New Venture Lab: Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs

Question

What kind of impact is Information Technology (IT) having on business and how can it enable me to work from home?

Answer

There are several macro trends that IT is enabling in our economy that will have a transformational impact on business and the family entrepreneur:

• The globalization of intellectual capital -- with the availability of high-speed networks and English increasingly as a universal language, it is easier than ever to have intellectual work such as research and analysis performed by specialists anywhere in the world.  In today's global market, Indian doctors analyze x-rays for U.S.-based patients and Filipino analysts write Wall Street investment reports, as work gets outsourced to the lowest cost, highest-skilled workers.  The threat of this trend is that someone with similar skills may "underbid" you in their willingness to work at a lower rate, while the opportunities include selling your intellectual capital to a broader, global market.
• The accessibility of information -- the availability, quality, and speed of information are all combining to transform our work and personal lives.  Whether you are "Googling" to find a local pizzeria or researching a service provider, information access has never been easier.  The threat is that many traditional information-based business models will be replaced by online digital business models, while the opportunities include the ability to work faster and deliver a higher quality product, often independent of employer location.
• The replacement of labor -- low skill jobs that involve repetitive, non-cognitive processes are increasingly "automated away" by technology.  Whether it is production robots that weld auto frames 24x7 or computer software that can analyze reams of information in a split second, jobs with lower skill content continue to be replaced by IT.  This threatens lower-skilled workers that are candidates for replacement, while the opportunities mean a lower-cost, higher quality product for product-based companies.
• The increase in spans of control -- IT enables faster and easier communication and better monitoring of worker's activities, allowing supervisors to manage larger numbers of workers in disparate locations.  While this threatens the jobs of lower-level supervisors, the opportunities for flatter organizations and leaner, lower cost production means companies that are more competitive in the marketplace.
• The collaborative work environment -- more information-based services are delivered through collaborative efforts of others, many times unknown to each other.  From networking sites such as LinkedIn to collaborative information and product communities such as Wikipedia and Linux, information is increasingly delivered collaboratively, creating new venues for work.  The threats include a loss of market share by companies without collaborative mediums and the opportunities are for companies to tap into a vast knowledge pool that directly apply their services via contract work that results in faster and richer results.

The massive impact of the new economic realities made possible by IT is literally creating a tectonic shift in business.  Given this, opportunities exist for a creative entrepreneurial family leader to translate his skills and experience into a new lifestyle and integrate his work and family life by reordering the means through which he produces value.  This is easier for knowledge workers in information-based industries, but possibilities also exist in service- and product-based industries.  The key is to focus on critical processes that can be leveraged with IT and outsourced to the benefit of the customer organization.  It could be as simple as redefining the terms of your current employment to work from home, or as much as launching a new venture that delivers a better price and/or quality than is currently offered.

(for more on the impact of technology on family entrepreneurship, see our upcoming article in the September/October 2007 article in Homeschooling Today from which this answer was excerpted)