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- July 2024
- Case
Freelancer, Ltd.
By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, 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...
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Keywords:
Freelancers;
Labor Markets;
Internet and the Web;
Digital Platforms;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Human Capital;
Change Management;
Globalized Firms and Management;
Employment;
Global Range;
Employment Industry
Stanton, Christopher, Karim R. Lakhani, Jin Hyun Paik, and Nina Cohodes. "Freelancer, Ltd." Harvard Business School Multimedia/Video Case 823-706, July 2024.
- February 2024 (Revised July 2024)
- Case
Taffi: Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia
By: Paul A. Gompers and Fares Khrais
Taffi was a tech-enabled fashion styling startup founded by Shahad Geoffrey in Saudi Arabia in 2020. Within three years of operating, Geoffrey had pivoted the business multiple times. In 2023, Geoffrey was attempting the business’s most ambitious pivot yet, shifting...
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Keywords:
Business Startups;
Disruption;
Entrepreneurship;
Venture Capital;
Investment;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Business Strategy;
AI and Machine Learning;
Fashion Industry;
Technology Industry;
Saudi Arabia;
Arabian Peninsula
Gompers, Paul A., and Fares Khrais. "Taffi: Entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia." Harvard Business School Case 224-052, February 2024. (Revised July 2024.)
- November 2023
- Case
UST's Adoption of Open Talent
By: Christopher Stanton and Kristen Senz
This case details the 2020 launch and subsequent scaling of UST’s Open Talent initiative, a program to integrate freelancers from digital platforms into its workforce. The case highlights how the shifting post-pandemic world, including layoffs, wage inflation, and...
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Keywords:
Talent and Talent Management;
Employment;
Working Conditions;
Organizational Change and Adaptation
Stanton, Christopher, and Kristen Senz. "UST's Adoption of Open Talent." Harvard Business School Case 824-117, November 2023.
- November–December 2023
- Article
Look the Part? The Role of Profile Pictures in Online Labor Markets
By: Isamar Troncoso and Lan Luo
Profile pictures are a key component of many freelancing platforms, a design choice that can impact hiring and matching outcomes. In this paper, we examine how appearance-based perceptions of a freelancer’s fit for the job (i.e., whether a freelancer "looks the part"...
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Keywords:
Freelancers;
Gig Workers;
Demographics;
Prejudice and Bias;
Selection and Staffing;
Jobs and Positions;
Analytics and Data Science
Troncoso, Isamar, and Lan Luo. "Look the Part? The Role of Profile Pictures in Online Labor Markets." Marketing Science 42, no. 6 (November–December 2023): 1080–1100.
- March 2023
- Case
Interior Collab
By: Lindsay N. Hyde, Thomas R. Eisenmann and Tom Quinn
After venture capital-funded online interior design agency Homepolish collapsed, its former freelance designers met to discuss next steps. The bitter experience led some of them to create a workers’ collaborative called Interior Collab. The founding members needed to...
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- December 2022
- Supplement
Freelancer, Ltd. Case Supplement
By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, 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 companies,...
View Details
Keywords:
Labor Markets;
Freelancers;
Change Management;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Globalized Firms and Management;
Human Capital;
Employment;
Digital Platforms;
Global Range;
Adoption;
Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Computer Industry;
Electronics Industry;
Employment Industry;
Information Industry;
Australia;
United States;
Philippines
Stanton, Christopher, Karim R. Lakhani, Jin Hyun Paik, and Nina Cohodes. "Freelancer, Ltd. Case Supplement." Harvard Business School Multimedia/Video Supplement 823-707, December 2022. (Click here to access this case.)
- August 2022
- Case
Meaningful Gigs
By: Brian Trelstad and Rachel Philbin
In October 2020, just a year after founding their company Meaningful Gigs, founders Ronnie Kwesi Coleman and Stephanie Nachemja-Burton prepared for a vital investment meeting with Rethink Education. They had already reached $400,000 in annually recurring revenue (ARR)...
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Keywords:
Venture Capital;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Revenue;
Education Industry;
Technology Industry;
Africa;
United States
Trelstad, Brian, and Rachel Philbin. "Meaningful Gigs." Harvard Business School Case 323-006, August 2022.
