Teleworking, Adam Smith and the Information Age

ClickNwork is applying Adam Smiths ideas to the Web with surprising results

A teleworking Web site, providing research to leading companies, and Henry Fords factory in Highland Park, Michigan, churning out Model T Fords for the masses, would seem to have little in common. But behind the scenes, both apply Adam Smiths Eighteenth Century thoughts on Division of Labor -- that economic efficiency is improved by assembling work in a sequence of specialized tasks.

Ford famously applied this theory some 90 years ago to build Model Ts fast and cheap, and revolutionized the automobile industry. Similar ideas have been used in practically all industrial processes and have become a linchpin of the exchange economy. But Smiths ideas are just as valid today and the Internet now offers the opportunity to apply them in ways unimaginable just a few years ago. ClickNwork (www.clicknwork.com) has started to apply them to business research services, offering a glimpse into how other business services might be resourced in the future.

ClickNwork has assembled an entirely virtual, global, flexible and very scalable workforce of specialists that wish to telework, and which is already behind business research services used by some of the worlds best-known companies, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Unilever, and J. Walter Thompson.

ClickNwork produces quality results from its disparate and far-flung team by using its Web-based workflow process that brings to bear the right skill at the right time: basically Net-based Fordism.

A second innovation, online workrooms, allows a team of people from around the world to work together on a task, without seeing each other or even knowing who the other people are. To research a business question, ClickNwork uses a combination of specialists and generalists, some separated by many time zones, working together in a team room.

This means, for instance, that an enquiry by a time pressed consultant working late in New York into, say, recent trends in outsourcing shared services, might be researched by a team comprising an information scientist in Australia, a librarian in northern California a graduate of Economics in Singapore and an unemployed labourer in New Zealand. But the teams are fluid: some might drop out of the team and be replaced by a housewife in Hong Kong and a student in London who cant sleep. Just a few hours after making the request, the consultant receives a high quality product, unaware that it is the result of perhaps 15 people from 10 countries working in their spare time and who combined, put in over a days work.
Businesses like it. It provides a vast research resource ready to produce quality research whenever they need and at low cost. The ClickNworkers like it too. They get to work only when they want, and mostly from home, and its a pure meritocracy -- those that are fastest and source the highest quality material get the highest pay, wherever they live.

If you would like to learn more about ClickNwork, please contact John Marchant or Roger Sharp at +1 212 866 4680 (john.marchant@clicknwork.com or roger.sharp@clicknwork.com).

About ClickNwork.com

ClickNwork.com (www.clicknwork.com) aims to be a virtual and organized workforce providing high quality outsourced business services for businesses and is initially focused on business research solutions.

It has built a global resource of over 20,000 people that wish to provide professional services over the Web, many thousands of whom have taken ClickNworks online tests to qualify. Successful applicants join a global team ready 24/7 to undertake business research and work in a team environment to complete requests fast, cost-effectively and to high quality.

No other Web site is applying this business model that brings rapid turnaround, high quality and low cost. For further information about ClickNwork, the services it offers and how it works, contact John Marchant or Roger Sharp at +1 212 866 4680 (john.marchant@clicknwork.com or roger.sharp@clicknwork.com).

Bios

ClickNwork is operated and primarily owned by John Marchant and Roger Sharp:

John Marchant has nine years management and strategy consulting experience, first with Coopers & Lybrand in London and then with Booz.Allen & Hamilton in New York, between which he completed in 1995 an MBA at Columbia University (on a full, merit-based scholarship). Before co-founding the company John was the General Manager of a business intelligence consulting start-up in Asia-Pacific that grew from four to over 30 full-time consultants in less than two years (without external finance) with offices in Singapore, Melbourne and Sydney.

Roger Sharp is an economist with strong business and management skills, developed during six years as a management consultant in a Strategy & Policy group at Coopers & Lybrand in London, then as Chief Economist for an electricity company in the UK, and then as part of the Australia-based management team of the Asia-Pacific business intelligence consulting company alongside John Marchant. He undertook Ph.D. research in the UK, focusing on trade strategies for developing countries, and has worked on a number of e-commerce strategy consulting assignments.