- 26 May 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Hayden Brown
Hayden Brown has been Upwork’s CEO since January 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic shifted much of the workforce to working from home. Upwork is a leading platform connecting freelance workers to businesses who need help. Hayden shares with what changes she has seen since Covid-19 hit, what skills are in demand and how this new normal might change the nature of remote work. Often the capabilities that are not readily available in the local market are accessible on platforms like Upwork.
- 22 May 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
How Catalant helps align workforce and work
Large firms aiming to innovate or achieve a degree of agility increasingly look for outside help. Catalant has placed itself at the crux of this dynamic by offering a project management software platform and staffing marketplace for harnessing the skills of internal and external personnel. Cofounders, co-CEOs, and HBS alums, Rob Biederman and Pat Petitti talk about the company’s evolution and how it’s providing clients regular insights into their most strategic work.
- 20 May 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: People + Work Connect
Covid-19 has brought Great Depression-level unemployment to many economies and triggered imbalances of supply and demand as some businesses have needed to staff-up quickly. One private sector response, People + Work Connect, is a business-to-business personnel exchange platform active in more than 40 countries. The brainchild of corporate chief human resources officers (CHROs) at Accenture, Lincoln Financial, ServiceNow, and Verizon has signed up hundreds of businesses looking to place idled workers or fill open positions. Accenture’s Nicholas Whittall and Mary Kate Morley Ryan discuss the initiative.
- 18 May 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Craig Malloy
What happens when a video conferencing company has to rely on its own products for its day-to-day operations? The pandemic turned Austin, Texas-based Lifesize’s commute-to-work culture into a virtual organization overnight. As its customers’ videoconferencing volumes increased almost tenfold, the firm adjusted to remote work and completed a major merger. CEO Craig Malloy talks about the fast-forwarding of many enterprises’ long-range plans and the implications of the new normal.
- 14 May 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Barry Schuler
The pandemic has radically altered the economic landscape and vastly complicated the VC market. Money is in short supply and start-ups need to run leaner. Consolidation looms. DFJ Growth partner, Barry Schuler, discusses risk mitigation, mentoring entrepreneurs through the crisis, and taking the long view.
- 11 May 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Karen Mills
Return guest, Harvard Business School senior fellow Karen Mills, is uniquely qualified to assert that the Covid-19 pandemic poses a greater threat to US small businesses than the Great Recession of 2008-2009. She directed the Small Business Administration from 2009 to 2013 and has been advising Congress and fintech companies on how to help small businesses through the pandemic. She is the author of Fintech, Small Business & the American Dream.
- 06 May 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Taso Du Val
The pandemic has increased demand for online, remote freelance and contract work. Digital labor platform Toptal provides a market for highly skilled freelancers and contractors working in such fields as software engineering, artificial intelligence, design, and project management. Not surprisingly, the downturn has sent more workers to the platform. In some cases, employers have turned to the platform to find temporary work for their idled employees. CEO, Taso Du Val, joins the podcast. (Toptal’s remote work playbook: https://www.toptal.com/playbook)
- 04 May 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Sham Kakade
Contact tracing—mapping the spread of a virus by identifying individuals in the chain of transmission—is an essential tool in the fight to limit the damage of Covid-19. Early experience in South Korea, China, Singapore, Germany, and elsewhere has shown what works. Successful schemes save lives and mitigate economic losses. Smartphone apps have a role play, but as with e-commerce, security and privacy are concerns. Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics recently published a paper outlining how contact tracing can be designed to protect users’ privacy. Coauthor Sham Kakade, a computer scientist at the University of Washington, explains.
- 01 May 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Handicapping the global competition for talent
Post-Covid recovery will hinge on how well countries leverage talent. This lends new relevance to international business school INSEAD’s 2020 global ranking of that capacity. Released in January, the school’s seventh annual Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) weighs countries’—and major cities’—ability to attract, foster, and maintain talent. The 2020 GTCI focus on AI is also apt, given predictions that the coronavirus will speed trends like automation. Co-author Felipe Monteiro interpreted.
- 29 Apr 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Nick Dalton
Unilever was several years into a company-wide plan to revamp its workforce when the coronavirus flared into a pandemic. The multinational entered the crisis braced for change. Executive vice president Nick Dalton discusses how that flexibility has helped Unilever maintain business continuity, provide for worker safety, and coordinate remote work. With the disruption of global supply chains and ordinary life largely locked down, all eyes are on the consumer goods business.