- August 2022 (Revised February 2023)
- Case
Braintrust: The Blockchain-Powered Talent Network
By: Christopher Stanton, Joseph B. Fuller and George Gonzalez
A San Francisco startup seeks to disrupt the freelancing industry through its user-owned talent network powered by the cryptocurrency, BTRST.
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Keywords:
Freelancers;
Blockchain;
Cryptocurrency;
Social and Collaborative Networks;
Talent and Talent Management;
Consulting Industry;
Technology Industry;
United States
Stanton, Christopher, Joseph B. Fuller, and George Gonzalez. "Braintrust: The Blockchain-Powered Talent Network." Harvard Business School Case 823-039, August 2022. (Revised February 2023.)
- 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...
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Sühr, Tom, Sophie Hilgard, and Himabindu Lakkaraju. "Does Fair Ranking Improve Minority Outcomes? Understanding the Interplay of Human and Algorithmic Biases in Online Hiring." Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society 4th (2021).
- 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...
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Keywords:
Disintermediation;
Intermediaries;
Online Marketplace;
Platform Strategy;
Trust;
Marketplace Matching;
Digital Platforms
Gu, Grace, and Feng Zhu. "Trust and Disintermediation: Evidence from an Online Freelance Marketplace." Management Science 67, no. 2 (February 2021): 794–807.
- 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...
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- January 2021 (Revised March 2022)
- Teaching Note
Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language
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...
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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...
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Keywords:
Talent Acquisition;
Platforms;
Skilled Labor Recruitment;
Gig Economy;
Talent and Talent Management;
Selection and Staffing;
Internet and the Web;
Strategy;
Digital Platforms
Fuller, Joseph B., Manjari Raman, Allison Bailey, and Nithya Vaduganathan. "Rethinking the On-Demand Workforce." Harvard Business Review 98, no. 6 (November–December 2020): 96–103.
- 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;
Digital Platforms;
Information Industry;
Australia;
United States;
Philippines
Stanton, Christopher, Karim R. Lakhani, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Jin Hyun Paik, and Nina Cohodes. "Freelancer, Ltd." Harvard Business School Case 820-075, January 2020.
- 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...
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Keywords:
Language Translation;
Freelancers;
Entrepreneurship;
Human Resources;
Management;
Expansion;
Quality;
Growth and Development Strategy
Whillans, Ashley V., Esel Çekin, and Alpana Thapar. "Ureed.com: The Marketplace for Language." Harvard Business School Case 920-038, January 2020.
- 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...
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Keywords:
Gig Economy;
COVID-19 Pandemic;
Talent and Talent Management;
Human Resources;
Labor;
Strategy;
Management;
Globalization;
North America;
Europe;
United States;
United Kingdom
Fuller, Joseph, William R. Kerr, and Carl Kreitzberg. "The Gig Economy: Leasing Skills to Pay the Bills." Harvard Business School Background Note 819-146, May 2019. (Revised February 2022.)
- 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.
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Keywords:
Strategy;
Platform;
Platform Businesses;
Technology;
Business Model;
Digital Platforms;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Internet and the Web;
Labor
Yoffie, David, and Allison M. Ciechanover. "Upwork in 2019." Harvard Business School Supplement 719-509, April 2019.
- 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...
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Keywords:
Strategy;
Platform;
Platform Businesses;
Technology;
Business Model;
Digital Platforms;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Internet and the Web;
Labor
Minor, Dylan, and David Yoffie. "Upwork: Creating the Human Cloud." Harvard Business School Case 718-402, July 2017. (Revised July 2018.)
- 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:...
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Keywords:
Startup;
Lean Startup;
Two Sided Markets;
Entrepreneurship;
Strategy;
Business Startups;
Venture Capital;
Consulting Industry;
United States
Avery, Jill, and Joseph Fuller. "HourlyNerd." Harvard Business School Case 316-134, January 2016. (Revised July 2017.)
- 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...
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Keywords:
Platforms;
Employment;
Digital Platforms;
Market Transactions;
Business Processes;
Information Technology;
Internet and the Web;
Job Search
Zhu, Feng, Rory McDonald, Marco Iansiti, and Aaron Smith. "Upwork: Reimagining the Future of Work." Harvard Business School Case 616-027, November 2015.