Harvard Business Review on Samasource
Read about “Hyperspecialization”By Thomas W. Malone, Robert J. Laubacher, and Tammy Johns
Managing in a world of Hyperspecialization
In any given company, hyperspecialization might reshape the organization in many ways, from the macro to the micro level of task assignment. Some of the tasks of a certain role might be hived off, or entire job categories and processes might be upended. Managers might focus on lower-value-added tasks, as the clients of Samasource do when they hand over data entry. Or they might see greater value in tapping world-class expertise for high-end tasks. For instance, Business Talent Group and YourEncore have networks of freelance experts who provide clients with short-term, high-priced, but ideally higher-value consultation.
Regardless of task level, capitalizing on hyperspecialization will call for new managerial skills and focus. First, managers will need to learn how best to divide knowledge work into discrete, assignable tasks. Second, specialized workers will have to be recruited and the terms of their contribution settled. Third, the quality of the work must be ensured. And finally, the pieces have to be integrated.
Breaking down the work.
Understanding how a knowledge-based job could be transformed by hyperspecialization begins with mapping the tasks currently done by people holding that job. Such a map may immediately suggest tasks and subtasks that could be performed with higher quality, at greater speed, or at lower cost by a specialized resource. In 2008 the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer undertook to do just this in an initiative it called pfizerWorks. Its task-mapping revealed that Pfizer’s most highly skilled knowledge workers were spending 20% to 40% of their time on things like data entry, web research, basic spreadsheet analysis, and PowerPoint slides. The company established a process that allowed these tasks to be off-loaded, first to a pair of Indian offshoring firms and then also to an Ohio-based company.
Critical to subdividing knowledge work is understanding the dependencies among tasks and determining whether they can be managed satisfactorily if the tasks are done by different people. A simple example: A multinational company recently reorganized its administrative staff and considered assigning the task of making executives’ travel arrangements to a select group of administrative assistants who could then become its travel specialists. In the end the company decided that because travel itineraries impinge directly on the scheduling of other meetings (and on family birthdays and anniversaries), it was more efficient to leave this task with the administrative assistants who worked directly with the executives.
Recruiting workers and assigning tasks.
To complete hyperspecialized tasks, companies can use internal employees, develop dedicated relationships with external suppliers, or rely on intermediary firms that link clients with communities of specialized workers. One large U.S. technology company used its own staff when it experimented with hyperspecializing its internal software-development process. PfizerWorks relied on a small number of dedicated outsourcing companies. The T-shirt maker Threadless created its own community of workers to design and critique its products.
Hyperspecialization will require most managers to learn to work with the kinds of dedicated intermediaries that have sprung up in recent years to provide access to pools of skilled labor. (See the exhibit “The New Brokers of Work.”) Much as “cloud computing” services offer on-demand access to computer capacity and storage space, these firms offer “crowd computing”—on-demand access to large groups of appropriately specialized workers.
The New Brokers of Work
The intermediaries enable clients to accomplish tasks that range in size from tiny to quite large. On Mechanical Turk and Samasource, workers undertake small tasks that last a few seconds or minutes in exchange for payment ranging from several cents to several dollars. Project sites such as Elance and oDesk enable the completion of medium-size projects in many domains—including web development, graphic design, writing, and business analysis—for payments of several hundred to several thousand dollars. InnoCentive and TopCoder undertake complex activities such as software development and scientific discovery for payments that can reach six or even seven figures.
Enterprises that already use hyperspecialization have developed a variety of innovative incentives for their communities of workers. Most of them pay, but many rely on other incentives as well. TopCoder, for instance, posts detailed individual performance statistics that are visible to the entire community, and members often go to great lengths to get their names on the list of top contributors. Another key motivator for many workers is the ability to select their own tasks. TopCoder’s founder, Jack Hughes, believes that this is a leading reason for his community’s high productivity.
As hyperspecialization becomes more common, attracting contributions from the most talented workers will become a critical success factor for many businesses. And it will increasingly resemble the way sales and marketing organizations now attract customers: by understanding what people want, figuring out how to give it to them, and learning how to keep them engaged. In fact, cultivating communities of workers is likely to become one of the key disciplines of 21st-century business.