Growth of the Freelance "Homepreneur"
You can trace the rise of home-based businesses to the early days of telecommuting in the 1980s and the mass adoption of the Internet in the 1990s. Cloud computing,online collaboration, and smartphones have accelerated the trend, and recent research clarifies the economic significance of companies like Labuda's.In addition to the ease of setting up such businesses, is the lower operating costs involved as the article points out. Though I think this would be most applicable to home based businesses that provide business and professional services, rather than one that sells products as you would still need to keep inventory on hand and the shipping costs and logistics may require the costs of renting space for storage.
Though I think this article would generate a lot of enthusiasm for those longing to leave the corporate world and strike out and own their own business, the reality is that you would most likely need to establish yourself first and furthermore, if you're going to sell business and professional services to large companies, then you're going to need to work in one to gain the necessary experience, knowledge and wisdom to have companies pay you for your expertise. It might be best to work in a large company and build the foundations of your home based business on the side part time. Plus you will really need to work on a consistent campaign to market yourself and build your personal brand. This post on HBP articulates this pretty well.
In any event, if this trend were to continue which it seems it will, the implications on the future of the workforce will be enormous. It will accelerate the adoption of Web 2.0 technologies such as social networking and collaboration tools, and technology infrastructure such as cloud computing as if it weren't fast enough already. Work will become much more projectized and companies both large, medium and small will be forced to bid and compete for resources, much like it is done on sites like guru.com, elance and rent-a-coder, etc.
In this world, everyone will be forced to conduct work in a more entrepreneurial fashion and though there will be many benefits, it may widen the gap between the have and the have not's.
Labels: Business Strategy, Entrepreneurism