In the past five years, San Francisco has become home to dozens of new online and mobile “service networking” companies that claim to be “revolutionizing” the way work gets done. Making up what has come to be known as the “platform economy,” these technology companies provide the platforms for online and mobile marketplaces in which users can buy and sell their goods and services. Together, these “platform economy” companies make up a concentrated innovative cluster in the San Francisco Bay Area, and, more specifically, San Francisco proper.
Cloud computing is a revolution in computing architecture, transforming not only the "where" (location) of computing, but also the "how" (the manner in which software is produced and the tools available for the automation of business processes). Cloud computing emerged as we transitioned from an era in which underlying computing resources were both scarce and expensive to an era in which the same resources were cheap and abundant. There are many ways to implement cloud architectures, and most people are familiar with public cloud services such as Gmail or Facebook. However, much of the...
Deepening digitalization and globalization has induced an ongoing societal transformation that may ultimately prove to be as significant as the original industrial revolution. Even as the ICT industry is being restructured, global competition is being transformed. Previously dominant firms—including telecommunications carriers, equipment providers, and powerful legacy software firms—are under assault from the move to cloud computing, in the network center, and mobile computing, on the network periphery. This transformation of the computing and communication infrastructure has been...
This presentation is based in part on: Where will Work Come from in the Era of the Cloud and Big Data (Zysman and Kenney, 2015). It was prepared for the Future of Work, Open Society Foundation.
This note is intended to help set the groundwork for a discussion of cross-national variation in responses to the emergence of labor-market platforms (LMP). The politics and policy of the labor exchanges will unfold as part of the development of the platform economy. We consider in three steps: 1) The character of the rise of the Platform Economy in an era of computing abundance; 2) The diverse array of work arrangements that are in play; 3) Whether computation intensive automation will be an increasingly powerful force in labor politics in this era....
Patents and brand names are only two examples of a broad category of disembodied assets from which firms derive revenue, referred to as “intangible assets.” Intangible assets pose a challenge for traditional financial valuation models for many reasons. Because intangible assets lack physicality, companies can easily transfer them internally from one subsidiary to another and among different countries. Aside from this difficulty in precisely determining their financial value, companies can use intangible assets as a profit-shifting tool in tax-planning schemes. In the course of their daily...
Since 2012, the platform economy has experienced stunning growth. While this growth can be measured in terms of the capitalization of platform companies or their gross revenue, a particularly relevant metric is the participation rate of those who earn money on the platform. It has been estimated that monthly participation grew 10-fold from October 2012 to September 2015. While this participation constitutes only 1 percent of adults in the United States, the cumulative participation rate reached 4.2 percent by the end of that period. For labor platforms, which are of particular interest in...
"Top Trends Affecting Michigan" a discussion of trends in technology and their impact on jobs and economic development. This event was part of the South Haven Speaker Series in South Haven, Michigan.