mit.edu - What new business models are made possible by digitization? How can entrepreneurs more quickly implement these models in ways that create widespread benefits for all? The IDE works to define the basic principles and systems to help companies design successful platform strategies and facilitate the digital transformation of work and commerce. Our team of researchers examine how networked platforms— like the ones used by Uber, Airbnb, and eBay—are changing the way companies do business.

Challenges (10.08.2017) "L'économie des plateformes peut donc faire voler en éclats le statut de salarié tel qu'il a été construit tout au long du XXe siècle" estime une étude diffusée par le ministère du Travail.

How many people are in the gig economy? We’re very interested in this question at Nation1099, and, as it happens, it isn’t an easy question to find answers to, especially since the gig economy is growing and changing very fast and people mean many different things by the term. Employment in general is undergoing dramatic changes, often summarized as “the future of work” or Workforce 2.0.

Brazil Learning Initiative for a World without Poverty (WWP) ( 18.07.2017)  Data on some 27 million Brazilian families are retained in a single registry - the Unified Registry for Social Programs (CadÚnico) - a useful tool for identifying and describing the socioeconomic conditions of low-income families.

Swiss Re Institute (07.07.2017) We live in a world with increasingly uncertain health outcomes. Individuals from developed economies have been living longer for many decades. However, those gains are beginning to be reversed in some countries, particularly within certain communities. Sensor technology is increasingly being deployed to counter these trends.

New forms of non-standard work in the online platform economy are creating a growing gap between digital innovation and decent work, which by definition includes fair wages, social protection and the right to bargain collectively. While estimates on the growth of on-demand and crowd work vary widely, a mid-term rise in labour market polarization and atypical work might arise. But it is also preventable. So, what can be done practically for online platforms to be a driver of quality jobs? 

Moderator: Sarah O’Conner, Correspondent, Financial Times

Eurofound (13.07.2017) This report examines developments in non-standard employment over the last decade. It looks at trends in the main categories of non-standard employment – temporary, temporary agency and part-time work and self-employment – based mainly on data from the European Union Labour Force Survey. The report includes a specific focus on work mediated by digital platforms, which is the most innovative of the new forms of employment that have emerged in the past decade.

Depending on who you ask, the gig economy, in which workers set their own schedules at companies such as Uber, either liberates employees from the grind of wage-slavery — or recreates the exploitation of earlier centuries by putting workers at the mercy of capricious and exploitative companies.

stateofaadhaar.in (2017) The Government of India aims to provide a comprehensive set of safety nets to India’s poor, including food subsidies, employment guarantees, and targeted cash transfers. Financial leakages and service delivery issues, however, reduce its effectiveness. The government aims to use Aadhaar’s authentication and fund transfer capabilities to address these problems.

Financial Times (11.07. 2017) Government should encourage companies to improve employment options. Some view the gig economy as a flexible working arrangement, while others see it, if not straightforwardly as a form of exploitation, then as one that allows for very little employment protection. But if companies like Deliveroo or Uber were mandated to offer their workers a choice of employment options, wouldn’t this help ensure workers were being treated fairly?