Decoding the new economy

Working in the gig economy

The motivations of demand economy contractors are varied and not without suspicion towards the services that employ them.

Just what do people think about the on-demand, or gig, economy? A survey by public relations company Burston-Marsteller looked at those who use and provide services for companies like Uber, AirBnB and Instagram.

Unsurprisingly the majority of users are have positive experiences with on-demand services which allows them to access product they couldn’t afford otherwise.

More important are the views of the contractors, and those who are doing these jobs for the flexibility are matched by those who’d rather have full time employment but can’t find a role.

Strikingly, the longer a contractor has worked for one of these services the more likely they are to find the company’s practices exploitative and more than half believe the platforms are gaming the regulations.

Overall, it shows participants in the ‘sharing economy’ have no illusions about the caring aspects of the services that employ them, unlike many of those touting the benefits from the sidelines.

How the taxi industry lost its advantages

The struggles of the taxi industry show regulatory barriers won’t keep out competitors

In San Francisco, the Yellow Cab Company is filing for bankruptcy in the face of mounting insurance costs and competition from services like Uber and Lyft.

For most of the Twentieth Century, having a government controlled market was good for cab companies and those owning the rights to own taxis. In most places though it wasn’t good for drivers and passengers however as wages fell along with the quality the service.

In most cities, the taxi operators didn’t care as their industry was protected and customers didn’t have much choice. The problem was compounded by supine regulators who saw protecting the interests of industry incumbents as taking precedence over making sure operators provided a safe, reliable service.

With the arrival of Uber, this changed and passengers started voting with their wallets. Interestingly, despite Uber X and Uber Pool being illegal in most place, regulators and their political masters found public opinion was firmly against the taxi companies and owners who’d exploited them for so long.

To the horror of the taxi operators, they found the community and the market had shifted against them leaving them exposed to changes they had never expected. Now operators like San Francisco’s Yellow Cabs are paying the price for not focusing on providing a decent service.

For other industries, particularly those which have some sort of barrier to entry through government regulation, the taxi industry’s woes are an important lesson – focusing on service is the key to staying in business, not relying on keeping competitors out.

What do we do with displaced workers?

As autonomous vehicles get closer to being commonplace, the question now is what do we do with the armies of displaced truck and taxi drivers.

When Uber founder Travis Kalanick was asked about this earlier this week he suggested that the company may be involved in vocational training for out of work taxi drivers, Tech Crunch reports.

Kalanick’s suggestion raises a number of interesting possibilities – we may see a training levy placed on the new tech companies to fund vocational colleges or develop a new generation of apprenticeship schemes.

The question though is what skills would be best for today’s displaced workers to acquire? One idea is to give them training in statistics in an attempt to address the looming shortage of data scientists.

Another angle could be to train them in programming so they code their way back into the workforce.

Whatever course we take, nations are going to have to face the need to reskill their workforces. Kalanick’s suggestion should be the start of a larger conversation on how we fund that training.

Opportunities in broken systems

Uber shows how opportunities arise when systems are broken

“Taxi drivers are good people, they are just treated badly”, Uber founder Travis Kalanick told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at Dreamforce last week.

Kalanick flagged how in most cities around the world the taxi industry is broken. Nowhere is that more true than in Australia and a piece I wrote for Business Spectator about the disruption to the nation’s taxi industry illustrates that well.

The success of Uber in disrupting those markets – although it should be noted the company is far from becoming profitable – shows the real opportunities lie where existing markets are broken or distorted.

If you’re benefiting from a broken market then this is a risk to your business. For outsiders, it’s an opportunity.

Uber and the cities of the future

Does Uber hold the key to solving cities’ public transport woes?

“We’re building the cities of the future” claims David Plouffe, Uber’s Senior Vice President for Policy & Strategy.

Plouffe was speaking in Uber’s head office ahead of this year’s Dreamforce conference where the transportation disrupter was announcing the next phases of its Uber Business service.

While western societies still remain car dependent, there’s a shift underway as people prefer to live in the cities rather than the suburbs and the far flung exurbs, particularly for younger people. “For my generation it was a big deal to get a car,” says the 48 year old Plouffe. “Millennials today don’t have that same identification – they don’t want to own a car.”

That shift, which is not just confined to millennials, presents challenges for cities believes Plouffe. “Cities need to support people who are moving in at historic rates,” he says. “Our cities are facing huge challenges.”

“Every city is facing congestion challenges which will only get worse over the next ten to fifteen years as the number of people moving into the world cities at a historic pace.”

“Most cities do not have the will or the money to build new public transportation systems,” Plouffe says. “The only way they are going to deal with this is for people to buy less cars, families to only have one car and to reduce the number of cars on the road.”

Not surprisingly, Plouffe sees this as being where Uber can help in expanding accessible and affordable transport to parts of cities which are unlikely to get public transit and to increase the carrying capacity of existing infrastructure.

This is an interesting point of view and one that has some validity if we accept the view that ‘on-demand’ services like Uber and others are actually aimed at all groups and not just the affluent upper middle classes and the rich.

For cities struggling to meet the demands of growing populations and shrinking budgets, services like Uber and Lyft may be part of the answer. That though will take some reform and a change of attitude from many regulators.

What should we call the sharing economy

What label should we give to businesses like AirBnB and Uber?

Stop calling it the sharing economy, cries marketer Olivier Blanchard in a blog post describing how the label is inappropriate and doesn’t accurately describe the imbalances in the relationships between providers, users and the online platforms that facilitate them.

The question is what do we call the business model of companies like Uber, AirBnB and the myriad other services that take providers’ time and resources – cars in the case of Uber, homes or spare rooms for AirBnB – then make them available to people who can use them, taking a commission in the process of course.

Blanchard wonders if much of the success of these companies is because America’s cash strapped middle classes are desperately trying to find additional source of income and there is very much a strong argument for that.

More importantly, is what do we actually call these businesses? While they are potentially are as exploitative as the free labour models that have evolved in the media with businesses like Huffington Post, at least they provide some type of income even if for Uber drivers the net returns may be marginal at best.

Blanchard himself suggests the Microtransaction Economy however that’s not a satisfactory label as the transactions – which may be many thousands of dollars for some AirBnB rentals – are not always small.

Maybe we should call it the downtime economy, where we’re using the time we’re not busy or when we’re not using our homes, cars or others assets to earn income. That too though doesn’t strike me as satisfactory although it does seem to address the underlying idea these services are really only intended to supplement somebody’s earnings, not be their primary livelihood.

None of these labels though are satisfactory and maybe we have to ditch the economy moniker. It’s time to start thinking about what we really should call these businesses.

Your thoughts.

Tag: Uber

How the taxi industry lost its advantages

Similar posts:

What do we do with displaced workers?

Similar posts:

Opportunities in broken systems

Similar posts:

Uber and the cities of the future

Similar posts:

What should we call the sharing economy

Similar posts: