Lots of startups bet on this future of knowledge work. Below are a few companies (listed and private) that are expected to benefit the most. Listed companies with a market capitalization greater than $25bn are not listed below. That’s why you don’t see the likes of Atlassian ($60bn), ServiceNow ($108bn), Workday ($60bn), Zoom ($107bn), Nvidia ($322bn), Google ($1175bn, Microsoft ($1684bn) or Facebook ($762bn).
1. Complex problems will dominate the workday, rather than routine tasks.
Complex problems require infrastructure to organize work. Asana ($5bn) is an application designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work. Asana simplifies team-based work management. Watch out for Coda, an online document management system, and Miro, an visual collaboration platform.
2. Recruitment will focus on soft skills, rather than hard skills.
Watch out for Pymetrics and WorkStyle, two startups pioneering the field of psychometric analysis.
3. The talent pool will become global, rather than remain local.
Traditional credentials will lose value. The global talent pool has access to (almost free) and relevant education, e.g., provided by Udemy or Coursera.
4. Teams will be distributed, rather than co-located.
Individuals as members of distributed teams need physical infrastructure to be productive.
Corsair ($3bn) (with their Elgato product suite) and Logitech ($15bn) provide high-quality and convenient equipment for distributed work. Watch out for boutique hotels and resorts that are purpose-built for company retreats and offsites.
5. Organizations will become ‘talent-light’ and hire on-demand, rather than entertaining an underutilized workforce.
Upwork ($5bn), a platform that offers a critical mass of knowledge workers will benefit from the trend of on-demand hiring. Watch out for Toptal and Gigster, highly curated services that focus on vetted (teams) of knowledge workers.
6. Most communication will be in writing, rather than verbal.
Watch out for Grammarly, Textio, Doist, Basecamp, Automattic, and, as teamwork and social gaming (MMORPG) will eventually converge, Discord.
7. New algorithms will enable knowledge workers and organizations, rather than disable them.
Watch this space…