Small Business Labs

Pew Internet: Experts Optimistic about Digital Life over the Next 50 Years

Pew internet's Experts Optimistic About the Next 50 Years of Digital Life project asked hundreds of technology experts how people's lives might be impacted by the evolution of the internet over the next 50 years.

72% of the respondents said there would be change for the better, 25% said there would be change for the worse and 3% believe there would be no significant change.

Key quote on why most are positive:

The optimists responding to the better-worse-no change question expressed hope that in the next 50 years digital advances will lead to longer lifespans, greater leisure, more equitable distributions of wealth and power and other possibilities to enhance human well-being.

But as Pew points out, even most of the optimists said there are potential downsides:

... nearly all of these experts’ written predictions included warnings about the possibilities of greater surveillance and data-abuse practices by corporations and governments, porous security for digitally connected systems and the prospect of greater economic inequality and digital divides unless policy solutions push societies in different directions.

What these experts recognize is technology can be used for both good and evil purposes. It's up to us to decide which.

The report is long, but the first page provides an excellent summary.

Corporations Starting to Embrace Digital Nomads

12 months living as a digital nomad, from LinkedIn, describes how a GE talent development executive spent a year as a digital nomad.

The key quote describes what she did when she finished her year as a digital nomad:

A point of culmination of this experiment is when I had the opportunity to pitch my experience to the CHRO of GE and so I have presented my learnings about this aspect of the future of HR, painting an image of digital nomads and flexible work at GE.

In the forecasting business, this is what's called a signal.

And in this case, the signal is corporations are starting to consider creating digital nomad programs.

There are 3 reasons we see this as a strong signal.

First, the author of this article is in talent development. This means she works with the people who decide the remote work policies at GE.

Having someone in her position supporting digital nomadism makes it much more likely GE will allow others to become digital nomads.

Related to this, she was able to pitch the chief human relations officer (CHRO) at GE on her experiences. This means the senior team at GE is now aware of digital nomads.

And 3rd, this didn't happen at Google or Facebook or some tech startup. It happened at GE, a traditional manufacturing firm. 

According to the findings of the 2019 MBO Partners digital nomad study, there are about 7.3 million American digital nomads. Of these, about 3.1 million report having traditional jobs.

Based on our digital nomad interviews, the vast majority of job holding digital nomads have been allowed to do this outside of any official corporate policy.  In most cases, their boss decided to allow them to travel. 

This is starting to change. As with GE, corporations are starting to explore, evaluate and consider - and in some cases, putting in place - digital nomad policies and programs. 

See the MBO Partners digital nomad research brief (we worked with MBO Partners on this study) for more on this topic.

The Pros and Cons of Working Remotely

Recode's How remote work is quietly remaking our lives provides a deep dive on the growing impacts of the shift towards working remotely. Key quote:

"The changes remote work has introduced have happened so gradually you may not have noticed. But its growing popularity is remaking how we work, the tools we use to work, how we communicate at work, and even the hours we work ... What was once a rarity among a select set of workers is quickly becoming a defining feature of the future of work."

The pros and cons of remote work are well known, but the article chart below nicely summarizes them. The underlying data comes from a remote worker study done by the social media marketing firm Buffer.

The big pro is, of course, flexibility.

We cover the importance of flexibility a lot (if you do a Google search on "flexibility "Small Business Labs"" you will find 3400 citations).

But it still needs reinforcing -  it's a key driver of both the shift to remote work and the rise of independent work.  

We also certainly agree remote and distributed work is a defining feature of the future of work.

And to better understand this trend, we closely follow two remote work edge groups - digital nomads and fully remote organizations.

Digital nomads can be thought of as remote workers on steroids. Because they're both remote and nomadic, they tend to have advanced methods for work remotely - including how they use technology. 

Fully remote organizations are also on the leading edge of remote work because, well, all of their employees are remote. 

While reading the Recode article we were struck that remote work is a great example of Amara's Law, which is:

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.

Back during the first Internet boom in the 1990s one of the most common forecasts was that very soon everyone would work remotely. This, obviously, didn't happen. 

But 2 decades later, it's starting to happen.

Uber Enters the Staffing Business

Last week Uber announced Uber Works, a platform that connects workers with businesses that need to fill available shifts in hourly jobs such as cooks, warehouse workers, commercial cleaners and events staffing. 

Uber's chart below (click to enlarge) provides their quick description of the service.

