The changing ladnscape of work

February 12, 2007 at 9:02 pm · Filed under Future work

INTUIT published a report (PDF) about the Future of Small Business, this is a quote from page ten:

“Personal businesses are a surprisingly large part of the American economy. According to the US Census Bureau, at the end of 2004 almost 20 million Americans operated businesses with no employees…Businesses without a payroll make up over 70% of the nation’s businesses, and almost one million new businesses without payrolls were added in 2004 (the latest available data).” It would be interesting to know how many of them earned their living from Internet related activity, and what kind of Internet related activity were they involved in (ebay?)

At the same time with Web 2.0 technologies offering enterprises to feel small but stay big (a promise waiting to be fulfilled), it seems that the bigger you are the more advantages you’ll be able to rip from your Web 2.0/social networking tools.

For the bigger picture (implications of falling communication costs) there is a podcast from (2005) of Thomas Malone who also wrote The Future of Work at IT Conversations

Here is part, of a three minute summary Mr. Malone gave of his book (subscribed from the podcast): “I think we are in the early stages of an increase in human freedom in business that may in the long run be as important a change for business as the change to democracy was for governments…”

Permalink