Tom Ringo, the head of IBM Human Capital Management (the consultancy arm of the company), said the firm’s global workforce of 390,000 permanent employees could be reduced to 100,000 by 2017, the date by which IBM is due to complete its HR transformation program. Ringo said the firm would employ “crowd- sourcing” and re-hire workers as contractors for specific projects when necessary, adding, “There would be no building costs, no pensions, and no healthcare costs, making huge savings.” An IBM spokesman later said Ringo’s comments were without merit. (Personnel Today, 4/23/10)

Whether IBM actually makes the transition to a mostly crowd-sourced workforce or not, the fact that it has discussed the possibility is significant. The expectation has been that hiring would increase not long after economic growth, but has this recession taught companies new lessons about the merits of lean staffing and the possibilities of technology? Might we see a significant segment of the U.S. labor force become permanent freelancers, doing work on demand?

Eric Zavolinsky

Simon & Schuster became the first publisher to establish a delayed release window between publication of hardcover books and their e-book editions.  Thirty-five books carrying the Simon & Schuster imprint and having high print runs or high price points will be available in their print versions four months prior to the availability of their e-reader editions. (Publishers Weekly, 12/14/09)

Newspaper publishers are seeking to charge for their work; music companies are dropping the so-called freemium model and looking to expand music-as-a-service programs (a.k.a. subscription music); and now a large publisher wants to have print editions own the market for a limited time.  Unlike the movie industry, which has all but abandoned the sequential release model (i.e., theatre release, DVD, pay-per-view and television), book publishers hope the process of copying and replicating a book will be more time consuming than the much easier digital copying that plagued the music and film industries and that they will be spared the agony of an extensive underground market. Good luck with that.

Ken Hey - Inferential Focus