July 10, 2008 8:43 AM
Broadband Enabling "Mom-and-Pop Multinationals"
Great article in Business Week available here.
It talks about the rise of "mom-and-pop multinationals" or the ability for small business entrepreneurs to tap into a global workforce and in doing so gain new efficiencies and expanded opportunities.
What was most fascinating about this article, though, is that while it details the site Elance.com at length and discusses the competitive dynamics of the online outsourcing marketplace, it never once uses the words "Internet" or "broadband."
To be honest, I'm not sure how to read this omission.
On the one hand this seems like a missed opportunity to continue beating the drum for how broadband makes things like cheap international VoIP calls, high quality video calls, collaborative environments, and more that are the application that are what truly enable this outsourcing to happen.
But on the other, perhaps this is an early sign of how the perceptions of the Internet and broadband are changing, no longer focusing on the technology but instead what it can enable.
In either case, I still found this to be an interesting article as it highlights just one way in which the Internet is having a profound aspect on people's lives while simultaneously suggesting at how the availability of broadband can change the definition of what economic development is and how it can be attained.
