Talent Communities

The talent shortage, customer demand for complex solutions and the size limits of Indian IT services firms will increase transaction costs to the point where the most efficient business model will be an organization that uses talent networks to deliver IT services. This was echoed in John Hagel’s call to action in his speech at Nasscom 2007. Although social networking has captured the imagination of web 2.0 businesses, collaborative delivery using communities is not very well understood, and we have yet to see a mainstream model that can successfully monetize it. Subsequent posts will describe a business that starts with a web 2.0 Job Portal and works outwards from there to a model that lets networks of small companies collaborate and deliver complex services to customers.
Ultimately the big opportunity lies in creating a disruptive services delivery mode by becoming a leader in the creation of talent communities, in using these communities to reduce transaction costs as well as production costs and in commercializing the resultant value network.