- 27 Apr 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Kent Thiry
Kent Thiry is a veteran healthcare executive with decades of experience observing public health policy and administration at both federal and state levels. He shares his assessment of why the US was slow out of the blocks in responding to Covid-19. Looking at the virus’ likely effects on the healthcare market, he anticipates that the crisis will accelerate adoption of tele-medicine. More broadly, he foresees a shift of more manufacturing to domestic locations, a speed-up of automation, and prospects for a greener, lower-carbon economy in the recovery from the current slowdown.
- 24 Apr 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Freelancer.com: On-demand Skills and Ideas
The Covid-19 pandemic appears to be accelerating the global workforce shift toward freelance and contract work, as it makes remote work a more attractive option. For many, the traditional employment model is being replaced by digital labor platforms like Freelancer.com, which touts skills outsourcing and innovation crowdsourcing. What’s in it for enterprises and freelance workers? Vice President Sarah Tang explains.
- 22 Apr 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Edward Glaeser
Harvard economist Edward Glaeser is an expert on how cities function as economic engines and centers of innovation. He notes that the advantages of density in spurring creativity and productivity are mirrored by the vulnerability it creates to threats like disease. Cities and their most vulnerable residents have borne the brunt of pandemics since antiquity. As Covid-19 tests the resources and resilience of urban centers and confronts leaders with difficult choices, Glaeser explains the policy options for protecting people and stabilizing the economy.
- 20 Apr 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Irfhan Rawji
Canadian entrepreneur Irfhan Rawji has insight into the pandemic’s influence on a wide range of sectors, from US companies working with global tech specialists, to startups in a variety of markets, the organic food business, and healthcare. He shares his observations on the coronavirus’ impact on the nature of work; how it is shaking up the VC world; increasing demand for organic and locally produced food; and testing the Canadian and US healthcare systems.
- 17 Apr 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Derek Thompson
In Episode 3 of the Covid-19 Dispatch series, we talk to The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson, who recently wrote about contact tracing. In the fight against Covid-19, this critical public health tool has been used unevenly. Thompson notes that South Korea and Singapore have had success with smartphone apps, but that South Korea’s reliance on GPS, along with surveillance video and credit card transactions, raised privacy concerns and may have discouraged participation. Singapore used Bluetooth proximity data, which doesn’t reveal geolocation information. The latter may provide the model for tracing efforts in the US and elsewhere.
- 15 Apr 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Ardine Williams
The pandemic has magnified Amazon’s role as household supply line and pushed the company to quickly adjust how it does business. The retail giant has revised scores of operating processes in response to customer demand, workplace safety requirements, and public health directives. For an enterprise with half a million employees in the US, implementing these changes has been a mammoth management challenge. Ardine Williams, the company’s vice president of workforce development discusses how the coronavirus has changed business as usual.
- 13 Apr 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Covid-19 Dispatch: Justin Wolfers
The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown more people out of work than at any time since the Great Depression, and did so with unprecedented speed. In this debut episode of the Managing the Future of Work podcast’s Covid-19 Dispatches, economist and New York Times columnist Justin Wolfers discusses alternatives to the official unemployment figures; best and worst case scenarios; economic insecurity; and the need for federal aid to state and local governments.
- 25 Mar 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Data-centric business: Inside the artificial intelligence factory
Artificial intelligence seems to have repealed the laws of business physics, allowing “digital native” companies to grow at the stroke of a key and cross traditional market boundaries unimpeded. In their new book, Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World, HBS professors Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani show the inner workings of the “AI factory.” Traditional businesses can’t bolt on AI and analytics and expect to compete. Marco explains how firms can adapt and discusses the implications for workers and public policy.
- 11 Mar 2020
- Managing the Future of Work
Jobcase: Shared opportunities, collective voice
Fred Goff wants to tap the Web’s scale and connectivity to rebalance capitalism for the benefit of workers. The former hedge fund manager launched Jobcase, a workforce platform and online labor organization, in 2015. It’s a job search site, a clearinghouse for qualifications, and a support network for its 100 million members, most of whom lack a four-year degree. The AI-augmented community wields significant consumer- and investor influence. Fred shares his views on degree inflation, the skills gap, and the need for greater diversity in the workforce.
Covid-19 Dispatch: Dan O’Connor
Commerce expert Dan O’Connor rejoins the podcast for a special Dispatch episode. Dan draws on his experience advising leading retailers and his ongoing research on global digital platforms to offer a glimpse of a post-Covid retail landscape. He also counsels those small businesses able to weather the crisis to take the opportunity to refocus. Across categories, the “at-home,” budget- and safety-conscious, consumer is an essential constituency.