WeWork era rises again, over 800 coworking spaces shut down over the past two years.

But as the article also points out, the coworking industry is experiencing a post-pandemic boom. Key quote:

"Old coworking spaces are back to life, and new ones are popping up. The advent of hybrid work and the slow return of business travel has left both middle and upper classes seeking a place where they can take meetings, focus, and find companionship: a coworking space."

The future is clearly bright for the coworking industry.

But unfortunately, the rising tide of remote work-driven coworking demand was too late to provide lift for The Wing.  

And yes, we got a bit carried away with our flight metaphors.