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BW story: Free labor economy

Posted by: Stephen Baker on December 29

Here’s a piece I wrote on the free labor economy. The idea is that companies have to come up with new HR skills and incentives to engage free laborers, especially online. It’s central to the business plans of lots of companies, including one I focus on, ThisNext.

This story has a long and convoluted history. I was working on it last summer. And like many stories from that time, it seemed a bit less relevant after Lehman Bros than before. So I decided to chop it down, rework it, and put it up online over the holidays. It’s a move to clean the 2008 slate and start with new stuff in 2009.

The next project? You can help me there (speaking of free labor…) by visiting our Ning community or the Vox Stimuli blog and sharing your ideas about how Obama and Co. should spend hundreds of billions in stimulus dollars. (Actually, if you don’t feel like clicking, you can leave your thoughts right here. I can aggregate the ideas from wherever.)

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Reader Comments

Gene McKenzie

December 31, 2008 08:06 AM

I think we should hire people to go to school and learn to install Wind and solor equipment, then have them install it in every home in The US.The people could then pay the money back at a rate of 3/4 of what they are paying now. This would put a lot of people to work
and since this would be a loan,You could make money in the long run.Think of all the oil we would be saving.The cost of solor and wind products would come down because of the volume

Paul Ciccotelli

December 31, 2008 07:09 PM

I think a great deal of emphasis should be placed on good old fashioned infrastructure. We need better road's, bridge's, sewer's, port's, airport's etc. These thing's are essential to moving people and bringing good's to the market. Not only will these project's create a lot of badly needed jobs but they will produce huge dividend's in the future. Another area of huge priority should be the building of a green economy. We need to protect our environment as well as our national security. We should stop sending so much of our money overseas too hostile nation's in exchange for oil, when many of these countries don't like us and then turn around and give some of our money to terrorist's who try and kill us.

Clown

January 1, 2009 10:18 PM

He should buy Facebook Gift credit and give it to every single, so everyone can give each other facebook gifts and be happy.

Emelita

January 3, 2009 01:09 PM

Hi
Obama's Administrations preparing the Stimulus..? for trillions of dollars? is some families will get some of that stimullus fund? if families are strugling for living in pay check to pay check?

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In Blogspotting Senior Writer Stephen Baker and Associate Editor Heather Green take a look at how cutting-edge technologies are changing business and society. Whether its blogs or wikis, data crunching or data targeting, technology’s advances are reshaping the world that we live in.

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