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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
  • 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
  • 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

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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  • 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; Online Technology; Growth And Development Strategy; Information Industry; Australia; United States; Philippines
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  • 2019
  • Working Paper

Using Online Data for International Wage Comparisons
By: Alberto Cavallo, Javier Cravino and Andres Drenik
We use a novel dataset from a large freelance website to document international wage differences for performing tasks that can be delivered online. The data records detailed information on tasks and worker characteristics which facilitates cross-country comparisons. We...  View Details
Keywords: Economics; Wages; Global Range; Data And Data Sets; Service Industry
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  • May 2019
  • 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; 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; Multi-sided Platforms; Growth And Development Strategy; Online Technology; 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; Multi-sided Platforms; Growth And Development Strategy; Online Technology; Labor
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  • April 2017 (Revised February 2020)
  • Case

edaixi (eWash): Digital Transformation of Laundry Services (A)
By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen, Chuang Chen and Ciwu Lin
Founded in 2013 as a laundry service featuring online ordering for home pickup and delivery, China’s edaixi (eWash) illustrated the online-to-offline (O2O) business model. As yet unclear in 2016 was the optimal way to organize third-party laundry service providers,...  View Details
Keywords: Laundry; O2o; Online-to-offline; Digital Platforms; Business Model; Service Operations; Ownership Type; Technology Platform; Transformation; China
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  • April 2017 (Revised February 2020)
  • Supplement

edaixi (eWash): Digital Transformation of Laundry Services (B)
By: Feng Zhu, Weiru Chen, Chuang Chen and Ciwu Lin
Founded in 2013 as a laundry service featuring online ordering for home pickup and delivery, China’s edaixi (eWash) illustrated the online-to-offline (O2O) business model. As yet unclear in 2016 was the optimal way to organize third-party laundry service providers,...  View Details
Keywords: Laundry; O2o; Online-to-offline; Digital Platforms; Service Operations; Business Model; Technology Platform; Transformation; Service Industry; China
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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: Entrepreneurship; Startup; Lean Startup; Two Sided Markets; Venture Capital; Entrepreneurship; Strategy; Business Startups; Venture Capital; Consulting Industry; United States
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  • November 2015 (Revised January 2017)
  • 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; Information Technology; Job Search; Employment; Market Platforms; Multi-sided Platforms; Market Transactions; Business Processes; Information Technology; Online Technology; 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; Online Technology; Publishing Industry
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  • Research Summary

Overview
By: Christopher T. Stanton
Professor Stanton’s research is focused on new possibilities around non-traditional work—through entrepreneurship, freelancing, or the gig economy. A related strand of work examines spillovers inside firms, which may be difficult to capture outside of traditional...  View Details

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