Ecosystems
The final assignment should be a 2,500–word (excluding title page and references) report that focuses on the impact of digital labor platforms in your professional sector. For example, if you are a lawyer, a consultant, an IT specialist, etc, what are the opportunities and risks for you to grow your business and take advantage of demand– based economies of scale? You can focus on either opportunities and risks for freelance work or for full time work in your existing organization. Each option will present different sets of opportunities and risks for career and skill development, but also in supplier and customer interactions. Emphasis should be placed on the specific ecosystem context of your professional sector and the available digital platforms (e.g. if you are a software developer GitHub and TopCoder could be
examples of digital platforms; if you are a consultant Eden McCallum would be an example; and so on).
You are also expected to conduct relevant literature searches to develop a line of argument that is powerful for the claims you are making. The final assignment is open–ended, but it should be written in a scholarly way. References (at least 15 academic papers) should be used (not as footnotes). The references should follow the Harvard Referencing Style.
To make the analysis as powerful as possible it might be useful to ground your analysis in your personal experiences and the specific actions to be taken. In your report, make these specific strategic actions explicit. In addition, you
need to demonstrate understanding of key theoretical concepts and that you can apply theory effectively and critically.
The essay will be assessed with a focus on the:
(1) analysis of the opportunities and risks presented to you by digital labor platforms in your professional sector for each of the two scenarios (freelance vs full time work), depending on what you choose to focus on,
(2) actionable plan for career and skill development and engagement with ecosystem partners.
(3) quality of the argumentation with relevant and critical use of literature and data.
