Andrew Karpie's Blog

The March on the Enterprise Continues: oDesk Advances

September has been a notable month for online staffing platforms pivoting their focus beyond SMBs and toward enterprise users of contingent workforce. MBO Partners and Work Market announced a partnership to meet enterprise needs for more efficient and compliant engagement of on-site contract workers and consultants – something they are calling Managed Contractor Cloud. Shortly thereafter came Elance’s... More

Elance Moves Closer to the Enterprise with Private Talent Cloud (Continues to Define Itself as a Segment Innovator)

One of the leading online staffing companies, Elance, has announced the introduction of its Private Talent Cloud™ offering targeted to enterprises. This announcement comes right on the heels of the Elance announcement, last week, about its partnerships with Smarterer and Skilled-Up that will allow Elance to extend its platform as an online testing and training platform for freelancers. It also follows... More

Is Elance Pointing the Way to A New Labor Market Function for the Staffing Industry?

Leading Online Staffing player, Elance, announced a major move that should make us all think a little bit harder about Online Staffing platforms (and their potential). By partnering with two other innovative platform providers, Smarterer (for online testing) and SkilledUp (for online learning), Elance may have taken a game-changing step. As far as I am aware, this concentration of numbers of workers... More

What Lurks Beneath? A Tectonic Shift in the Work Arrangement Landscape?

Earthquakes occur when sufficient stress has built up along fault lines, such that the earth moves all of a sudden, and what’s on the surface is often drastically altered. Things in our 21st century world are now happening so quickly that we rarely pause to examine what changes actually occurred and how those changes overtook us (they often come quietly from behind).

Just over the past 20 years, we... More