The gig economy for knowledge workers never really took off outside of software, largely because organizational and cultural norms got in the way. But the pandemic has forced companies from all sectors to get used to remote working – and remote working is not very different from working a gig. The authors discuss how to approach gigification, offering a task-based framework based on answering three questions: Is the work codifiable? Is there a gap between the creation and consumption of value? Can the work be carried out at home?
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The term “gig economy” was coined by the former New Yorker editor Tina Brown in 2009. It described how workers in the knowledge economy increasingly were pursuing “a bunch of free-floating projects, consultancies, and part-time bits and pieces while they transacted in a digital marketplace.”
