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  • 2021
  • Article

Does Fair Ranking Improve Minority Outcomes? Understanding the Interplay of Human and Algorithmic Biases in Online Hiring
By: Tom Sühr, Sophie Hilgard and Himabindu Lakkaraju
Ranking algorithms are being widely employed in various online hiring platforms including LinkedIn, TaskRabbit, and Fiverr. Prior research has demonstrated that ranking algorithms employed by these platforms are prone to a variety of undesirable biases, leading to the...  View Details
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  • February 2021
  • Case

Braintrust: The Blockchain-Powered Talent Network
By: Christopher Stanton, Joseph B. Fuller and George Gonzalez
San Francisco startup Braintrust developed a talent network governed and incentivized by a blockchain token as a way to align incentives between clients and freelancers. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a rise of remote work and accelerated the growth of the platform;...  View Details
Keywords: Freelancers; Blockchain; Talent and Talent Management; Internet and the Web; Business Startups; Growth and Development Strategy; Consulting Industry; United States
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  • February 2021
  • Article

Trust and Disintermediation: Evidence from an Online Freelance Marketplace
By: Grace Gu and Feng Zhu
As an intermediary improves trust between the two sides of its market to facilitate matching and transactions, it faces an increased risk of disintermediation: with sufficient trust, the two sides may circumvent the intermediary to avoid the intermediary’s fees. In...  View Details
Keywords: Disintermediation; Intermediaries; Online Marketplace; Platform Strategy; Trust; Marketplace Matching
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  • January 2021 (Revised March 2022)
  • Case

Brigad: The Future of Work
By: Nien-he Hsieh, Elena Corsi and Daniela Beyersdorfer
In 2019 Florent Malbranche, CEO and co-founder of the French tech startup Brigad, pondered the next growth steps. Founded in 2015, Brigad’s objective was two-fold: to help restaurants and bars find qualified staff for punctual shifts, and to make it easier for...  View Details
Keywords: Platform Business; Gig Economy; Regulation; Entrepreneurship; Marketplace Matching; Growth and Development Strategy
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  • January 2021 (Revised March 2022)
  • Teaching Note

Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language
By: Ashley V. Whillans
This case explores the growth of Ureed, an online marketplace for translation services that is powered by a workforce consisting of remote freelancers who are based in the United Arab Emirates. Nour Al Hassan, the founder and CEO faced the challenge of how best to...  View Details
Keywords: Language Translation; Freelancers; Remote Work; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Management; Motivation and Incentives; Job Design and Levels
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  • November–December 2020
  • Article

Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce
By: Joseph B. Fuller, Manjari Raman, Allison Bailey and Nithya Vaduganathan
As companies struggle with chronic skills shortages and changing labor demographics, a new generation of talent platforms, offering on-demand access to highly trained workers, has begun to help. These platforms include marketplaces for premium expertise (such as Toptal...  View Details
Keywords: Talent Acquisition; Platforms; Skilled Labor Recruitment; Gig Economy; Talent and Talent Management; Selection and Staffing; Online Technology; Strategy
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  • January 2020
  • Case

Freelancer, Ltd.
By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes
Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500...  View Details
Keywords: Freelancers; Platforms; Digital Labor; Labor; Human Resources; Management; Internet and the Web; Growth and Development Strategy; Information Industry; Australia; United States; Philippines
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  • January 2020
  • Case

Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language
By: Ashley V. Whillans, Esel Çekin and Alpana Thapar
Jordanian entrepreneur, Nour Al Hassan, founded Tarjama in 2008, tapping into an underserved and high demand need: Arabic translation service. Its lean model comprised of hiring full-time employees, mainly women, who worked from home. It steadily grew over the...  View Details
Keywords: Language Translation; Freelancers; Entrepreneurship; Human Resources; Management; Expansion; Quality; Growth and Development Strategy
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  • May 2019 (Revised February 2022)
  • Background Note

The Gig Economy: Leasing Skills to Pay the Bills
By: Joseph Fuller, William R. Kerr and Carl Kreitzberg
This primer provides a comprehensive exploration into the gig economy and how it is reshaping global business. It shows how the Uber driver, the freelancing programmer in India, and the independent corporate consultant are all different variants of the modern-day gig...  View Details
Keywords: Gig Economy; COVID-19 Pandemic; Talent and Talent Management; Human Resources; Labor; Strategy; Management; Globalization; North America; Europe; United States; United Kingdom
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  • April 2019
  • Supplement

Upwork in 2019
By: David Yoffie and Allison M. Ciechanover
Stephane Kasriel, the CEO of Upwork, the leading platform for freelance labor, updates his progress on how to redesign its business model in 2019.  View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Platform; Platform Businesses; Technology; Business Model; Digital Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Internet and the Web; Labor
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  • July 2017 (Revised July 2018)
  • Case

Upwork: Creating the Human Cloud
By: Dylan Minor and David Yoffie
Stephane Kasriel, the new CEO of Upwork, the leading platform for freelance labor, needs to decide on how to redesign its business model. While the firm has been growing rapidly since the merger of Odesk and eLance, the newly combined firm continues to face problems of...  View Details
Keywords: Strategy; Platform; Platform Businesses; Technology; Business Model; Digital Platforms; Growth and Development Strategy; Internet and the Web; Labor
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  • January 2016 (Revised July 2017)
  • Case

HourlyNerd
By: Jill Avery and Joseph Fuller
HourlyNerd, a two-sided marketplace platform for matching freelance consultants with small companies looking for help, struggles to define a growth plan for the future. The company, started as a class project in HBS' FIELD 3 course, is assessing three growth paths:...  View Details
Keywords: Startup; Lean Startup; Two Sided Markets; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Consulting Industry; United States
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  • November 2015
  • Case

Upwork: Reimagining the Future of Work
By: Feng Zhu, Rory McDonald, Marco Iansiti and Aaron Smith
Upwork, the world's largest freelance talent platform, was the result of a merger between the two leading online freelancing companies in 2014, Elance and oDesk. After the merger, the company operated as Elance-oDesk and continued to manage two online...  View Details
Keywords: Platforms; Employment; Digital Platforms; Market Transactions; Business Processes; Information Technology; Internet and the Web; Job Search
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  • March 2011 (Revised December 2012)
  • Case

Demand Media
By: John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld
Google search had helped Demand Media grow to be a $1.9 billion online publisher. Then, social media and smartphone apps began to change the way people navigated the Internet. How should Demand Media respond? The business ran on a radically new model in which a stable...  View Details
Keywords: Business Model; Information Publishing; Consumer Behavior; Customization and Personalization; Internet and the Web; Publishing Industry
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