Uber is partnering with staffing firms for this effort. The staffing firm partners will employ, pay and handle worker benefits.

This, of course, means Uber will not have to deal with the employee classification or other legal issues they faces in their ride hailing business.

Uber betting that their technology will provide value to workers, the companies that employ them and the staffing agencies that place them. 

They point out in their blog post announcing the service that temp workers currently struggle with rigid scheduling and a lack of information on what jobs are available and how much they pay. They claim Uber Works will fix these problems. 

For businesses, Uber says they can provide a broader pool of potential temp workers and simplify the hiring and payment of these workers. Staffing firms benefit from more placements and better information flow.

Uber's obviously not the only company offering this type of platform.

Wonolo, Snag and Moonlighting all have similar platforms in the sense that they offer businesses access to shift workers. 

Also, Shfitgig, which recently pivoted away from connecting workers to jobs, now offers staffing firms a technology platform that claims to provide many of the features Uber is offering. 

And, of course, several of the large staffing firms are trying to provide similar online staffing platforms.

This includes Uber's first staffing firm partner, True Blue. Their platform, Job Stack, seems to be quite similar to Uber Works. 

So there's a lot of competition for Uber Works.

But the market is also huge. According to the Staffing Industry Analysts, the global staffing industry generated $490 billion in revenue in 2018. 

This, coupled with Uber's brand recognition and technology skills, means they could easily be successful.

Uber Works is currently only available in the Chicago area. Uber says they will roll it out to more cities in the near future. 

The Economic Impact of Craft Brewing

The Brewers Association recently released their small and craft brewing economic impact report for 2018. 

The study found that the craft brewing industry contributed $79.1 Billion to the U.S. Economy in 2018 and provided directly and indirectly about 550,000 jobs. 

These numbers are based on what are called economic multipliers, which are used to measure both the direct and indirect impact of economic activity.

For example, the employment multiplier for auto factory workers is about 7. This means for every auto factory job gained or lost, 7 other jobs are gained or lost. These occur in suppliers to the plant as well as places where auto workers spend their money. 

As the chart below shows (click to enlarge), the number of actual jobs at breweries has grown quite rapidly, to 77,902 in 2018 from just 24,864 in 2010. 

This means brewing was one of the fastest-growing sources of employment during that time.

We've long used craft brewing as an example of the rise of niche businesses. We even featured the industry in a 2008 research report, The New Artisan Economy, which we did with Intuit.

And the three broad trends we laid out in the New Artisan Economy report as driving the growth of niche businesses continue to do so:

1. Growing numbers of customers are looking for unique, unusual, personalized or locally produced products.  

2. The Internet and online marketing have made it much easier to find or be found by people interested in buying niche products.  

3.  Technology is lowering the costs of serving niche markets and making artisans able to compete with even the largest of firms.  

7.3 million Americans Describe Themselves as Digital Nomads

MBO Partners this week released Digital Nomads: Leading the Shift to Remote and Distributed Work. The key finding of this study is 7.3 million Americans identify as digital nomads. 

Digital nomads are people who choose to embrace a location-independent, technology-enabled lifestyle that allows them to travel and work remotely, anywhere in the world.

There are many kinds of digital nomads. Some are nomadic for relatively short periods of time. Others travel for many years.

Some regularly move across countries and continents.

And yes, some really do sip Mai Tai's on the beach in Bali while banging away on their laptops.

But others never cross a border, choosing instead to live and work while exploring a single location or country (#VanLifers, for example).

What unites them is their passion for travel and new experiences and their commitment to working remotely. 

One of the more interesting study findings is 44% (3.1 million) of the digital nomads report having a traditional job. This is a clear signal that employers, at least in some cases, are willing to allow traditional employees to be digital nomads. 

Other findings include:

• Digital nomads tend to be younger and male, but all age groups are represented: 39 percent are female and 41 percent are 40 years old or older.
• Most digital nomads report being highly satisfied (79 percent) or satisfied (9 percent) with their work and lifestyle.
• Most also report either being very satisfied (35 percent) or satisfied (44 percent) with their income.
• Digital nomads work in a wide variety of fields, ranging from consulting, coaching, and research (13%) to sales, marketing, and PR (also 13%) to other remote-friendly fields like information technology (11%) and creative services (9%). 

As we've found in the past, a lot of Americans would like to be digital nomads. 16.1 million said they plan on becoming digital nomads over the next 2-3 years and 41 million said they may become one.

