The Rise Of Micro-Multinational Companies
from the the-global-village-at-work dept
Hal Varian's latest opinion piece for the NY Times starts out by discussing how technology helps to "level the playing field" by allowing small companies to act like big companies, but then gets more interesting towards the end. That basic premise of the "level playing field" has been covered to death -- and really isn't all that accurate. However, later in the article, he notes (anecdotally) about new companies that are "micro-multinationals." That is, they're basically startups or small businesses -- but their employees are all over the world, enabled by all of the various free-to-cheap communications technologies we have today. He presents it as a very different take on the whole offshoring debate. By setting up a situation where a small company can be both tiny and global instantly, it's making it possible to create companies and new jobs where none existed before.
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Re: The Rise Of Micro-Multinational Companies
It's a logical extension of online work, and a concept I've been speaking about (http://www.alienpants.com/bizcase.zip) and writing about (I contributed a chapter in the recent Massively Multiplayer Game Development 2 book specifically about providing customer support using online staff).
All my staff work remotely using the Internet, and frankly I don't care where they live (except when it comes to working out tax :) ). We even had one guy presenting a live TV show from his bedroom using a webcam. That version ran for 11 months, and the show itself is still broadcast daily almsot 3 years later (although they now produce it in a studio using proper cameras).
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No Subject Given
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been going on for years....
One recent example of this is WSO2, which has (had?) only five employees located in Sri Lanka, London, New York and San Francisco.
Chris.
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Meeting the Legal Needs of the Micro-Multinational
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Miles=Millimeters
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