What are some innovative applications or currently untapped industries that could benefit from the sharing economy? Please explain how the sharing economy would have an impact and what benefits it would bring.
Since 1999 or so, on-line work platforms have remotely connected businesses and independent professionals so that freelancers can find clients and get paid on-line in the sharing economy. For example, Upwork (formerly Elance-oDesk) is a global freelancer marketplace with 9 million registered freelancers and 4 million registered clients, according to Wikipedia.
What is currently untapped is a flexible work arrangement inside large corporations by their employees. For example, a technical documentation specialist in a large engineering company follows a rigid reporting structure, so once one project is over he/she often becomes idle until the next project starts, while another department of the company in a different location may have an immediate short-term need for technical documentation. Such work can be accomplished by intra-corporate freelancers, just like free agents in the National Hockey League (NHL).
In particular, there are great opportunities for increasing efficiency in the government where dynamic exchange of marketable skills within the workforce is currently blocked by bureaucratic barriers, leading to the waste of human resources which are funded by the taxpayers.
Since most intra-corporate freelancing work can be done by telework, there is a positive impact by reduced commuting time, so it brings benefits of reduced emission of carbon dioxide (CO2).
Therefore, Intra-Corporate Freelancing in on-line work platforms is the innovative application that could benefit from the sharing economy.