Of course, relatively few of these people will do so.

The vast majority will continue to be what we call "armchair digital nomads" - folks that follow the many blogs, Instagram accounts and related digital nomad media but don't become one themselves.

We're interested in digital nomads (we worked with MBO Partners on this study) because they are on the leading edge of remote work. This makes them an ideal group to study to better understand the future of distributed work and the technologies that support it.  

See the report for more details. 

See our digital nomad section for more coverage of digital nomads.

Liza On-Demand, a Gig Economy Comedy

Liza On-Demand is a TV show that, according to its description: 

... follows the chaotic misadventures of Liza, a young woman in Los Angeles who is trying to make a career out of juggling various gig economy jobs — for lack of a better idea of what to do with her life.

We've only watched a few episodes, but we've seen Liza drive for Lyft, get hired via TaskRabbit to bake cookies, help someone move and kill a cat (she didn't do it). 

The show is on YouTube Premium and is free. The 2nd season of the show starts at the end of September. The show's trailer is below.

Liza On-Demand stars Liza Koshy, who is a comedian, actress, and YouTube star who boasts more than 17 million subscribers on her main channel. 

Ths show is produced by Above Average Productions, a digital-first entertainment studio. Their tagline is "slightly better".

We find the show interesting on several levels.

First, of course, is it's about the gig economy. You know a trend has entered the mainstream when their starts to be movies and TV shows about it.

Second is the rise of digital-first entertainment. 

The world of entertainment has changed and the traditional channels (TV, big-screen movies, radio) no longer control the industry. Digital and online entertainment are now near-equal partners to traditional channels.

And the 3rd reason is the rise of Internet stars. Koshy is an excellent example, having turned her YouTube celebrity into broader entertainment success.

All interesting cultural shifts and trends.

BTW, despite being well outside of the target demographic we liked the show.

 

Working Remotely the Norm for independent Workers

According to data from the 2019 MBO Partners State of Independence study, 83% of full-time independent workers report working remotely at least some of the time, and 31% report working remotely full-time.

As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), this is substantially higher than what traditional full-time job holders report. 

That full-time independent workers are more likely to work remotely than full-time traditional job holders is no surprise.

But that almost 1 in 3 three work remotely full-time is a bit surprising and illustrates the growing nomadic nature of work.

This is in large part being driven by improvements in the technology that support remote work.

Online video and chat services make it easy to connect and communicate with customers and partners, online content creation tools and cloud storage enable work to be done and delivered from remote locations, and online marketplaces provide remote access to new customers.

Another driver is the growing acceptance by hiring organizations that remote workers can be highly valuable and productive contributors. 

A 3rd driver is, of course, more people want to work remotely.

Small Businesses Worried About Corporate Concentration - and Especially Amazon

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance recently released its 2019 Independent Business Survey. The key finding is small independent businesses see large corporations - and especially Amazon - as their main competitive threat. 

They also feel government policies have not helped. Key quote from their article on the study:

Many public policy decisions in recent years have fueled market concentration and favored their big competitors.

As the study chart below shows (click to enlarge), the survey respondents listed Amazon as their biggest challenge.

Big companies, in general, also came in 2nd and supplier mergers and concentration came in 5th.  So it's clear the respondents consider big firms and industry consolidation a major problem.

But as is shown in the study chart below, they see Amazon as the biggest threat. 91% say Amazon has hurt their business at least a little and over half say it has hurt their business significantly.

It's important to note that retail small businesses, who are in competition with Amazon, are heavily overweighted in the survey sample (it was a non-probability sample).

A sample more reflective of the overall small business sector of the economy would not be as negative on Amazon.

But these numbers are still stunning and show the power and reach of Amazon and its impact on small retailers. 

The BBC's List of 101 Things You Need to Know About the Future of Work

The BBC's The 101 people, ideas and things changing how we work today really does cover 101 different trends, shifts, people and things impacting the future of work.

The long list includes a brief description of each item. For example, item 88 - Soft Skills - is described as:

"Employees need abilities computers and automated systems don’t have – like creativity, adaptability and persuasion. Yet recruiters are struggling to find these kinds of candidates."

They also include a link to a more detailed description that contains other links to even more detailed information (click here for the link to the deeper description of soft skills)

We probably wouldn't include some of the items that are on the list. But with such an extensive list there's bound to be some that are less important than others.

Overall it's an excellent list and a great resource and taxonomy on the future of work.