The Gig Economy and The Rise of the Uber-Specialists

Business Speak

Posted on May 19, 2017 by Jeff Shuey

Does the gig economy encourage the rise of the Uber Specialist?The Gig Economy

Where Uber Specialist means a person with deep and specific skills.

Note: This has NOTHING to do with the car service.

Effectively this is the market and model for independent consultants since the dawn of time. Where someone has a unique skill that people are willing to pay for.

Simple. That’s consulting 101.

What about generalists? We’ll come back to this.

The Gig Economy encourages and enables people from all walks of life to take their skills and put them on the open market.

For example, in business:

  • If you want somebody to clean up your audio files you can find that online.
  • If you want someone to help you proofread a technical document you can find them online too.
  • If you want someone to help you with almost any task you can find that skill somewhere online and/or in your town.

Although the points above are specific tasks there are other skills that are more general generic in nature. There is nothing wrong with being a generalist in this sense. However, it is likely that generalists will be limited in what they can charge for their services.

Back to the question from the title of this post:

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